THE MAGAZINE OF TECHNOLOGY INSIDERS 10.08 steam punked the warped tech of a victorian world that never was

www.spectrum.ieee.org volume 45 number 10 north american 10.08

updaTe 13 Open-sOurce vOting can open-source software save electronic voting? By Mark Anderson

14 virtual cOlOnOscOpy

16 car talk

18 keeping mems mOving

20 hOme fuel cells tO sell in japan

opinion 22 48 9 spectral lines Is the United states ready for digital television? the transition may not be so smooth. By Tekla S. Perry

10 fOrum Futurist ray Kurzweil gets the last word on the singularity.

21 technically speaking New words are needed to reprocess old electronics. By Paul McFedries

deparTmenTs 4 Back stOry 28 on the road to tikrit. sparks fly: cover story 6 cOntriButOrs engineers build community and 22 hands On more at Techshop 48 The sTeampunk techshop, a high-tech hands-on [top left]; strange workshop, is expanding—perhaps to steam-powered conTrapTors a city near you. By David Schneider critters inhabit Do-it-yourself enthusiasts are drawing on the aesthetics of the i-wei huang’s careers garage [top right]; 19th-century Victorian era to create fantastic brass-adorned, steam-driven 24 sam Altman is only 23 and on and solar panels machines. All hail the steampunk subculture. By Erico Guizzo leave from stanford, but his software on a u.s. air Force base harvest may already be on your cellphone. energy from the 28 a less well-oiled war machine By Susan Karlin sun [bottom]. One of the world’s most profligate users of energy, the U.S. military, 25 Humor can hurt your career— is turning to renewable sources on a grand scale. By Sandra Upson or help it. By Carl Selinger

COVER: BOOks JOnathan 34 Fresh phish 26 A new book rescues the lost SpRaguE/ history of electrical engineering. REdux A flaw in the Internet’s infrastructure makes it easy for scammers to By Mark Anderson thiS pagE, ClOCkwiSE lure people to fake Web sites. By David Schneider fROm tOp lEft: timOthy 26 Does nuclear disarmament aRChibald; JOnathan SpRaguE/REdux; mma still matter? By William Sweet REnEwablE VEntuRES 40 bomb squad diary 76 the data Bomb disposal has gone high-tech, as our reporter saw firsthand when Little text messages are a very big his convoy encountered an IED north of Tikrit, in Iraq. By Glenn Zorpette business. By Steven Cherry www.specTrum.ieee.org october 2008 • Ieee spectrUm • NA 1 volume 45 number 10 north american 10.08

www.Ieee.org/ tHeINstItUte available 6 ocTober on The insTiTuTe online

conFerence looks aT paTTern recogniTion read up on the latest advances in the fields of computer vision, pattern recognition, speech and signal analysis, and biometrics. these topics and more will be discussed at the 2008 International conference on pattern recognition, scheduled from 8 to 11 December in tampa, Fla.

ieee merchandise available the new Ieee online store opens tOp: SEan mCCabE; bOttOm: Ruth fREmSOn/ its doors this month with its thE nEw yORk timES shelves stocked full of t-shirts, caps, umbrellas, and briefcases www.spectrUm.Ieee.org emblazoned with the Ieee logo. available 1 ocTober on specTrum online commiTTee besT oF lucky Takes on clean Fifteen years ago, a book compendium of Robert W. Lucky’s column, drinking waTer Reflections, was published asLucky Strikes...Again. Today, through the the Ieee committee on earth miracle of the Web, we can publish a compendium whenever we want. So observation has been working on a we asked Bob [above] to pick his 10 favorites from his column since then. “water for the world” project aimed at creating pilot programs to provide “Does the list have the one with Brutus, the telephone-answering computer clean, safe drinking water in areas that accidentally discloses the owner’s extramarital affair?” asked staffer where there is none. Nancy Hantman (who arrived at IEEE Spectrum in 1981, just months before the column’s debut). Sorry, Nancy, that one didn’t make the list—but just imagine what did. Let us know if Bob left out your favorite as well. Thanks to the Web, we can do this again, whenever the mood strikes...again.

oNLINe FeAtUres: ALso oNLINe: rOBOtic dinOsaurs get Big: • webcasts In an exclusive video, two lucky kids • podcasts get a sneak peek at Kota, a plush • News triceratops big enough to ride. • blogs • Jobs nasa spent us $650 milliOn and • career Accelerator Forum four decades developing Gravity Probe B • Ieee Xplore® digital library to test einstein’s equations, but the data • white papers came back noisy. cosmologist paul s. • opinions wesson explains what went wrong and • more! how to save the experiment.

ieee spectrum (IssN 0018-9235) is published monthly by the Institute of electrical and electronics engineers, Inc. All rights reserved. © 2008 by the Institute of electrical and electronics engineers, Inc., 3 park Avenue, New york, Ny 10016-5997, U.s.A. the editorial content of Ieee spectrum magazine does not represent official positions of the Ieee or its organizational units. canadian post International publications mail (canadian Distribution) sales Agreement No. 40013087. return undeliverable canadian addresses to: circulation Department, Ieee spectrum, box 1051, Fort erie, oN L2A 6c7. cable address: ItrIpLee. Fax: +1 212 419 7570. INterNet: [email protected]. ANNUAL sUbscrIptIoNs: Ieee members: $21.40 included in dues. Libraries/institutions: $205. postmAster: please send address changes to Ieee spectrum, c/o coding Department, Ieee service center, 445 Hoes Lane, box 1331, piscataway, NJ 08855. periodicals postage paid at New york, Ny, and additional mailing offices. canadian gst #125634188. printed at w224-N3322 Duplainville rd., pewaukee, wI 53072-4195, U.s.A. Ieee spectrum circulation is audited by bpA worldwide. Ieee spectrum is a member of American business media, the magazine publishers of America, and the society of National Association publications. www.specTrum.ieee.org october 2008 • Ieee spectrUm • NA 3 back story E Beer, Not Bombs wish: that he would at some point he would at point that some wish: Iraq embedded with U.S. military military U.S. with embedded Iraq I’ve always believed that the best Zorpette [at Zorpette no. should editorial content, butbecause of foot ofeach page. IEEE Spectrum citi aspiration “may seem odd. But I was blow it up. of them One specialists journalism comes from people doing roadside bombs. “EOD teams are are teams “EOD bombs. roadside is dealing with roadside bombs, and in Iraq to report on how the military by arobot. bomb on the placed a to hesee going not was only two U.S. Navy bomb-disposal bomb-disposal Navy U.S. two bomb, he was also going to help going also he was bomb, eyes. own his it to with bomb see ordnance disposal, or EOD. They or EOD. They disposal, ordnance blew up that acharge igniter on an get close enough to a roadside to enough aroadside close get and seeing things firsthand.” search for, destroy and search disable, explosive in trained specialists [above] apicture snapped as just  NA • iEEE Sp iEEE • NA

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Courtesy of Glenn Zorpette iEEE mEdiA Staff Director; PubliSher, IEEE SpEctrum James a. Vick, [email protected] aSSociate PubliSher, SaleS & aDVertiSing Director Marion Delaney, [email protected] recruitMent SaleS DeVeloPMent Manager MARK PAUL McFEDRIES Michael buryk, [email protected] ANDERSON does has been writing buSineSS Manager robert t. ross Marketing & ProMotion Manager blanche Mcgurr, double duty in this the Technically [email protected] issue. With the U.S. Speaking column interactiVe Marketing Manager ruchika anand, [email protected] liSt/recruitMent Marketing Manager ilia rodriguez, presidential since June 2002. He [email protected] elections looming, he looks into says he knew it was time for this rePrint SaleS +1 212 221 9595, ext. 319 the long-running battle for secure month’s “E-cycling E-waste” DePartMent aDMiniStrator faith h. Jeanty, [email protected] aDVertiSing SaleS +1 212 419 7760 electronic voting in “Open-Source [p. 21] when he saw the term telePhone aDVertiSing/SaleS rePreSentatiVe Voting” [p. 13]. He also reviews e‑waste in The New York Times. John restchack +1 212 419 7578 aDVertiSing ProDuction Manager felicia Spagnoli Michael Brian Schiffer’s book McFedries has written numerous Senior aDVertiSing ProDuction coorDinator nicole evans on the history of electrical books, including The Complete aDVertiSing ProDuction +1 732 562 6334 engineering prior to Edison Idiot’s Guide to Weird Word Origins, ieee Staff executiVe, PublicationS anthony Durniak [p. 26]. “It’s filling in a gap that which was published this past iEEE bOArd Of dirEctOrS PreSiDent & ceo lewis M. terman many people, including me, didn’t August. He also runs Wordspy, +1 732 562 3928 fax: +1 732 465 6444 [email protected] know existed,” says Anderson. a Web site that tracks emerging PreSiDent-elect John r. Vig words and phrases. treaSurer David g. green Secretary barry l. Shoop JOHN BLAU, who PaSt PreSiDent leah h. Jamieson

lives in Düsseldorf, NATHAN PERKEL VicE prESidENtS Germany, has been was aiming for evangelia Micheli-tzanakou, Educational Activities; John baillieul, Publication Services & Products; Joseph V. lillie, contributing to “a mix of old- Member & Geographic Activities; george W. arnold, President, Standards Association; J. roberto b. de Marca, Technical IEEE Spectrum for fashioned taste with Activities; russell J. lefevre, President, IEEE-USA nearly 20 years. Though he’s modern technology” diViSiON dirEctOrS written for us about such diverse in the photo of Jake von Slatt in giovanni De Micheli (i); thomas g. habetler (ii); curtis a. Siller Jr. (iii); edward Della torre (iV); topics as low-power processors, our cover story, “Steampunk Deborah M. cooper (V); irving engelson (Vi); peer-to-peer TV, and robotics, Contraptors” [p. 48]. Enthusiasts John D. McDonald (Vii); thomas W. Williams (Viii); frederick c. Mintzer (ix); William a. gruver (x) his article, “Car Talk” [p. 16], like von Slatt (né Sean Slattery) rEgiON dirEctOrS about vehicle-to-vehicle commu- envision a 19th-century world howard e. Michel (1); John c. Dentler (2); William b. ratcliff (3); robert J. Dawson (4); David J. Pierce (5); loretta J. arellano (6); nications schemes, is a natural that might have been. To add to ferial el-hawary (7); Jean g. remy (8); enrique e. alvarez (9); fit. “I’m based in a country the historical effect, Perkel shot Janina e. Mazierska (10) whose economy is highly the portrait with a traditional dirEctOrS EmErituS dependent on car manufactur- large-format 4-by-5-inch film eric herz, theodore W. hissey igrid Blau ing,” he points out. camera instead of the digital iEEE StAff s

huMan reSourceS betsy Davis, SPhr oen; k camera he used for his other +1 732 465 6434, [email protected]

VIKTOR KOEN photos in the article. PublicationS anthony Durniak iktor v portrays entrap- +1 732 562 3998, [email protected] eDucational actiVitieS Douglas gorham

+1 732 562 5483, [email protected] owers;

ment in his JONATHAN p StanDarDS actiVitieS Judith gorman ate ate

illustrations for SPRAGUE wanted +1 732 562 3820, [email protected] k “Fresh Phish” [p. 34], to capture the MeMber & geograPhic actiVitieS cecelia Jankowski

+1 732 562 5504, [email protected] erkel; p which describes a recently craftsmanship of corPorate Strategy & coMMunicationS Matthew loeb, cae an

+1 732 562 5320, [email protected] H

discovered flaw in the Internet’s steampunk artists at buSineSS aDMiniStration richard D. Schwartz n Domain Name System. “The I-Wei “Crab Fu” Huang and +1 732 562 5311, [email protected] multiplicity of the hooks” in his Richard “Datamancer” Nagy technical actiVitieS Mary Ward-callan +1 732 562 3850, [email protected] underwater scene “gives it a [p. 48]. Sprague says he focused Managing Director, ieee-uSa chris brantley

+1 202 530 8349, [email protected] aren Hammond; dramatic effect,” he says. Born in on the intricacies of the gears and k Thessaloníki, Greece, Koen is on parts in such creations as the iEEE publicAtiON SErVicES & prOductS bOArd

John baillieul, Chair; tayfun akgul, Duncan c. baker, John t. barr everitt; the faculty of the Parsons School laptop computer disguised as a iV, Mohamed e. el-hawary, gerald l. englel, gerard h. gaynor, l roger a. grice, Marion o. hagler, Jens hannemann, Donald n. enny

of Design, in New York City. His music box. A first-time heirman, evelyn h. hirt, hirohisa kawamoto, Phillip a. laplante, p Mary y. lanzerotti, Michael r. lightner, george f. Mcclure, adrian award-winning images have been contributor to Spectrum, Sprague V. Pais, roger D. Pollard, Saifur rahman, Suzanne M. rivoire, Jon exhibited worldwide in museums, has also shot for Travel & Leisure, g. rokne, W. ross Stone, James M. tien, robert J. trew, Stephen yurkovich, amir i. Zaghloul galleries, and private collections. Fortune, and Men’s Journal. iEEE OpErAtiONS cENtEr 445 hoes lane, box 1331, Piscataway, nJ 08854-1331 u.S.a. kwise fromleft: top

tel: +1 732 981 0060 fax: +1 732 981 1721 C Clo  NA • iEEE SpEctrum • OctObEr 2008 www.spectrum.ieee.org spectral lines

digital reception? No better. signal distribution between Like most people who the antenna and the tuner.” Digital Dilemma watch broadcast television, Our antenna cables Converting to digital television is I get my signals through were installed before we supposed to be simple. It’s not an ancient antenna on my lived in this house. I try to roof—a bent, cobwebbed, imagine what’s going on aluminum monstrosity that inside the walls. A splitter hen the U.S. is, it turns out, optimized for probably sends a line into Congress voted in VHF signals. Most digital the bedroom—giving the W2006 to stop over- channels come in on the UHF upstairs TV half the original the-air broadcasts of analog band. So I next installed signal—before continuing television on 17 February a $60 indoor RCA Flat down the wall, dropping 2009, it assured the public Antenna. No improvement. under the house, and splitting that going digital would I convinced my husband into three to five other lines. be cheap and painless. It to climb up on the roof and If that’s the case, the family allocated US $1.5 billion to replace the VHF antenna room gets 10 to 15 percent of help fund the purchase of with an $80 C2 UHF the original signal. converter boxes for what was antenna from Antennas Yet that was fine for supposedly the tiny minority Direct, in Eureka, Mo. This analog VHF television. of U.S. households that improved reception on my “The lower VHF don’t subscribe to a cable or second-floor Sony television. frequencies,” Schneider satellite television service. It now gets most of the says, “tend to be more But if my experience is broadcasts I got with analog forgiving of long cable typical, the coupons are just reception, along with CW runs and splitters. UHF the first step in a conversion and Ion (two secondary U.S. signals are more prone that will be neither painless networks), plus the Spanish to loss.” With 30 meters nor, in the long run, cheap. and Chinese stations. of typical coaxial cable, a I ordered two coupon The new antenna didn’t 50-megahertz VHF signal cards back in January. They do as much for the TV in the loses about 2.8 decibels; a arrived in April, and in family room; I am picking up 500-mHz UHF signal loses June I purchased a $50 RCA NBC now, but I still can’t get about 8.5 dB. A couple of converter box at Wal-Mart. most local network affiliates. bites from a mouse along A different brand at Radio San Jose, Calif., instead The local terrain may be the way can increase that Shack was sold out. of San Francisco’s award- responsible, says Ernest loss dramatically. The television’s built-in winning KQED. In addition, Neumann, KQED’s director If I can find one of analog tuner had gotten I got reasonable reception on of broadcast operations; the splitters, I can put great reception on all the four Spanish- and Chinese- UHF doesn’t propagate a preamp on it for about major networks, a local language channels. But ABC through hills and other $60. Alternatively, I can nonaffiliated television and NBC, two of the three obstacles. Or my problem rewire. And I’m not alone. station, and a Spanish- major U.S. networks, broke might stem from multipath “People living more than language channel—all in the up constantly and were interference. In urban 10 miles [16 kilometers] VHF band—and six fuzzy unwatchable, while CBS environments, a strong away from the transmitter but watchable UHF channels. went missing entirely. digital signal can bounce are mainly going to have to Using the RCA converter I went back to Radio around, and many tuners start over,” Neumann says. box, I got great reception on Shack with my remaining can’t sort out the information. Or I can spend about $60 one PBS-affiliate channel. coupon and ended up with a But, given that I have a month for cable or satellite This gave me four choices $60 Digital Stream converter. better reception upstairs, a service—just the thing the Bryan Mullennix/Getty BryanMullennix/Getty of programming, because The connection process was more likely culprit is the digital television converters the affiliate broadcasts the same as for the RCA box. cable from the antenna to the are supposed to help me multiple standard-definition The on-screen graphics are a television. Richard Schneider, do without. —Tekla S. Perry programs instead of one little nicer, but I never found president of Antennas Direct, high-definition program. a comprehensive program says, “Eighty percent of the A version of this column iM a Unfortunately, the PBS guide, which made channel calls we get about reception appeared in IEEE Spectrum G es station was KTEH, out of selection difficult. And the problems turn out to be in the Online’s Tech Talk blog on 16 July.

www.speCtrum.Ieee.org OctOber 2008 • Ieee Spectrum • NA  forum

growth and, like all such reproductive machinery), paradigms, it will come which is a level of to an end. It was not the complexity we can first approach to bring handle. And indeed, we exponential growth to are making exponential the price-performance gains in modeling and of computing; it simulating extensive was the fifth such regions of the human paradigm, and it won’t brain, including be the last. Smooth— the cerebral cortex. and predictable— Horgan’s argument is exponential growth basically “The notions started over a century of the singularity are ago, decades before ridiculous. Therefore Gordon Moore was even it won’t happen. born. And it applies to QED.” I respond in information technologies detail to this seductive that go beyond mere argument in the section computation, such as “The Criticism From brain reverse engineering Incredulity” in chapter 9 and genetic sequencing. of my book. In fact, I Another argument that respond in detail to all of Horgan and your other the skeptical arguments skeptics don’t mention in your issue in chapter 9 ray Kurzweil is that the design of the and in my 2005 book in human brain, while not general, and it would Letters do not The SingulariTy: the singularity “will simple, is nonetheless a have been useful if represent opinions The laST Word occur in about 15 years,” billion times simpler than your skeptics had gone of the Ieee. short, commend IEEE yet I clearly state 2045 as it appears, due to massive beyond using de novo concise letters are preferred. they I Spectrum for devoting my projection—see page redundancy. Biological arguments as if nothing may be edited for an issue to the varied 136 of my book [The systems such as the brain had ever been written space and clarity. faces of the singularity Singularity Is Near: When are probabilistic fractals, about this subject. Additional letters [“The Singularity: A Humans Transcend which give them their are available online Ray Kurzweil in “And More Forum” Special Report,” June]. Biology, Viking, 2005]. messy, unpredictable IEEE Affiliate Member at http://www. There were a number of One of my arguments quality. The design of Newton Highlands, Mass. spectrum.ieee.org. thoughtful essays, such is that progress is the human brain is Write to Forum, as those by Christof exponential. If you think in the genome, and I Editor’s clarification: IEEE Spectrum, Koch and Giulio Tononi, linearly, as Horgan seems show that there are only The statement “This 3 Park Ave., 17th Floor, New York, NY by Rodney Brooks, to, then human-level about 50 million bytes of singularity will occur in 10016-5997, U.s.A.; and by Vernor Vinge. intelligence will seem design information (after about 15 years” appears fax, +1 212 419 7570; It is sensible for you far away. Take 30 linear lossless compression) in the table “Who’s e-mail, n.hantman to have also included steps and you get to in the genome Who in the Singularity,” @ieee.org. critics, but it would have 30. Take 30 exponential (including the epigenetic which was not written been useful to assign steps (2, 4, 8,…) and you information in the by John Horgan. skeptics who do their get to a billion, which is homework. John Horgan one reason that the next [“The Consciousness several decades will see CorreCTionS Conundrum”], for far more progress than is in “earth-size radio telescope opens its eye” example, cites my books, intuitively obvious. Your [update, August], the accompanying photo caption but it seems that he has constant citing of Moore’s should have stated that the radio telescope near not read them. He makes Law in every “expert Arecibo, puerto rico, has a diameter of 305 meters, utline o

no mention of their view” is misleading. In or roughly 1000 feet. S principal arguments, and my book, I spend several in “A computer for the clouds” [update, August], al/Corbi

many descriptions in chapters explaining why the correct average power efficiency for the top G

your issue are incorrect. Moore’s Law is just one 10 supercomputers is 248 million floating-point Se GG

You state that I predict example of exponential operations per second per watt. Gre

10 NA • Ieee Spectrum • OctOber 2008 www.spectrum.ieee.org more online at www.spectrum.ieee.org

privacy, please: Is Open-Source Voting open-source voting the Its proponents could put pressure on voting-machine makers, solution to the but critics say it’s not a cure-all United States’ election issues?

PHOTO: DIGITAL VISION/ n the aftermath of the Florida and democratic elections. Already, for open-source voting systems. GETTY IMAGES recount debacle of the 2000 two bellwether states, California The catalyst for open-source I presidential election, the U.S. and New York, have taken voting is the Open Voting Consor- Congress appropriated billions notice. This spring, California’s tium, based in Sacramento, Calif., of dollars for state and local state assembly considered a which demonstrated its electronic governments to buy electronic bill mandating that new voting balloting software in August at voting systems. But in the years systems be based on open- LinuxWorld in San Francisco, since, a string of problematic source software. The bill didn’t using it to take a straw poll for the elections has led much of the pass, despite support from the presidential election and also to voting public to join early critics in California secretary of state, whose determine the conference’s best-in- concluding that available machines office certifies voting systems. But show award. According to OVC are buggy, easily subverted, and at least one major (and for now president Alan Dechert, the vote impossible to accurately audit. undisclosed) California city is tallied 816 ballots over 16 polling So perhaps it was only a matter considering open-source voting. stations, using ballots that had to of time before members of the open- So the issue is likely to come up be created on the fly after the best- source movement would enter the again. Meanwhile, New York’s in-show finalists had been chosen. fray, with the claim that their kind state board of elections decided late Dechert admits it’s a long of technology can guarantee free last year to waive certification fees way from a straw poll to a state— www.SpectrUm.Ieee.org OctOber 2008 • Ieee Spectrum • NA 13 or even a town—election. scanning paper ballots. But, he says, open-source Moreover, Mercuri says, machines already have there are problems that much of the functionality of OVC wouldn’t necessarily closed-source ones, are more solve. “In poorer precincts trustworthy, and are one- or in precincts where there tenth the cost. A comparable is some deliberate disen- closed-source voting franchisement going on, we machine costs US $4000, find that the machines aren’t he says, “and it does its job quite working properly,” stupidly. With ours, the resulting in long lines at the hardware costs $400 and polls, says Mercuri, who has the software is free.” The been called in as an expert greatest advantage of open- in a number of elections. source voting software, Earlier this year, Mercuri Dechert says, is that anyone taught a class at the who can read computer University of Pennsylvania code can inspect an OVC that built an OVC system system to ensure its security. from material available on In the OVC system a OVC’s Web site and ran a voter chooses candidates mock election. The vote- on a touch screen and then counting database was prints a ballot, which shows buggy, she says. And OVC’s Colon Cancer Screening, those selections in bar-code software for designing form. The printout would be ballots was so complex that stored in a ballot box until even her Ph.D. students The Easy Way the polls close. Then, with were scratching their heads. radiology researchers devise a election monitors observing, Of course, as with any open- workaround for a nasty problem the ballots would be hand- source product, the solution scanned using a bar-code may be to simply enlist more reader. Proprietary systems developers to refine the code. new software pro- foiled killer creeps up on so by manufacturers like However, Mercuri thinks gram promises to make many people because the gold Diebold, Election Systems the open-source model of A one of medicine’s more standard in colorectal cancer & Software, Sequoia continual refinement might grimace-inducing check- detection, the colonoscopy, Voting Systems, and Hart not fit with a government ups significantly simpler. By is tremendously unpopular. InterCivic typically tally certification process that devising a way to digitally The prescreening regimen votes as soon as the voters takes months and hundreds clean up three-dimensional requires ingesting nothing make their selections. of thousands of dollars. X-ray images of the colon, a but liquids for 24 hours, This runs contrary to the Those problems aside, if group of researchers at the including a diarrhea-inducing OVC’s philosophy, which open-source voting gains in State University of New concoction that forces a in Dechert’s words is “You popularity, says Mercuri, it York at Stony Brook hope to patient to stay near the cast your vote in private, could pressure proprietary encourage more patients to bathroom for hours. Then but it’s counted in public.” voting-machine companies receive their recommended there’s the test itself: a camera The problem with the to open their systems to colon cancer screenings. attached to a fiber-optic cable OVC model, says Rebecca greater scrutiny. “The Colorectal cancer kills is inserted into a patient’s rear Mercuri, owner of computer viability of a real open- close to 700 000 people each and snaked through the colon. security firm Notable source product out there in year worldwide—a staggering This allows a doctor to visu- Software, in Philadelphia, is the market would now kick number considering that most ally inspect the walls of the that while OVC may be more open the door of the vendors of these victims are done in by gut for the presence of polyps secure than today’s proprie- who are saying we’re never a tumor that ticks like a time that could turn cancerous. tary systems, it is no more giving out our source code,” bomb for as long as 15 years For the past few years, the secure than electronically she says. —Mark Anderson before erupting. This easily option of a virtual colonoscopy

14 NA • Ieee Spectrum • OctOber 2008 www.SpectrUm.Ieee.org inside out: radiologists in New York have invented a technology that screens for colon cancer without discomfort. PHOTO: zHENGrONG LIANG at Stony Brook’s medical school and a member of the team that developed the tech- nique. The software separates the colon from everything else, based on the difference between its density and that of stool and fluid; these differ- ences are indicated by varia- tions in image intensity on the CT scan. Big variations in the stool’s consistency might cause the software to mistake fecal matter for part of the colon wall. Reliably setting the bound- ary of the colon wall, says Liang, was the team’s great- est technical challenge. The software had to screen out has offered patients a partial from vacation photos. colorectal cancer, primarily artifacts introduced by the CT reprieve by doing away with “Prepless virtual colonos- due to the invasive nature scan, in particular one known the inserted camera. Instead, copy, meaning no laxatives or of the standard colonoscopy, as the partial volume effect. a computed tomography (CT) diet modification, is the holy Milano points out. This effect renders extra scan renders a 3-D image of grail that doctors have been For electronic colon cleans- layers at the places where, say, the colon, enabling doctors to looking for,” says Andrew ing to work, each patient has air and stool meet. “The scan- perform noninvasive virtual Milano, a clinical professor to ingest three shot-glass-size ner generates values at these fly-throughs of patients’ of gastroenterology who servings of a barium solution points, which might suggest digestive tracts. But recipients performs virtual colonoscopy that attaches to the stool, that there’s tissue there,” have still had to deal with at New York University making it easily detectable says Liang. “That might the discomforting effects of but was not involved in the by the CT scanner, and a shot make you think, because the prescreening potion and Stony Brook study. Research of iodine to make the stool of the shape [a lump where diet. Now these research- shows that only about half softer and more uniform. the rest of the colon wall is ers hope their method— of people older than 50 in This uniformity is impor- smooth], that you’re looking partial volume segmentation, the United States get their tant, says Jerome Zhengrong at a polyp when you’re not.” described in an upcoming recommended screening for Liang, a radiology professor But the new software article in IEEE Transactions does an even better job of in Biomedical Engineering— seeing past the artifacts than will banish that as well. technology Liang and his Their algorithm, an colleagues previously pat- improvement on a technique ented, reducing the number of developed in 2002, analyzes false positives by 50 percent. the CT scans and discrimi- In 2000 the group founded nates between the pixels that Viatronix, in Stony Brook, to represent colon walls and develop an earlier version those showing fluids and fecal of prepless virtual colonos- matter. This allows doctors copy. The university is now to remove the unwanted bits in talks with several large from the image of the colon manufacturers of medical the way a tourist would use fantastic voyage: physicians can erase the colon’s contents and imagers about licensing the Photoshop to erase strangers perform a virtual fly-through of the organ. PHOTO : zHENGrONG LIANG new version. —Willie D. Jones www.SpectrUm.Ieee.org OctOber 2008 • Ieee Spectrum • NA 15 look out! Vehicle-to-vehicle communication could prevent accidents.

PHOTO: GENErAL MOTOrS in 10 different applications, including monitoring speed and hazardous goods. CVIS collaborates closely with the Safespot Integrated Project, another EU-funded initiative, which is focused largely on preventing accidents through intelligent car and road communications systems. Both projects aim to provide a proof of concept for all their tested systems in 2009. In an important step toward getting these systems on the road, the European Commission agreed to an EU-wide frequency band, 5.9 gigahertz, and allocated 30 megahertz of spectrum for vehicle and roadside infrastructure communications. Car Talk The frequency is to be used mostly but not exclusively for road safety e urope begins testing vehicle-to-vehicle and applications, according to Kompfner. vehicle-to-infrastructure communications systems Both CVIS and Safespot use the 5.9-GHz frequency and are based on nder pressure to improve and extendable bumpers. Or a vehicle IEEE 802.11p wireless technology, safety and reduce traffic could communicate directly with others says CVIS project manager Peter U congestion, fuel consumption, and with roadside infrastructure, using Christ. The proposed standard is a and carbon dioxide emissions, the a dynamic local map to help the driver flavor of Wi-Fi, specially designed European Union has spawned a batch quickly respond to warnings of conges- for data exchange among moving of projects to give cars the ability to tion and make better decisions about his vehicles and road infrastructure. communicate wirelessly with the road or her route. Now these and other con- Though they’ll use the same and among themselves. The effort, cepts are being tested at the Lindholmen band, vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle- similar to some in Japan and the United Science Park, in Göteborg, Sweden. to-infrastructure applications have States, has reached a major milestone “In some respects, we’re guessing what different needs. “One of the big following a June EU ruling that set aside early winner applications and services differences between the various RF spectrum for vehicle-to-vehicle could be,” says Paul Kompfner, head of applications being tested in both groups communication. Those developing car- development at ERTICO-ITS Europe, a is Safespot’s need for very low latency and road-communications systems will public-private partnership that includes and short response times” because begin testing their wares this fall ahead major carmakers, IT vendors, and it must be able to prevent accidents, of large-scale road trials at six sites in telecommunications service providers says Christ. And because for many of Europe, which will begin in early 2009. focused on developing and deploying its applications CVIS requires more Experts expect the technologies to begin intelligent transportation systems and bandwidth than the 30 MHz allotted commercial deployment as soon as 2011. services. “These are intended to be good by the EU, ERTICO is proposing to use There’s been no shortage of ideas. A examples of the spread of systems that the 5.4-GHz band in addition, he says. car might share data with other vehicles could be deployed in the first wave.” Several other research initiatives over a distance of 20 to 200 meters, giving One of them could be the Cooperative hope to contribute their work as well. the driver enough time to intervene and Vehicle-Infrastructure Systems (CVIS) The EU anticipates that by supporting avoid a crash or, if a crash is inevitable, to project. Led by ERTICO, CVIS has been multiple projects and allocating provide data that optimizes usage of air developing software and hardware frequency, it will accelerate deployment bags, motorized seat-belt pretensioners, for onboard and roadside units for use of an EU-wide system. —John Blau

16 NA • Ieee Spectrum • OctOber 2008 www.SpectrUm.Ieee.org lube job: the casimir effect makes memS get stuck.

IMAGES: SANDIA NATIONAL LABOrATOrIES

had a layer of metallic-based metamaterials. Metamaterials are specifically engineered to have properties that do not occur naturally, such as the ability to bend light the wrong way. The method proposed by the Los Alamos team for generating this repulsive effect has yet to be tested experimentally, but experts say it is promising. Unsticking MEMS The Los Alamos theory is exotic materials could combat the casimir effect, based on an idea of Timothy H. a kind of quantum-mechanical stickiness Boyer’s, professor of physics at the City University of New York, who theorized in a 1975 paper that esearchers at and their antiparticle equivalents, magnetic materials with special Los Alamos National which flit into existence and properties would turn the Casimir R Laboratory, in New then annihilate one another so force on its head. That’s because Mexico, think they may have fast that they cannot be detected. the virtual photons would induce the answer to a vexing problem In 1948, Casimir theorized that electromagnetic fields in the plates. called stiction, which causes these fleeting particles would With the right material between ultrasmall components of draw two uncharged metal the plates or perhaps coating them, microelectromechanical systems plates together if the plates were the induced fields would push the (MEMS) to stick together. This placed very close to each other. plates apart so strongly that they impediment to micromovement Virtual photons exert pressure would overwhelm the pressure is caused by the Casimir effect as they bounce off the plates. of virtual photons squeezing the (after the Dutch theoretical Only photons of a wavelength plates together. Recently, Harvard physicist Hendrik Casimir), shorter than the separation University professor Federico an odd attractive force that between the plates can form there. Capasso and his graduate student influences only objects that are But in the region surrounding Jeremy Munday showed that Deep-Sea very close together. As MEMS the plates, many more photons ethanol between two gold plates Diver components are shrunk to a with longer wavelengths will be would produce some of that effect, This ­underwater ­ scale of hundreds of nanometers formed as well. The net effect reducing the Casimir attraction robot, called­ Sentry­ , ­ or less, many engineers predict is that there are more photons by 80 percent. But for actual can dive­ up­ to­ ­ that the Casimir effect will bouncing off the outside of the repulsion, simple ethanol won’t do. 5000 meters­ below­ ­ become more of a problem. plates than between them, and “You need a strong magnetic the surface­ and­ ­ autonomously­ map­ ­ “The Casimir force is the the excess pressure pushes the material, with unique magnetic the seafloor­ for­ ­ ultimate cause of friction plates closer together. As the effects,” explains Dalvit. “There’s 18 hours­ at­ a­ time.­ ­ in the nanoworld,” says Ulf plates grow closer, this effect no hope with standard, naturally On its­ first­ voyages,­ ­ Leonhardt, a theoretical grows stronger, because even existing materials. But with in July­ and­ August,­ ­ physicist at the University fewer photons are able to form. the new metamaterials, we’ve it mapped­ an­ area­ ­ off the­ coast­ of­ ­ of St. Andrews, in Scotland. Now Felipe da Rosa, Diego found that you can have the the ­northwestern ­ “Micro- or nanomachines could Dalvit, and Peter Milonni of the famous Casimir repulsion.” United States­ to­ ­ run smoother and with less theoretical division of Los Alamos Dalvit and his colleagues have scout ideal­ ­locations ­ or no friction at all if one can National Laboratory are saying performed detailed calculations for underwater­ ­ laboratories [see­ ­ manipulate the Casimir force.” that the Casimir effect, which on metamaterials and found that “Neptune Rising,”­ ­ To understand the Casimir is normally attractive between they should fight stiction. He IEEE Spectrum, ­ effect, recall that a vacuum only two surfaces, could actually says that experiments to prove it November 2005].­ seems to be empty space but is be made repulsive—and thus are already under way. PHOTO: UNIVErSITY OF WASHINGTON actually full of virtual particles reduce stiction—if those surfaces —Saswato R. Das

18 NA • Ieee Spectrum • OctOber 2008 www.SpectrUm.Ieee.org “we could potentially put a bioactive silk film in every bag of spinach, and it could give the consumer a readout of whether or not E. coli bacteria were in the bag” —David Kaplan, professor of biomedical engineering at Tufts University, in Medford, Mass., on a new edible optical sensor

Home Fuel Cells to Sell in Japan the outlook is iffy for cost reductions and consumer dividends

fter a number of membrane fuel cells, in which that in the usual household it Ministry of Economy, Trade false starts in the a polymer serves as elec- would be operated once daily, and Industry (METI), A United States and trolyte. The advantages are to heat a 200-liter hot water distributors of the fuel elsewhere, fuel cells scaled to compactness and low oper- tank. Nevertheless, scaled-up cell systems were given a home heating and electrical ating temperature, but their and improved versions subsidy of roughly $55 000 needs may be nearing a reliance on a costly platinum may someday supplement for each unit installed in commercial debut—at least catalyst is a disadvantage. the home’s electricity 2005, the first year of the in Japan. During the last Matsushita bills the significantly and even project. The amount has four years the Japanese 1-kilowatt fuel cell it is com- provide surplus energy that subsequently decreased government has spent more each year and is now about than US $100 million on a one-third that figure. “With program to demonstrate such commercialization beginning systems, supporting the work next year, we are entering of five companies, including a new phase, so how best Toyota and Toshiba. Now to continue subsidizing is Matsushita Electric plans to under discussion,” says start mass production of the Yamamoto. “But it will be less system it developed in the than the current subsidy.” program, with an admittedly Even at the present level of modest sales target of subsidies, a Matsushita sys- 1000 units in 2009. Two tem might pay for itself only other participants, Ebara in 10 years or so. So for home Corp. and Eneos Celltech, are sales of fuel cells to really also reportedly preparing for take off, costs must come full-scale manufacturing and down rather sharply. The marketing in 2009. project’s road map calls for a Fuel cells are environ- price tag of around $9000 by mentally friendly electro- 2010 or 2011; Matsushita says chemical devices that combine it hopes to get its selling price hydrogen and oxygen to to energy companies down to produce electricity, leaving approximately $5500 by 2015. heat and water as by-products. So far, Japan’s regional (Typically, they can generate energy suppliers have hydrogen from natural installed just 3700 units gas, propane, or kerosene.) for field testing in the Each cell has two electrodes, hydrogen at home: matsushita will start selling home fuel cells METI program. By 2010 separated by an electrolyte. in 2009. PHOTO: KO SASAKI/THE NEW YOrK TIMES/rEDUX METI expects from 20 000 Hydrogen gas reacts at the to 100 000 systems to be anode, releasing hydrogen ions mercializing as a cogen- can be sold back to the grid. installed, but Yamamoto and electrons. The ions pass eration system to provide Matsushita has yet to set concedes that, due primarily through the electrolyte to the both heat and power, prices for its fuel cells, which to higher-than-expected costs, cathode, while the electrons, boasting that the system are sold to power companies those targets are much lower blocked by the electrolyte, can generate electricity with that then lease to consumers, than original predictions. He flow to an external circuit a record-setting efficiency but to judge from Japan’s thinks that Kyocera may have after an inverter converts of 39 percent. In practice, experience with the proton- a better chance of reducing them to alternating current. however, the system is so exchange systems so far, costs in a solid-oxide fuel cell The companies partici- small and produces so little they will be a pricey way it’s been developing, also with pating in Japan’s program power that initially it will to warm water. According METI support, because that from 2004 to 2008 all concen- be used primarily for water to Atsushi Yamamoto, a system does not use platinum. trated on proton-exchange heating. Matsushita expects deputy director with the —John Boyd

20 NA • Ieee Spectrum • OctOber 2008 www.SpectrUm.Ieee.org technically speaking By paul mcFedries

E-cycling E-waste recycling old words to reprocess old electronics

utomakers have long given their best designers free rein to A come up with “concept cars”— prototypes that highlight some new design or high-tech feature but aren’t meant for the production line. Back in February, mobile-phone maker Nokia borrowed this idea and unveiled a concept phone called the Remade. The hook? It was made almost entirely of recycled materials, such as aluminum cans, plastic bottles, and even old car tires. The Remade is an example of upcycling, a form of recycling that takes used or recycled materials and creates a new product with a quality or value Nokia’s aptly Named phoNe, the remade, is an example of “upcycling”—it’s made of higher than that of the original materials. aluminum cans and other recycled materials. photo: nokia Materials that are designed to be upcycled are called technical nutrients. explicitly includes sex toys as an example only through e-cycling programs. Large Traditional recycling is sometimes of e-waste that must not be tossed out.) companies handle most of this, but some described as downcycling because the It’s no wonder we’re starting to see individuals want a slice of the pie too. quality of the material degrades with lots of reclaimers, which are firms These urban miners prize discarded each life cycle. Recycled paper isn’t as that process so-called brown goods— electronics but also scour cities for nice as newly printed paper; recycled obsolete electronic products such as scrap metal. This aboveground steel isn’t as strong as newly forged radios and televisions. Reclaimers divide mining is usually aboveboard, but some steel. (The in-between form—where brown goods into historic scrap (or underhanded individuals have taken the recycled material is basically the historic waste), which refers to obsolete to cutting down bronze statues, tearing same as the original material—is called electronics manufactured by a company down iron fences, and even stealing closed‑loop recycling.) that’s still in business, and orphan scrap manhole covers, committing a crime Six billion humans generate an awful (or orphan waste), obsolete items made known as materials theft. lot of e‑waste (or for the hyphen-averse, by a firm that’s gone out of business. Consumers are getting hip to the ewaste) in the form of discarded computers, Reclaimers reclaim as much as they recycling problems inherent in electronics monitors, cellphones, and other electronic can, not only from computers and and are starting to precycle, or choose gewgaws. The process of recycling their cellphones (which contain millions of gadgets based on how recyclable they are. components or metals is called e‑cycling dollars worth of copper, gold, silver, Some manufacturers take responsibility (or often ecycling), and it’s been getting and other precious metals) but also an for their products cradle to cradle, a lot of press lately—and generating a lot increasingly wide range of electronic extending a product’s life cycle to include of new lingo. Indeed, e‑scrap has the goods, including VCRs, CD players, recycling it into something new. If dubious honor of being the fastest growing calculators, radios, stereos, CB radios, the manufacturer also handles these segment of the garbage system. fax machines, and answering machines. recycling duties, it’s called an extended The sheer quantity of all this The reclaimers sell what they can producer. Most such manufacturers also WEEE (waste electrical and electronic to manufacturers who upcycle the offer voluntarytake ‑back programs, in equipment) is bad enough, but then there materials into new goods. What’s left which consumers can return end‑of‑life are all its toxic heavy metals, such as requires certified destruction, in which devices at no charge. lead, cadmium, and mercury, which leach an e-scrap item such as a computer is Of course, you could also follow out, harming nearby ecosystems. That’s carefully and completely dismantled so the lead of a nut-orchard owner in why many municipalities around the that it poses no danger to the environment. Australia, who wanted to attract birds world now mandate that old electronic The hidden riches in cellphones and that would eat pests. His solution? appliances must be e-cycled. (According other electronic gear have been called Convert the shells of old Macintosh to Discover magazine, a new British law green gold because they’re realized computers into birdhouses! ❑ www.spectrum.ieee.org october 2008 • Ieee Spectrum • NA 21 hands on

The Innovators Club interest in techshop’s neighborhood workshops is growing

ou don’t need your lots of dreary job‑shop work. own exercise equipment Then Newton conceived Y to get fit, so why do you of making it a community‑ need your own machine tools supported resource. But that to build something cool? model came with its own Such thinking led Jim shortcomings. Wouldn’t Newton to found the first klutzy people maim TechShop, a high‑tech themselves and then sue the workshop open to anyone business into bankruptcy? who pays a modest Wouldn’t insurers refuse membership fee. Think of to provide coverage for it as a health club for geeks. that very reason? Instead of treadmills and As it turned out, Newton elliptical trainers, you’ll find got his liability insurance. laser and plasma cutters, One reason was the milling machines and lathes, emphasis he has put on oscilloscopes and frequency safety instruction. His generators. What’s more, latest system for allowing you’ll run into like‑minded only trained members to folk who can give you use the more dangerous tips on everything from pieces of equipment is a very tungsten inert‑gas welding sweet hack, appropriate to computer‑aided design, to the whole TechShop either through organized philosophy. Each tool has a classes or informal coaching. pair of safety lights, one of That first TechShop which shines red unless the opened its doors in Menlo member using it (identified Park, Calif., in October 2006. by an RFID badge) has been Now it’s branching out. Two instructed on the safety and new facilities, one in Durham, basic operation of the tool, N.C., and another in in which case a database is Portland, Ore., are opening updated and the other light soon, and more are in the shines green. “If we catch you planning stages [see side‑ using that machine with the bar, “A New Crop of Shops”]. red light on,” Newton says, SparkS fly—literally and figuratively—att echshop, a community Newton, who used to “you’re gone—you’re out.” But workshop in menlo park, calif., founded by Jim Newton [foreground]. Photo: timothy ArchibAld be the science advisor to the badge system has proved the popular television to be almost unneeded for program “Mythbusters,” safety, because of a basic abuse the tools or even walk stuff hasn’t been lost to theft— created TechShop to have human quality: “People,” he off with ones that aren’t just the reverse, in fact. “We such a workspace at his says, “have a very strong bolted down? Newton says actually have the opposite disposal for building what sense of self‑preservation.” you have to expect that problem,” he says. Because he describes as his own Even if ensuring safety things like end‑mill cutters of spontaneous donations, “crazy inventions.” At the isn’t a problem, doesn’t a will get dulled but that those the number of tools on the start, it wasn’t clear to shared shop necessarily members wanting sharper shelves has grown with time. him how to support such a suffer the tragedy of the tooling are free to bring their The number of par‑ facility other than by doing commons? Don’t people own. And he has found that ticipants is growing too.

22 NA • iEEE SpEctrum • octobEr 2008 www.spectrum.ieee.org a New Crop of ShopS The Durham, N.C., TechShop is slated to open in December, spearheaded by Scott Saxon in partnership with Jim Newton. Saxon had just returned from a year of piloting autonomous aerial vehicles in Afghanistan—a skill he picked up flying radio-controlled model airplanes— when a chance meeting with Newton sparked the idea of duplicating the Silicon Valley experiment in Saxon’s hometown. A similar encounter with Newton motivated Denney Cole, a former Intel employee who now works part-time for the Portland Group, to launch a TechShop in his part of the Pacific Northwest. The Durham site boasts almost twice the square footage of the Menlo Park TechShop and will be outfitted with mostly brand-new equipment. (Much of the gear in Menlo Park was donated or bought used.) Other TechShops are in preliminary planning stages in Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco, and Sunnyvale, Calif., and in Seattle, Austin, Texas, and Orlando, Fla. Saxon hopes to open several locations before he’s through. He believes that any place with 100 000 people within a half-hour’s drive can support such a community workshop. If he’s correct, TechShop franchises may be springing up in many other cities as well. Move over, Dunkin’ Donuts—geeks want a better place to hang at night. —D.S.

Apple and Sun computers. to incorporate a blanket That such enterprises have nondisclosure agreement signed on to TechShop, when into the membership they surely have access to documents. That way, other machine shops, shows no one demonstrating a that its real value lies in the cool new gizmo to other rich community it offers. TechShoppers could be There are currently some members. Some are small That community raises a viewed as putting the 400 individual members, companies that need potential problem, though: invention to public use. the more ardent of whom access to equipment they inventors may see a risk in TechShop indeed caters have to be thrown out can’t afford. But they also doing prototype work at to budding entrepreneurs. when the shop closes include such California TechShop—having their It hosts “inventors‑alliance down at midnight. Once heavyweights as NASA’s ideas stolen. And even if meetings” and, Newton membership reaches Ames Research Center in nothing scurrilous takes hopes, may eventually its planned limit of 500, San Jose, PDI DreamWorks place, using TechShop be able to offer them Newton will keep it open in Redwood City, and could conceivably seed money to get their 24/7. “You can live here if Frog Design in Palo Alto, compromise an inventor’s businesses launched. “As a you want,” he says, jokingly. an industrial‑design ability to obtain a patent. frustrated inventor,” Newton TechShop also boasts consultancy well known for Newton is sensitive to says, “I know I would like to a few dozen corporate its work on some of the early these worries and plans see that.” —David Schneider www.spectrum.ieee.org octobEr 2008 • iEEE SpEctrum • NA 23 careers Generation GPS sam Altman wanted to track his friends 24/7. Now he’s making mini- a business of it profile suture kit became a permanent fixture in A the Altman household around the time Sam’s mom, a “The tracking gets a knee‑jerk signals between the phone and cell doctor, came home to find her son reaction,” says Altman. “A year towers to locate a user. Altman com‑ surrounded by the parts of what into the company, we had to hire mitted himself full‑time. “I went to was once the family TV. a chief privacy officer.” Loopt has the first two weeks of classes and HigH-tecH “She was pretty good‑natured added privacy features, such as my head wasn’t in it,” he says. “I Haunting about that,” he says. “I was one of letting users temporarily block thought, ‘This could be a huge deal If your lab is haunted, those losers who hung out in the the tracking of their movements if I do it right.’ ” you can call an basement building things. I’d be or even enter fake locations. Armed with parental blessings engineer instead of a ripping out circuit boards, and in Altman has a passion for GPS and strategic guidance from Stan‑ psychic. Even celebrity medium James Van the process I would cut or shock technology. In 2004, he spent the ford’s computer science department Praagh seems to myself. She stitched me up on the summer after his freshman year and the Business Association of think so. Though he kitchen table more than once.” in a research project that built Stanford Entrepreneurial Students, claims also to be Years later, those battle scars are the first autonomous navigation which helps students commercial‑ “clairsentient,” able to intuit messages from paying dividends. At the ripe old system for helicopters—“like an ize technological ideas, he and Sivo “the beyond,” Van age of 23—and on sanctioned leave autopilot, but one that can dodge took leaves of absence and set about Praagh says that even from Stanford University—Sam buildings,” he says. badgering venture capitalists. those not so gifted Altman and Nick Sivo, his best Back in school that fall, Altman They raised $5 million and can sense spiritual friend from freshman computer had an epiphany when he noticed signed deals with BlackBerry, entities with the help of a little technology. class, also 23, are the creators of his fellow students constantly on Verizon, Sprint, and its youth His new best seller, Loopt, software for cellphones that their cellphones. The moment brand, Boost Mobile. They are talk‑ Ghosts Among Us: figures out where users are and class ended, he says, they were ing to other carriers, both foreign Uncovering the Truth displays photos of their friends calling their friends. “People were and domestic. es About the Other AG m i Side (HarperCollins, moving around on a map. relying on their cellphones more So far the technology has come 2008), offers a list Verizon Communications and and more. It got me thinking about more easily than the corporate of electromagnetic Sprint Nextel are already clients. how powerful location‑based mentality. “My age helps because field readers, Geiger Loopt charges users $3 to $4 a month advertising could be.” I am in the target demographic,” ontour ontour by Getty

counters, digital video c for the service and is considering The following summer, with says Altman. “I’m basically and audio recorders,

thermometers, selling local ads. It is also integrating US $6000 in funding from Y Com‑ building a service for me and my womey/ t infrared thermal the service with Facebook and other binator, a venture capital firm that friends. But when I go meet with obyn scanners, and audio social networking sites. helps launch young engineers with a senior person at a carrier, I get r ht: ht: amplifiers. “These Needless to say, software that great ideas but no business savvy, comments about my age. One of my G devices,” he says, tracks people 24 hours a day he and Sivo put together a prototype first hires was someone in his 40s es; ri “pick up temperature AG m drops and spikes draws its share of controversy, that could pinpoint the position that could talk to the grown‑ups.” i in electromagnetic even though the service applies of any participant’s cellphone and At some point, Altman needs to

charges that often er/Getty only to networks of friends who display the information on every return to Stanford for his degree. P

signify the presence oo also buy it, is closed to children other participant’s cellphone. If the “I’m hoping the company can count h

of ghosts.” Talk about rk

spectral efficiency! under 14, and reminds new users phone doesn’t have GPS built in, the toward my senior project.” mA eft: eft:

—Susan Karlin that they are being tracked. service analyzes the exchange of —Susan Karlin l

24 NA • iEEE SpEctrum • octobEr 2008 www.spectrum.ieee.org Humor Dos and Don’ts Optimist: The glass is half full. Pessimist: The glass is half empty. Engineer: The glass needs to be redesigned.

’ve told that joke at parties many times and have always gotten a laugh. Tell it to a group of I senior engineers who have heard it a hundred times, though, and you’ll get a polite, stony silence at best. Your ability to use humor can play a positive role in your career, but judgment is called for. Here are a few dos and don’ts. Back in 1997, I met baseball legend Henry “Hank” Aaron. He had arrived early for a meeting at my office. We were alone, and he seemed uncomfortable. Sensing this, I had the New York brashness to tease him about the recent World Series in which the Yankees beat his former team, the Braves. We had a good laugh. Use humor to break the ice. In those days, one of my co‑workers regularly fell asleep in the afternoon while reading. One day our supervisor beckoned us to Andy’s cubicle, where he gently placed a note on his reading material that Rarely are we engineers called upon to entertain, said, “We’re all watching you!” Andy woke up, saw but we often make presentations where humor the note, and looked around sheepishly. We were in can hold the audience’s interest and reinforce our hysterics. A bonding experience! Playful stunts can points. I was on the engineering panel at a middle lighten the mood, so long as they don’t offend. school career day recently, and while I didn’t tell The safer strategy is to tell jokes about yourself any actual jokes, the principal later thanked me and your own foibles. For example, in person, I can for “being so funny.” For example, when I had the implicitly refer to my own appearance. I’m 5 feet students calculate the minimum required “red 5 inches [1.65 meters] tall and bald. So when others time” interval at a street intersection, I pretended complain they’re having “a bad hair day,” I say, to be a slow‑moving older pedestrian crossing the “Every day is a bad hair day for me.” If a program is street. My overacted role‑playing was effective and running late and the moderator asks me to be short, lighthearted. Integrate humor into your talks. I say, “I’m always short.” Develop your sense of self- You’ve probably seen cartoons in presentations deprecating humor. where the caption is too small to be read, or you just Those jokes rely on my physical presence, where don’t get the point of it. On the other hand, popular people can also see me smile. Humor frequently comic strips like Dilbert and Peanuts can be useful. doesn’t convey itself in e‑mail. The slightest sarcasm I’ve used a Peanuts cartoon to illustrate stress: can come across as mean. Using emoticons, such as the first three panels show Charlie Brown lying wide a or a “wink” ;‑), can help. Ensure your messages are awake all through the night; the last panel shows taken in the spirit you intended. him standing on the pitcher’s mound, thinking, Even a joke that is guaranteed to be funny can get “Before a big game, there shouldn’t have to be a night you a bad workplace reputation with people who before.” Humorous slides must relate to the content. might be put off by these trivial spamlike messages. Cartoons must be clear. Don’t mindlessly forward e-mail jokes at work. There’s a diverse audience out there, and different Philli On the other hand, you can send free e‑cards people find different things funny, or even offensive, P t for many situations, such as thank‑yous, so be careful and err on the side of caution. Hank oled congratulations, and other sentiments. They Aaron and I come from disparate worlds—enough A no/Getty no/Getty can be a refreshing change. Just make sure they’re so that insulting his team was a bit risky. Be careful of appropriate for a business communication. cultural differences. i m

AG There’s more to humor than telling jokes. Find ways Humor can be an important facet of your work— es to add a lighter touch to all your communications. and personal—life. Use it wisely. —Carl Selinger

www.spectrum.ieee.org octobEr 2008 • iEEE SpEctrum • NA 25 books

BriNgiNg Edison, however, requires However, scholarship some patience. Schiffer—who comes first here, storytelling power to is, of all things, an anthropol‑ second. The narrative, such as it PoWer struggles: the people ogy professor at the University is, moves back and forth in time scientific autHority anD tHe creation of of Arizona at Tucson—metic‑ telegraphically. For instance, A new book rescues Practical electricity the lost history of ulously researched his book, a scrappy kid named Charles Before eDison electrical engineering packing it with 1100 endnotes. Brush is, four paragraphs By Michael Brian Schiffer; A preface confesses the later, an industrial tycoon MIT Press, 2008; 440 pp.; US $38 author’s childhood determi‑ whose electrical arc lights have ISBN: 978-0-262-19582-9 n 20 August 1842 nation to become an electrical illuminated two continents an explosion on engineer, and one senses in and proudly crowned the new centrate on a single unifying O the Potomac River him a childlike wonderment, Statue of Liberty. thread or, better yet, threads, pulverized an old clam boat as if these ancient inventions Now that Schiffer has com‑ weaving them into one histori‑ and sent its “millions of were the world’s newest pellingly mapped the neglected cal strand. Every journey—even fragments 500 feet into the air,” marvels. Gadget geeks will ap‑ half century before Edison that of a transatlantic telegraph in full view of U.S. President preciate this gear‑centric focus, commercialized electricity, message—must have a begin‑ John Tyler and 8000 other a steampunk Consumer Elec‑ here’s hoping that someone will ning, a middle, and an end. spectators. The explosion tronics Show in book form. take these materials and con‑ —Mark Anderson was triggered by remote control, when Samuel Colt, the famous revolver maker, a DiSarmiNg It’s Blix’s belief that the continued consoli‑ threw an electric switch some argumeNt dation of law—most significantly, nuclear 8 kilometers downstream. A Hans Blix wants the united disarmament treaty law—is the best way of clearly awed Congress later heading off catastrophic violence. (Blix did gave Colt US $15 000 to pursue states to restart nuclear concede, however, in a talk he gave earlier his research into what he disarmament talks this year in New York, that some problems called “submarine batteries”— will remain intractable and make today’s mines and torpedoes. f you admire efforts by Henry the use of force unavoidable. He A new book by technol‑ Kissinger to revive nuclear dis‑ mentioned a new international ogy historian Michael Brian I armament negotiations, and doctrine that’s been gaining Schiffer vividly recounts this yet you also respected Hans Blix ground—the “responsibility to and other little‑known tales of for standing up to President protect.” Perhaps in time that the pioneers who first tamed George W. Bush in the run‑up principle will be enshrined in “galvanism” and mastered to the second Iraq war, then our international code of conduct magnetism. These early inno‑ this little book about nuclear alongside the duty to answer vators contended with such disarmament is for you. Why aggression, so that there is a hidebound experts as pioneer‑ Nuclear Disarmament Matters is comprehensive standard for ing scientist and founding the latest—and one of the best— legitimate military action.) WHy nuclear Smithsonian director Joseph in an uneven but ambitious Though Blix may minimize Disarmament Henry, who, despite his dis‑ series of short and accessible matters as inconveniences problems like covery of inductance, impeded introductions to various weighty By Hans Blix; Boston Islamic extremism and ethnic the practical application of this subjects, from global poverty to Review/MIT Press, 2008; hatred, there is no more eloquent still‑pure electrical science. capital punishment. 112 pp.; US $14.95; or informed spokesperson for ISBN: 978-0-262-02644-4 Back stories, like the first “Since World War II the view that talking with adver‑ sketches for a 1753 telegraph there has been a tremendous saries and enemies is essential. and a faxlike machine from consolidation and expansion of inter‑ There are obvious dangers in that attitude, 1853, emerge like long‑ national law,” Blix observes. “Customary which is why policy toward Iran and Russia neglected ghosts. law has been codified [at the global level].” are major issues in the U.S. presidential con‑ Coaxing these tales out He lists trade, finance, communications, test. Do the merits of talking outweigh the of Power Struggles: Scientif- space, nuclear energy, and human rights dangers? In this concise book, Blix makes ic Authority and the Creation as areas newly subject to such codification. the case that they do. —William Sweet of Practical Electricity Before

26 NA • iEEE SpEctrum • octobEr 2008 www.spectrum.ieee.org 28 NA • iEEE SpEctrum • octobEr 2008 A Less Well-Oiled War Machine the high cost of petroleum is forcing the u.S. military to turn to solar, geothermal, and wind energy By Sandra Upson in the MiddLe Of the MOjAve desert, a nondescript two-story building behind a gated fence houses an unlikely group of geologists. their lineage is strong: several generations of prospectors have been drawn to dig in this dry corner. Within 100 kilometers of the geologists’ base near china Lake, calif., 19th-century gold diggers stumbled on riches, and later oilmen got lucky in the same inhospitable soil. now these earth-minded fellows have grand ambitions of their own. their aim is to turn the u.s. department of defense into one of the world’s largest users of geothermal energy.

Their vision isn’t all a pipe dream. The rising cost of fuel men and women should form such a group at the heart of one has the Pentagon pressuring the four branches of the armed of the most energy-intensive operations on the planet. services to cut their energy bills wherever they can. It’s easy Among them are these desert geologists. Employed by the to see why—every US $10 increase in the price of a barrel of oil Navy, they are responsible for one of the largest geothermal costs the Air Force, for example, an extra $600 million. The power plants in the United States, a 270-megawatt genera- Army, Navy, and Marines, too, are tearing through their bud- tion facility at Coso Hot Springs, at China Lake. In the next gets. In response, energy managers at bases across the coun- few years, these scientists hope to figure prominently in a try are reevaluating how they light, insulate, heat, and cool Department of Defense plan to generate 25 percent of its elec- their buildings. The most ambitious of these managers have tricity from renewable sources by 2025. begun aggressively adopting renewable-energy technologies. For an organization that spent $13 billion on energy in 2007 Together they have emerged as a distributed network of clean- and has a War on Terror to finance, whittling away at domes- energy advocates. The irony, of course, is that these military tic electricity bills, which account for only one-fourth of that

30 NA • iEEE SpEctrum • octobEr 2008 WWW.spectruM.ieee.Org fertile land: the u.s. military is using some of its vast quantities of land to generate power, as it did for this 270-megawatt geothermal power plant [left] and a 14-megawatt photovoltaic array [previous pages and above], both located in the Mojave desert.

Photos: Left, UsN-GPo, ChiNa Lake, CaLif.; PrevioUs PaGes aNd riGht, MMa reNeWaBLe veNtUres figure, may seem like a silly exercise. The scale of the proj- try. But the language surrounding the goal is weak and pro- ects and the savings, though, prove that the military is not vides no direction. To Thomas Morehouse, a consultant for the merely indulging in a public-relations ploy. Not counting the Institute for Defense Analyses, a think tank in Alexandria, Va., geothermal power plant, the Defense Department says that the energy legislation alone doesn’t explain the DOD’s green- in fiscal year 2007 it had produced or bought enough renew- ish inclinations. “There is no energy policy. There is no coor- able energy to cover 11.9 percent of its electricity needs, which dinated Defense Department program for renewable-energy amounts to about 1.3 trillion kilojoules a year. deployment and no single office in the Pentagon that tracks it,” “There’s been a shift in the last five years, where more peo- he says. “The projects so far happened largely because you get ple are actively trying to do the right thing inside the agencies, a particular base commander somewhere who’s enthusiastic and I don’t believe it’s simply because of high energy costs,” says about doing this and puts in the effort to make it happen.” John Archibald, a former deputy director of the U.S. Department Indeed, bolstered by edicts from the upper echelons of gov- of Energy’s Federal Energy Management Program. “Many are ernment, energy managers at individual bases have begun to act aware of the global-warming issue, and quite a few have signed on a conviction that climate change and a constricted energy sup- on that this is something we need to address.” Until recently, ply could make for an ugly future. What has emerged is a patch- military planning and environmental stewardship rarely over- work of energy-sustainability projects. Some of them have been lapped, except when it came to cleaning up toxic-waste sites and record setting, others are barely noticeable, but together they managing “the bugs and bunnies,” as some government officials attest to a growing concern about the DOD’s annual consump- refer to habitat-conservation projects on federal land. tion of some 912 terajoules, almost 1 percent of U.S. energy use. That attitude has begun to change. Many defense staffers As Don Juhasz, chief of energy and utilities for the U.S. Army, cite specific legislation—the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which puts it, “There are enough of us deep within the DOD who see set clean-energy milestones for the federal government, and that, long term, if we’re going to be here 50 years from now, we the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which need to be leaders and drive the country towards the future adopted the 2025 benchmark as a goal for the whole coun- we want. We need to set the example.”

WWW.spectruM.ieee.Org octobEr 2008 • iEEE SpEctrum • NA 31 he Naval Air Weapons Station, in China Lake, Calif., sits on a hilly plot of arid land about 240 km east of T Los Angeles. The California wildfires recently smoldered down from the mountains to the west, but a sudden downpour this past July briefly painted the Joshua trees and ankle-high brush a perky green. From the Geothermal Program Office, manager Andrew Sabin dispatches his crew to check out prom- ising geothermal spots across the Southwest. This summer, they were investigating California’s Chocolate Mountains, where the Navy and Marines test aerial weapons. “It’s probably one of the hottest spots on Earth, literally and figuratively,” Sabin says. In theory, this region could produce more than 600 MW, an enormous figure given that the total geothermal electric power generation in the United States today adds up to about 3000 MW, sunny outlook: the u.s. navy’s geothermal program, run by according to the Geothermal Energy Association. Andrew sabin, is on the verge of developing a new power plant. Simply put, a geothermal power plant generates electric- Photo: fred ProUser/reUters ity through wells that can reach thousands of meters into the Earth. The wells bring heat to the surface by drawing hot water research on ways to rely less on drilling, the office has just begun or steam from high-temperature cracks in the Earth with fluid experimenting with lidar imagery, which should add more cer- flowing through them. That water or steam then drives turbine tainty to the site selections. The office has commissioned an air- generators. Finding the best spots to drill those deep wells, craft to fly over a long north-south valley west of the Chocolate however, can be tricky and expensive. Mountains to generate maps from a laser scanner that sends Initially, geologists exploring a site look for the most obvi- trillions of photons down to Earth and measures the length of ous beacons, such as the bubbling mud puddles and fumaroles time before they are reflected back. “We know there’s high heat that send up clouds of steam in the hillside around the Navy’s flow and fluid, and now we’re looking for active faults,” Sabin China Lake base. Even a quick scan through Google Earth explains. “Any structures would be very, very subtle, but we’re images can reveal some promising linear features that could hoping that with lidar they’ll jump right out at us.” Coupled with turn out to be faults. Once a site is chosen, the geologists ana- a digital model of the area’s elevation, certain lidar patterns can lyze the rocks, inspect soil densities, and study the chemical seem, to the trained eye, distinctly like a fault. characteristics of subsurface water. This past summer, they Though lidar has been around for some time, only recently were gathering data on variations in the area’s magnetic and has the image resolution—and interest—been high enough to gravitational fields. The flow of liquid along a fault over time make it worth pursuing. “Ten years ago when we went knock- can alter the mineral makeup of the rocks, changing the local ing on doors, we got no response. Now when we come calling, magnetic field. An unexpected magnetometer reading suggests the base commanders are interested and we can have a conver- the presence of a flowing fluid in the rock, and therefore also sation,” Sabin says. But geothermal development always starts points to a well-defined fault. small; the inscrutability of this deep-seated resource tends But none of those data are enough to positively identify a geo- to make developers shy. A contractor has agreed to install a thermal hot spot. “Until we drill a hole in the ground, I know 30-MW power plant at Naval Air Station Fallon, in Nevada, even as much about this rock as you do,” says Steven Bjornstad, the though the production capacity of the field could be as much as senior geologist on staff at the Geothermal Program Office, -add 160 MW. The leadership at another Nevada base, Hawthorne ing, “Some day I hope I can stop saying that.” After decades of Army Depot, has also welcomed exploration on its base. Sabin, Bjornstad, and their crew of eight others are arguably the most organized and where it all Goes: Of the us $13 billion the military spent on energy in fiscal year well-funded entity promoting geothermal 2007, more than half went to jet fuel, which is used by aircraft, some battle tanks, and the occasional generator. the dOd’s 577 000 buildings account for one-fourth of its energy use. development within the United States. Their office’s operation is underwritten entirely by what the Navy earns from its agreement with the power plant’s operators—about COMMODITY APPLICATION $14.7 million a year. A third of that goes to Steam 1% Auto gas 2% Exempt buildings 1% the geothermal office, and the rest pays for Coal 2% energy projects within the Navy that might Fuel oil 3% otherwise struggle for support. Natural gas 8% One of those projects is a set of studies Goal buildings assessing the feasibility of wind turbines. 24% At Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, in Auto Texas, anemometers 30 meters up in the air Jet fuel 53% diesel 9% measure daily wind speeds around the base. Marine Vehicles 75% “This bay is the windsurfing capital of the diesel 11% world—it’s always windy. But even know- Electricity Source: O ce of the ing that, there can still be risk for an energy- Deputy Secretary of 12% Defense for Installations services contractor to put up a turbine,” and Environment says Chris Tindal, Continued on page 56

32 NA • iEEE SpEctrum • octobEr 2008 WWW.spectruM.ieee.Org

FRESH PHISH How a recently discovered flaw in the Internet’s Domain Name System makes it easy for scammers to lure you to fake Web sites By David Schneider

hen you direct your brow­ He then alerted other security experts ser to www.google.com, you and the makers of network equipment take it for granted that the and worked with them behind the scenes Web page that appears will to get software patches written. The vari­ indeed come from Google ous vendors released their new code in a Wand not from some shadowy Internet scam­ coordinated move on 8 July. At that point mer pretending to be Google. But your faith the existence of the threat became com­ is misplaced. It turns out to be easy for a mon knowledge, at least among computer malicious computer hacker to trick your types, but the details of how the flaw could browser into steering you anywhere he be exploited were still shrouded in mys­ wants and then to pilfer sensitive informa­ tery. To give network administrators time tion, like your user name, password, and to install the new software, Kaminsky had credit card number. planned to wait 30 days before publicly Dan Kaminsky, of the Seattle­based describing the vulnerability. But things computer­security firm IOActive, stum­ soon spiraled out of his control. bled onto the problem in February while By looking at the patch, others guessed examining the functioning of the Domain what Kaminsky had found, and soon some Name System, or DNS, the database that had posted their ideas on the Internet. The computers use to find their way around cat slipped fully out of the bag when a blog­ the Internet. At the time, it was still just ger at the computer­security firm Matasano a theoretical vulnerability; he had not Security confirmed some of these specula­ actually observed anyone taking advan­ tions. The blog post was taken down quickly, tage of it. But he knew that clever crimi­ but not quickly enough to prevent it from nals would eventually uncover the flaw, at being copied and widely disseminated. viktorkoen which point all kinds of damage could be Within days, code to exploit the new­ done. “I realized the scope of this pretty found weakness in the DNS had been quickly,” he recalls. posted on the Web site of the “computer

WWW.Spectrum.Ieee.org october 2008 • Ieee Spectrum • NA 35 academic underground” (http://www. into the cache of a name server. The is hosted on a machine in the hacker’s caughq.org)—precisely the kind of thing hacker could, for example, change the evil domain, BadGuysAreUs.com. So Kaminsky had hoped to forestall. name server’s entry for “www.paypal. when you access that eBay page seek­ Whereas some network adminis­ com,” thus blocking access to PayPal, ing to purchase a book about Mother trators may initially have been reluc­ or worse, duping people into going to a Teresa, your browser sends out a DNS tant to patch their systems, fearing that site that mimics PayPal’s. From there, query to look up the IP address of the upgrade itself might cause prob­ it would be relatively simple to har­ BadGuysAreUs.com. lems, most of them now seem to have vest user names, passwords, and other Assuming the hacker doesn’t try made the change. No definitive tally is valuable data. this too often, the address won’t be available, but Kaminsky has created a Such an attack would work much in your name server’s cache, so it will tool on his personal Web site (http:// like the many “phishing” scams now issue a series of queries to other name www.doxpara.com) that allows visi­ plaguing the Internet, but in this case servers. Eventually, your name server tors to check whether the server they the victims wouldn’t need to click on a will be referred to the bad guy’s name are using has been patched. He reports link in a shady e­mail message. They server, which responds by supplying that as of 9 July, about 85 percent of the could type the correct name, “www. the requested IP address. Now here’s name servers being tested were vulner­ paypal.com,” directly into a browser where it gets ugly: the Domain Name able. But by 6 August, the proportion and still get sent to the wrong place. System allows the answer to include had dropped to 30 percent. (The real PayPal would upgrade the additional information. The bad But even those who have taken security of the connection from http to guy’s name server could thus be pro­ the appropriate steps are not exactly https, but the victim may easily fail to grammed to send a false IP address for breathing easy. The patch is not a per­ notice when this doesn’t happen on the any other site—such as Citibank (http:// fect countermeasure, as Kaminsky has scammer’s simulated site.) www.citibank.com)—along with the emphasized on his blog: “This is just The attacker could also use this requested IP address. The fake address a stopgap—we’re still in trouble with tactic to redirect e­mail. By replac­ would then take the place of the bank’s DNS, just less.” ing the IP address of, say, a corpo­ real IP address in your name server’s rate mail server with the IP address cache, where it would act to redirect f you follow computing at all, you of a mail server that he controlled, he traffic from anyone trying to use that know that security experts routinely could inspect incoming correspon­ server to reach www.citibank.com. uncover software glitches and vul­ dence before passing it on to the tar­ The ability to tack on additional nerabilities and then issue software geted company’s mail server. Even information in a DNS response was patches and upgrades. What Kaminsky more troubling, he could add his own considered a valuable feature when I has found, however, is much bigger and malicious code to e­mail attachments, the Internet was first set up—it was much scarier. which from the recipient’s point of view designed to provide the IP addresses To understand why, you need to might appear to come from known and of name servers referenced in the main know the basics of how the DNS works. trusted sources. part of the response. At that time, which The Domain Name System is essentially Security experts had long been predates the Web by many years, nobody the Internet’s phone book. It’s a huge aware of two general ways that a thought much about the possibility of database containing the 32­bit numeric hacker could carry out such a “cache scammers using this mechanism to take codes that identify every single site poisoning” attack on a name server. advantage of folks purchasing things on the Internet. These are known as But both had been rendered ineffective through an Internet auction or doing Internet Protocol addresses, or IP years ago with changes to DNS soft­ their banking online. addresses for short. Amazingly, this ware. Kaminsky, however, has found To counter such mischief, DNS soft­ database is distributed over some a way for a hacker to circumvent these ware was changed about a decade ago 12 million computers worldwide, fixes—and to combine the two exploits to do what is called bailiwick checking. known as DNS name servers. in a way that makes an attack espe­ With that, any extra information added When you type “www.google.com” cially potent. to a DNS response is ignored if it per­ into your browser, it must translate tains to a domain that is different from that human­readable text into an IP he first kind of attack the one that was asked about in the address before it can access the site. To causes the targeted name first place. So your name server would do so, your computer sends a request server to query a second disregard an IP address said to be for to a name server upstream, probably name server, one that the bad www.citibank.com if the original query one maintained by your Internet ser­ guy controls. That turns out was about BadGuysAreUs.com. vice provider. T to be incredibly easy to do, even if the The second way an attacker can Then, if your ISP’s name server has name server to be poisoned is behind poison a name server’s cache relies the IP address for the requested site a corporate firewall or otherwise pro­ on the fact that the conversation stored—or “cached”—it returns this tected from outside access. your computer has with the name information to your computer pronto. Suppose this hypothetical villain server upstream—or the conversation If not, it goes through what may be an creates a Web page that contains a between two name servers involved in elaborate process querying other name description of Mother Teresa—perhaps answering your query—is fundamen­ servers to find the address. an eBay ad for a copy of her definitive tally insecure. One computer sends Kaminsky has discovered a way for biography. Unbeknownst to you, the out a request to another and then a hacker to insert a false IP address page includes an embedded image that waits for an answer from it. But the

36 NA • Ieee Spectrum • october 2008 WWW.Spectrum.Ieee.org Early Attack Strategy Root .com BadGuysAreUs name name .com name server server server

3. The targeted name server has not cached the address, so the query is routed through a root name server, a .com name server, and finally the BadGuysAreUs.com name server. 4. The BadGuysAreUs 2. The user’s computer asks the name server responds with targeted name server to trans- an IP address but adds late www.BadGuysAreUs. a false IP address for a com into an IP address. completely different Web site, www.paypal.com.

DNS query

1. A user loads a Web Cache 5. The targeted name page containing an Response Targeted name server image hosted at www. User server stores the false IP BadGuysAreUs.com. address for paypal.com.

6. When people using this name server attempt to go to www.paypal. com, they are directed to a Web site that looks like PayPal’s but works only to harvest their user names and passwords.

paypal.com .com Root Kaminsky DNS Attack name name name server server server

3. The attacker repeats steps 1 and 2 using different prefixes: aab. DNS query paypal.com, aac.paypal.com, and so on, until the targeted server finally 1. An attacker issues Response a DNS query for accepts a spoofed response. The the nonexistent spoofed response “poisons” the aaa.paypal.com. cache of the name server with a false address for www.paypal.com.

Cache 1 2 Targeted name server Attacker 3 100

2. The attacker immediately sends fake responses to his own query, each containing Response a different query ID number and a false IP address 4. Users accessing www.paypal.com bryan christie design bryan christie for www.paypal.com. through the poisoned name server are directed instead to a Web site that looks like PayPal’s but works only to harvest their user names and passwords.

WWW.Spectrum.Ieee.org october 2008 • Ieee Spectrum • NA 37 answer could, in fact, come from any or so. Thus, if the first such attack failed, for, say, pdq.paypal.com? Nothing, of machine, anywhere. the hacker would have to wait a day or course. But remember that the attacker Well, almost—a few systems work more to try again. If he had to attempt can add some devastating additional differently. Anyone accessing sites in this hundreds of times before achieving information to his spoofed DNS Sweden’s .se domain, for example, can success, it could take years to poison the response—namely, a false IP address use a secure extension to DNS called name server’s cache. for www.paypal.com. Such fakery DNSSEC (for Domain Name System Kaminsky’s insight reveals how an will pass the bailiwick checks because Security Extensions) to carry out DNS attacker could sidestep that problem. the extra information is for the same lookups. But DNSSEC hasn’t really Imagine that a hacker asked your ISP’s domain as the bogus name that was caught on, in part because it is cumber­ name server to look up a nonexistent being looked up in the first place. So some for name­server administrators to address within the paypal.com the bad address will go into the cache, manage. That attitude now seems due domain—for instance, aaa.paypal.com. taking the place of the previous entry for an adjustment. “There certainly was This nonsensical name would, of course, for www.paypal.com if one had been a spike in interest in DNSSEC” after not be cached in your ISP’s name server, stored there. Kaminsky made his discovery known, so it would pass the request up the line, The 8 July patch makes such an says Cricket Liu, a DNS expert at eventually asking the real PayPal’s attack much more difficult—though Infoblox, a Santa Clara, Calif., provider name server for the corresponding IP not impossible. It works by randomly of DNS hardware and software. address. While all that was going on, varying not just the query ID but also Still, most communication between the attacker would send your ISP’s the port number in use, which you can name servers continues to take place name server a lot of spoofed answers think of as being like the suite num­ over an insecure channel. The receiver w it h d i f fe r e nt I D ber on a postal address. To defeat this does check the origin of an answer numbers. defense, a hacker must guess both the using a numeric tag attached to the 16­bit query ID and the 16­bit port request. But this query ID number number—32 bits in all—requiring, on wasn’t designed with security in mind; average, some 4 billion spoofed replies it was intended originally just to match to be received. Such a colossal amount up outgoing requests with incoming of traffic would be hard to conceal answers. Early on, DNS software from network administrators. assigned those numbers sequentially, which made it easy for an attacker to ecurity professionals are guess them. Since about 1997, DNS soft­ taking Kaminsky’s attack ware has been configured to assign scenario very seriously, those ID numbers randomly to and hackers appear to be make such attacks harder. But the testing the waters. ID number has only 16 bits, which SComputer­security expert Steven M. translates to 65 536 possible values— Bellovin, a professor of computer sci­ few enough to give an attacker a rea­ ence at Columbia University, in New sonable chance of guessing right if he York City, says, “I’ve seen reports that can try thousands of times. it’s started to happen in the wild.” But And that, it turns out, is easy. All a he believes that DNS cache poison­ hacker needs to do is send a request to ing will ultimately affect few people— the name server asking it to look up an in contrast to what can happen with IP address it doesn’t have cached. Then Because the hacker has a head start certain computer viruses and worms— he immediately bombards the server in the race, many of his simulated DNS given that system administrators are with answers, each containing a dif­ responses will beat the real one back now taking appropriate steps. He never­ ferent query ID number. Many of the to your name server. If, for example, theless cautions, “It’s one of the more fake replies will beat the real answer 100 fake answers arrive before the real serious problems we’ve seen, because back to the name server seeking the one, the attacker’s chances of having it’s going after the infrastructure. The address. One of them, the attacker one of his bogus responses accepted hard­core bad guys are starting to hopes, will contain the correct query improve, from 1 in 65 536 to a more wor­ wake up.” o ID. More sophisticated versions of this risome 1 in 655. Even if all 100 spoofed second type of attack don’t have such answers fail to get the ID number right, To Probe FurTher Paul Vixie’s pio- long odds: one scheme, for example, there’s nothing preventing him from neering report “DNS and bIND Security takes advantage of the fact that nomi­ repeating this attack as many times Issues,” which warned that the Domain nally “random” query IDs can to some as he wants, asking about different Name System was vulnerable to attack, extent be predicted. nonexistent addresses each time: aab. appeared in Proceedings of the Fifth Up until now, guess­the­query­ID paypal.com, aac.paypal.com, and so USENIX UNIX Security Symposium, attacks hadn’t been considered much of forth. Eventually—typically in about Salt Lake City, June 1995. a menace, because the hacker would very 10 seconds by Kaminsky’s estimation— A full description of how the Domain likely fail on the first attempt, and the a false answer will be accepted. Name System works is available in DNS name server would then store the correct What’s so scary about someone giv­ and BIND, Fifth edition, by Cricket Liu

IP address in its cache, typically for a day ing your name server an IP address and Paul Albitz, o’reilly, 2006. koen viktor

38 NA • Ieee Spectrum • october 2008 WWW.Spectrum.Ieee.org

I’m on Iraq’s main north-south highway, sitting in my undershirt and armor with two Navy bomb-disposal technicians in a million-dollar 26-ton armored truck. I am having one of the signature experiences of this war.

BomB Squad diary A high-tech form of bomb disposal has evolved on the streets of Iraq and Afghanistan. It may be coming to a city near you COUNTERING IEDs: PART TWO By Glenn Zorpette

www.spectrum.ieee.org october 2008 • Ieee Spectrum • NA 41 It’s late January, about 3:00 on a cloudy, humid, windless Then again, the bags might be filled with explosives. afternoon. We’re on the edge of the city of Tikrit. A couple don- Supporting that possibility are a few other objects in the keys stand in the muddy median nearby. Half a dozen similarly burlap bag coming into view on the briefcase monitor in priced and armored U.S. Army vehicles are scattered around the truck, courtesy of the Talon’s video camera. These objects us, pulling security and blocking traffic. A military supply could be an artillery round or two, and maybe some control convoy stretches behind us, followed by a motionless queue electronics. A pair of shiny, shellacked copper wires leads of cars and trucks kilometers long, with some very irritated away from the bag in the general direction of a small, single- Iraqis inside them. story concrete building about a kilometer away.

In front of us, 125 meters away, there is only one thing: an Enough already. There’s one surefire way to find out if the /WPN is

improvised explosive device. IED is real: detonate a charge on it. The robot operator summons NN de

We’re going to blow it up. the Talon back to the truck, and the driver hands it some blocks NG u

“Hey, this is your day,” says the Navy tech who’s driving the of C-4 explosive attached to a reel of shock tube. He hands me NF da ; truck and leading our little three-man crew. He grins at me the reel. The robot whirs back to the IED, spinning the reel in e TT e behind dark aviator glasses and a thick mop of wavy black my lap. The robot drops the C-4 between the two bags. P or

hair. “How many reporters get to go back to New York and The driver hands me the igniter. I grip it tightly in my left NN Z e say, ‘I blew up an IED?’ ” hand while inserting my right middle finger into the ring at

Humming a Suzanne Vega tune, the other Navy man, in the end of its firing pin. /WPN; GL is

the back of the truck, peers at the IED through the optics of a “Stand by for fire in the hole in 15 seconds,” the driver says NN remotely controlled robot called a Talon, which costs almost over the truck’s public-address system. “Fire in the hole in de NG u

exactly as much as an Aston Martin DB9 roadster. He’s prod- 10, 9, 8, 7, 6…” NF da ; ding the object with the Talon’s manipulator arm. e TT e The IED, which cost its builder less than the price of a couple xplosive ordnance disposal has come a long P of Aston Martin wheel rims, looks like a big burlap bag with two way since the London Blitz. Over eight months or NN Z oversize sandbags inside. Working the joysticks of his briefcase- in 1940 and ’41, hundreds of thousands of bombs e FT: GLFT: size remote, the tech grabs one of the bags with the Talon’s arm. rained down on British cities, killing an esti- e M L

“I can’t pull ’em or push ’em,” he reports. “They’re heavy.” mated 43 000 people and leaving 1.4 million home- ro F In fact, they might actually be sandbags. This thing might be less. Roughly 10 percent of the bombs did not explode, and

E read, a fake IED, put here to distract us from a real one nearby. Or it the job of defusing them fell mostly to army but also to a few P might have been placed here just to let hidden insurgents watch navy units. Assigned to one of these was an American named

and learn from how we deal with it. Draper L. Kauffman. Previous s

42 NA • Ieee Spectrum • october 2008 www.spectrum.ieee.org PREVIOUS PAGES: A remotely controlled talon robot reaches for a mortar round [left page]. the talon is controlled by a console in the Joint eoD rapid response Vehicle (JerrV) behind it. on the right page, from left: eoD tech edward Hart operates a talon from inside a JerrV; a JerrV parked near tikrit, iraq; a u.s. Navy eoD tech investigates an unexploded rocket north of tikrit on 25 July 2007.

THESE PAGES: on 28 January 2008, near tikrit, two u.s. soldiers [left] pause before a route-clearance mission to hunt for improvised explosive devices. that mission included a Buffalo vehicle [above, background] and also an rg-31 [foreground]. the cages shield the vehicles from rocket-propelled grenades. on a 2007 mission, scott crawford [right] taped together two blocks of c-4 to blow up an ieD.

After the United States entered the war, the U.S. Navy gave Kauffman the task of creating a school for bomb-disposal tech- nicians, which survives to this day. For more than 60 years, trainees have learned to dispose of unexploded bombs, locate and destroy mines on land and underwater, demolish under- water obstacles to beach and harbor assaults, move ammunition stores, and clean up after munitions accidents. Those tasks kept explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) techs busy until about six years ago, when the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq started generating wave upon wave of IEDs. The tide started in Afghanistan in 2002 but gained enormous momen- tum months later in Iraq, where vast ammunition caches set up by Saddam Hussein in the 1970s and 1980s provided insur- gents with an estimated million tons of artillery rounds and T his s his other explosives. Early on, the standard IED was one or more

P artillery rounds rigged to a radio-based detonator such as a read, read, cellphone or a garage-door opener. F ro Coalition EOD teams did their best to keep up. Unfortunately, M L M e

FT:GL their techniques, tactics, and technology had been developed for

e fundamentally different problems. Before Iraq and Afghanistan, NN Z NN a bomb in the road was usually a mine. Any trained EOD tech- or P e nician could identify its type, and therefore its inner workings, TT e

(2); M (2); on sight. An IED, unlike a mine, can be detonated at the push of a cellphone button by a man peering through a pair of binocu- i C To minimize the possibility that informa- hae Editor’s note: lars at the EOD tech grappling with it.

L Z L tion in this article could endanger coalition personnel in Iraq e LT Five years ago, EOD teams were traveling the roads of Iraq or Afghanistan, a draft of this article was reviewed by current a K a in unarmored Humvees. When they approached IEDs, they

LN and former officials of the Joint IED Defeat Organization, a U.S. s /

u sometimes wore heavy bomb suits, which offered limited pro- Defense Department agency. In response to those reviews, IEEE . s . N . tection to vital organs but were cumbersome and stifling in the Spectrum voluntarily eliminated some details concerning the av

Y Iraqi heat, despite their whirring ventilator fans. Most techs pre- mission recounted in this article.

www.spectrum.ieee.org october 2008 • Ieee Spectrum • NA 43 ferred to take their chances without them, and many of them This IED-hunting exercise is called route clearance. It were killed—more than 50 over the next four years, according to keeps the roads open for supply convoys transporting fuel, the EOD Memorial Web site (http://www.eodmemorial.org). mail, spare parts, ammunition, computers, soap, video-game In the end, new tactics and techniques emerged based on consoles, lightbulbs, furniture. And food, of course. small, maneuverable robots, gyroscopically stabilized optics, Anyone who has ever spent time in a war zone under- exotic systems to detect buried wires and metal, electronic stands the importance of food. In Iraq, the quantity, quality, jammers to defeat radio-controlled IEDs, and blast-resistant and variety of comestibles in the dozens of far-flung U.S. din- vehicles. Meanwhile, for the first time EOD techs were rou- ing facilities result from multiple logistical wonders that occur tinely integrated into combat and covert missions, to deal every day. (“Ice cream!” an EOD veteran had blurted out to me with IEDs encountered while moving through hostile areas. over dinner the night before, laughing so hard he was red in the “The American military has invented, in about three or four face. “You’ve got guys risking their lives so that some far-off years, a way of warfare that didn’t exist before,” says Daniel FOB can have Baskin-Robbins. Think about it, man!”) Gouré, vice president of the Lexington Institute, a Washington, The sky is just starting to lighten as we roll out. We pull up D.C., think tank. “That’s lightning speed.” to a huge pit, and the Navy techs let me test-fire the JERRV’s Today EOD techs have other responsibilities, like postblast .50-caliber machine gun into it, provoking amused radio commen- and forensic analysis at IED attack sites. The information they tary from the soldiers in the vehicles lined up behind us. Then gather helps flesh out dossiers on bomb makers, bomb-making we rumble and bounce through the gates, and the driver flips on cells, and the social, financial, and logistical networks that sup- the US $80 000 electronic jammer. It puts out signals powerful ply and sustain them. enough to swamp the receivers of any radio-controlled IEDs that Regardless of what happens in Iraq and Afghanistan, the we might encounter [see Web-only sidebar, “The Electromagnetic new technologies and tactics will endure. Long after the con- Struggle,” at http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/oct08/eodextra]. flicts in those places have subsided, IEDs, including car and We listen to pulsating rock music on an iPod plugged into suicide bombs, will continue to wreak bloody havoc. Outside an excellent sound system, an unofficial “aftermarket” addi- of Iraq and Afghanistan, there are more than 200 IED attacks tion to the JERRV, which costs a little over $1 million, nicely every month around the world, according to the British equipped. I sit in the “death” seat next to the driver, wearing counter-IED consulting firm Hazard Management Solutions. headphones that let me talk to the Navy techs and also with the “We will be fighting an irregular war for the next 20 or other vehicles in the convoy. Outside the thick Lexan windows 30 years,” says Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz, the director of the flows an overcast tableau of scrubby, rocky, littered desert and U.S. military’s Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO), in an the occasional cluster of decrepit concrete houses, villas, and interview. “The enemy doesn’t want to fight us at sea, or in the abandoned gasoline stations. air, or in a pitched land battle. The enemy is going to fight us in An hour later we’re skirting the city of Bayji. Occasionally, an electromagnetic environment,” using IEDs. we pass men sitting in chairs drinking tea, or working on a car. Five little boys playing near the side of the road wave to us, and he day began at Contingency Operating Base Spei- the robot operator throws them a handful of lollipops. cher with a predawn briefing and a prayer. Nineteen of After 40 minutes a spotter in one of the vehicles ahead of us us stand around in a circle in the light thrown by our sees something in the road and we all stop. It turns out to be a huge armored vehicles. The two Navy EOD special- big metal box with two bricks in it and some wires attached— ists—the team leader–driver and the robot operator— your basic fake IED. Word comes back over the radio and we Tand I will be in a Joint EOD Rapid Response Vehicle, or JERRV. wait while the Army specialists search for other devices. We’ll be part of a convoy with more than a dozen Army special- Insurgents place dummy IEDs for any of several reasons: ists riding in several of these vehicles, all equipped with high-end to videotape how a route-clearance team deals with an IED so optics and other systems to help spot and manipulate IEDs. they can refine their methods of attack, for example, or to halt the Most of the soldiers are shouting and joking and laughing; teams so they can fire rocket-propelled grenades at the vehicles. they look like teenagers. By contrast the Navy EOD techs seem A while later we hear over the radio that just after we left, subdued and world-weary. They’re both in their mid-20s. I’m Iraqi Police stopped a car and detained the five men inside it. old enough to be their father. They had the standard trappings of IED emplacers: long-range Two of the Army vehicles are encased in steel cages, to cordless phones (used to trigger the bombs), AK-47 assault rifles, deflect or destroy rocket-propelled grenades. One of them has and a digital video camera. It’s likely we had been videotaped. a giant robotic arm to paw through trash and whatever turns We continue on at a pace that seems excruciatingly slow. I ask up. Mounted to the front of one of the other vehicles is the same the team leader what he thinks of the “concerned local citizens,” the air blower used to dry the track at Nascar races; here it’ll blow U.S. military term for the Sunni Iraqis, also known as Awakening away trash heaps, which sometimes conceal IEDs. members, who are paid modestly to help capture insurgents and The briefing covers intelligence on local insurgents and disrupt bomb-making networks. “It’s the best thing we’ve got procedures to follow if we find IEDs, come under attack, or going,” the team leader says. “It’s not controlled by the IA or the need medical evacuation by helicopter. We get our call sign: IP”—the Iraqi Army or the Iraqi Police. “trip wire.” Then a soldier says a prayer out loud. “It’s probably why this route clearance is so routine,” the After leaving Speicher, we’ll travel north on Iraq’s main robot operator chimes in from the back of the truck. north-south thoroughfare, Highway 1, which the U.S. mili- A few minutes later, the team leader, who is on his third deploy- tary calls Main Supply Route Tampa. At some point we’ll ment, talks about some of his previous missions. “You see weird turn around and drop in for lunch at Forward Operating Base stuff on route clearance,” he says. “I’ve seen 12 or 15 vehicles get (FOB) Summerall, north of Bayji. If all goes well, we’ll be back blown up in front of me. You’ll see people pop up and squirt out at Speicher in time for dinner. of buildings running. I’ve dealt with postblast where there were

44 NA • Ieee Spectrum • october 2008 www.spectrum.ieee.org MAN, MACHINE: thayer Jones, a u.s. Navy eoD tech, rests in a JerrV during a route-clearance mission on 24 July 2007.

deaths or body parts. On my last deployment, we got blown up preoccupied with finding and disabling IEDs already on the twice, both times because an officer ran over a pressure plate.” roads. The JERRV is the apotheosis of that approach; still, Maybe that’s why he seemed so much older than the Army there’s no arguing with its success. Hundreds of EOD techs specialists on their first deployment. have gone on thousands of missions since the first JERRVs We turn left onto a route that loops around Bayji rather than arrived in late 2005, and so far only two men have been killed by going through it; the Americans call this the Hershey Bypass. an IED while in a JERRV: Chief Petty Officer Patrick L. Wade At 9:40 a.m., we stop to answer nature’s call. and Petty Officer 1st Class Jeffrey L. Chaney. “Get a good look around before you hop out,” the team leader They lost their lives on 17 July 2007, after an IED packed advises. “And close the door after you go out.” in a culvert underneath a road in northern Iraq threw their Later, the robot operator, a Navy lieutenant who is less 26-ton vehicle several tens of meters. The equivalent weight of experienced than the team leader, comments on the lack of the explosive was later estimated to be many hundreds of kilo- action so far. “The way I feel is, I’m here; I’m away from my grams of TNT. The blast crater was about 100 cubic meters. wife. There is s—t out there to be taken care of. If I’m here and It’s hard not to love a JERRV when you’re inside one, in Iraq, I’m not finding it, I feel like I’m wasting my time.” far from any base, cocooned within its armor and technology and The team leader shrugs wearily. “I’ve seen enough IEDs in massive, purpose-built utilitarianism. Its soft red lighting is easy my life. I really don’t care if I never see one again.” on the eyes at night. The doors are of a composite material, the The radio hisses: “Just before the overpass. There’s a hole better to withstand attacks from rocket-propelled grenades and in the left side…a wire beside it. It doesn’t look like the wire explosively formed penetrators, a particularly lethal form of IED. goes in the hole.” Another false alarm. On we go. Steel plates protect the engine compartment. The machine gun We get to the top of our route around midday. We turn around, on top fires armor-piercing incendiary rounds. drive for 45 minutes or so, and pull in to FOB Summerall a lit- In racks in the cabin and behind the dashboard may be tle after noon. We stop by the EOD tactical operations center to installed several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of electronics: drop off a coffee machine we’d brought with us from Speicher. the jammer; a gyroscopically stabilized optical system called A team leader there tells us that last night a raid in the desert a Gyrocam; frequency-hopping VHF radios; and a blue-force nearby yielded 140 fifty-kilogram bags of homemade explosive. tracker, which shows the truck’s position, tracks it relative to The pathway leading to the operations center is a line of cap- other “friendlies,” and allows them all to communicate. tured 130-millimeter brass artillery shell cases, laid side by side, On a previous route-clearance mission, Master Chief Michael gleaming yellow in the brown dirt. Perdun had marveled at the improvement in transport. “One day you’re flying around the country with canvas doors on your very war has its iconic vehicles. World War II Hummer, and the next day you’re in this,” he said, with a wave had the Jeep; Vietnam had Huey helicopters; the to indicate the diesel-driven vault we were riding in. da

NF first Gulf War had the Humvee. Iraq has “mine Of course, JERRVs also carry the tools of the bomb-disposal u NG NG resistant, ambush protected” vehicles, including trade: a big cabinet stocked with C-4 and other explosives, reels de

NN the JERRV. of shock tube, igniters—and the robots, usually Talons, which is /WPN EThe U.S. government’s approach to countering IEDs has let the EOD techs do most of what they need to do while sit- been criticized as being overly reliant on technology and overly ting inside the truck.

www.spectrum.ieee.org october 2008 • Ieee Spectrum • NA 45 RIGHT AT BOOM: u.s. Navy bomb-disposal specialists came across an improvised explosive device north of tikrit on iraq’s Highway 1, on 28 July 2007. As they blew it up, chief Butler, an eoD technician, snapped a picture through the windshield of their Joint eoD rapid response Vehicle.

The Talon robot is produced by Foster-Miller Technologies, t was an appointment near Samarra. And it was a a U.S. subsidiary of the British defense company QinetiQ, prime example of why, six months later, as this article was and it costs about $160 000. It is typically controlled by radio being written, IED attacks had fallen off in Iraq. and it moves on tracks, like a tiny tank, with an amusingly On 8 January, U.S. soldiers from the 101st Airborne jaunty whir. There are more than 2000 of them in Iraq and Division, along with Navy EOD techs, crept toward a several hundred in Afghanistan. In a typical configuration Icluster of buildings and tents believed to be a camp of al-Qaeda it weighs about 52 kg, can keep pace with a person who is in Iraq, the main foreign insurgent group. The mission was jogging briskly, and has video cameras that can be switched dubbed Operation Fulton Harvest, and it began with a tip from between visible, thermal, and night vision. There’s also a ver- a local source. The area, in the desert southwest of Samarra, sion that can be outfitted with a .30-caliber machine gun or a is dotted with sparse clusters of small dwellings. The EOD .50-caliber rifle. And Talons don’t leave other Talons on the team was there to use various technologies to detect any IEDs battlefield: if an IED blast damages a Talon, another one is or other booby traps. dispatched to drag the broken one back to the JERRV (which Two of the first three buildings the raiders came upon had is why JERRVs always carry more than one Talon). been used as a place to mix ammonium nitrate fertilizer with The Pentagon’s goal for future EOD robots is to give them diesel fuel or urea to make bulk explosive and also to dry the more intelligence and, therefore, autonomy. An Advanced resulting product. The third building was an IED-production EOD Robot System (AEODRS) is to be deployed in the next five house. It was clear that the facilities were in active use, said years. The lead organization for the project, which has not yet Maj. Kelly Kendrick, the operations officer of the 101st Airborne, been formally approved, will be the Naval Explosive Ordnance in an interview at Speicher two weeks after the raid. Disposal Technology Division, in Indian Head, Md. Spotters on helicopters found a footpath near the third The division declined my request to visit but agreed to building leading through some tall grass to a living and cook- answer written questions. What will the new robot be able ing area that included several tents. The soldiers had gotten to do that the existing ones can’t? I asked. “AEODRS is envi- about 5 meters into the tall grass when they were attacked. sioned to have significant autonomy as appropriate for the There was an all-out firefight with 15 to 20 insurgents. For EOD mission, scalability/family of systems, modularity/ 15 minutes the air buzzed and roared with bullets, grenades, rocket- plug&play and EM [electromagnetic] environment capabil- propelled grenades, and even mortars, all at close range. Three ity,” came the e-mail response. soldiers were killed and two wounded; three insurgents were And what exactly does “significant autonomy” mean? It killed and three captured. The rest of the insurgents escaped. conjures a vision of a tech crouched in an armored truck, Over the next few days the EOD and other specialists peering at the scene from his robot’s video cam on the dis- uncovered a network of underground bunkers and tunnels play of a tablet computer and using a stylus to circle an IED. underneath the tent area, including an al-Qaeda command- With no more direction, the robot makes its way to the bomb and-control center and another underground chamber that on its own. had been booby-trapped with a grenade. But if that’s one of the capabilities the Navy envisions for They found enough raw materials to make 4000 kg of home- /WPN

its future bomb-disposal robots, it isn’t ready to say so yet. made explosive and, in a nearby house, 1500 kg of finished is NN

“NAVEODTECHDIV is currently working with the EOD product. There was a dump-truck-size vehicle being turned de NG

users to determine what types of autonomy are ‘right’ for into a vehicle-borne IED, with 1000 kg of explosive, Kendrick u NF

EOD missions” is all they would tell me. said. There were four other smaller vehicles also being con- da

46 NA • Ieee Spectrum • october 2008 www.spectrum.ieee.org verted to VBIEDs, and nine other big IEDs being built with “I think I see our present up here,” the team leader says. “victim-operated” triggers, such as pressure plates. “Yeah, that’s cute,” replies the robot operator. The investigators also found weapons and armaments, elec- We pull up near the two donkeys, next to a soldier who is tronics training manuals in Arabic, $16 800 in $100 bills, some holding an M-16 across his chest. The team leader leans out the Sudanese money, and lots of ball bearings, which insurgents pack door and asks, “What’s going on?” around an IED’s main charge to maximize death and destruction. The soldier says the thing looks like two 120-mm artillery There were also personal computers and simple video-production rounds in a burlap bag with wires coming out of it. facilities to make and mass-produce grisly propaganda video The robot operator sends out the Talon. He finds bags inside discs, which the team found stacked by the thousands in one of the burlap that are too heavy to push or pull with the robot’s the underground chambers. arm. “That’s UBE or sand,” he says. “We’ll find out when we It was a standard insurgent camp. During the several weeks blow it.” (UBE means “unidentified bulk explosive.”) I spent north of Baghdad, raids like that one occurred at a rate of several a week within a 75-km radius of Tikrit. Virtually all of them began in the same way, with a tip from a local resident “Where do you turn or a former insurgent who was fed up with al-Qaeda or other foreign fighters. off your aggreSSion The cumulative effect of those and countless other raids, level?” the team leader muses. several months later, was a steep decrease in the rate of IED attacks in Iraq. The tip-offs and raids did what billions of dol- lars spent developing technologies, some exotic, apparently He steers the robot back to the JERRV. The team leader ties could not. Can it be that old-fashioned community relations a big knot in some shock tube and tapes it up with a blasting and police work are all that matter and that the technological cap and two blocks of C-4 plastic explosive. Shock tube is plas- solutions the U.S. military has been chasing are a mirage? tic hose a few millimeters in diameter, lined inside with a dust- It’s a tempting argument, at least superficially, but it over- ing of HMX explosive and fine aluminum powder. One end of looks the many factors and chores beyond tips and firefights the tube is attached to an igniter, and the other to a blasting cap that are necessary to take apart an IED network. Also, it under- wrapped up in some blocks of C-4. The igniter, a tube 12 cen- estimates what technology does, because much of the technol- timeters long with a pin in one end, starts a shock wave that ogy is classified. U.S. military officials will say only that -tech travels down the tube at 2000 meters per second, sustained by nology-based forensics from captured IEDs, postblast analysis, the explosive inner lining. The shock wave triggers the blast- and other sources are helping them to understand networks ing cap, which detonates the C-4. and even identify individual bomb makers. “They’re tracking “Stand by for fire in the hole in 15 seconds,” the team leader those guys a lot better than they were a couple years ago,” said announces. “Fire in the hole in 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.” Lt. j.g. Scott Bryant, a Navy EOD tech at Forward Operating I pull the pin on the igniter. There’s an orange fireball, Base Falcon, south of Baghdad, in an interview a few weeks maybe 12 meters in diameter. I feel a thump like a punch in after the Fulton Harvest raid. the chest. The igniter sparks and sizzles in my hand. A cloud Even a straightforward raid on an insurgent camp involves of black smoke drifts toward us. technology: the mission often begins with overhead recon- “Yep, that was definitely some s—t,” the team leader says. naissance and surveillance, often from pilotless drone air- He keys the iPod and blasts “Play That Funky Music” while craft. And as far as I could tell from my interviews in Iraq, no he and the robot operator play air drums. commanders would think of raiding a camp without taking There’s frag in the road around the blast site, which means along EOD techs trained in the use of classified technologies that in among the bags of UBE there was also almost certainly to sweep the roads and footpaths for IEDs. an artillery shell or two, to create shrapnel. “We absolutely need science and technology,” says Col. Kevin We gather up the IED’s command wires, enamel-covered cop- Lutz, the commander of Combined Joint Task Force Troy, the per. They clearly lead to a one-story building, about 25 meters U.S. military organization that oversees EOD and related activi- square, a kilometer or so away. The team leader and the robot ties in Iraq. “It’s not a panacea, but we cannot do without it.” operator debate about what they should do. “Whoever was there, dude, they’re gone now,” the team leader says. “I guarantee it.” had a cow on my last deployment,” the team leader “Still, we could find s—t. Make the house go away.” reminisces. Insurgents have often concealed IEDs in In the end, they decide to let the house stand. “My experi- dead (and occasionally live) animals. So EOD operators ence with command wire,” the team leader tells me, “is that generally blow up any animal carcass they come across. when you trace it out, there’s rarely anything at the end of it “We put four blocks of C-4 in its ass.” except a power source and a switch.” IWe’re about 8 hours into the mission and we’re getting a “Where do you turn off your aggression level?” he muses. little bored. He’s been in situations where there was also a combat team, At 2:33 p.m., with Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog” playing on whose commander was “basing his decision on what you say— the sound system, the radio hisses the words that suddenly whether they destroy a house or knock down a building.” make life interesting: “Possible IED on southbound lane. We do some postblast analysis and then drive back to Wires running west.” Speicher. At the EOD tactical operations center, we learn that “Well, we’re gonna get to blow something up,” the team five U.S. soldiers in a Humvee have just been killed in an IED leader says. He says it the way a farmer might say, “It looks attack and coordinated ambush from a mosque in Mosul, north like we’re gonna get a little rain.” of where we were. No one says anything for a minute or two. Ten minutes later we see the IED, or fake IED, in the road. The buzz from having blown up a bomb is gone. o

www.spectrum.ieee.org october 2008 • Ieee Spectrum • NA 47 thesteampunk contraptors HArdwAre HAckerS Are creAtINg fANtAStIcAl mAcHINeS from A VIctorIAN Age tHAt NeVer wAS by erico guizzo

TOP-HATTED TINKERER: Sean Slattery, whose steampunk persona is that of a 19th-century inventor named Jake von Slatt, holds one of his creations, a telegraph sounder that clacks out text feeds from the web. He’s also built a wimshurst high- voltage generator [opposite] using parts bought at Home depot.

PHOTOS: NATHAN PERKEL

october 2008 • Ieee Spectrum • NA 49 RETRO RIDE: sean slattery (aka Jake von slatt) plans to convert his faux 1929 mercedes into an anachronistic steam- powered Victorian vehicle. photo: NAthAN pERKEL

ean Slattery puts on his gog- Sgles and starts up the engine of his Frankenstein’s mon- ster of a car, its fiber- glass body imitat- ing that of a 1929 Mercedes SSK, its chassis taken from a 1972 Volkswagen Beetle. He bought it on eBay for US $1500, and after major repairs he is now ready to add his own hack. He plans to paint the machine black with gold filigree, mount brass headlights and a slanted grille, and install a compact boiler to drive the vehicle with the fiery might of steam. Call it the Steampunk Car.

50 NA • Ieee Spectrum • october 2008 automaton anImatoR In a small garage in dixon, calif., artist I-wei Huang, known as crab fu, has brought to life a legion of remote-controlled steaming creatures. He built them out of scale-model tanks and boats, electronics kits, and “a bunch of junk parts I’ve collected.” the trilobite [top] uses a miniature steam boiler and the engine from a model boat to turn its metal tracks. the centipede [center] crawls using 32 legs driven by a steam- powered system of sprockets and chains. the lobster [bottom] has the chassis of a 1/16-scale toy tank fitted with an aluminum carapace and a small steam engine.

photoS: JoNAthAN SpRAGUE/REDUX

Ieee Spectrum • NA 51 teampunk is a ­ burgeoning ­ subculture ­that ­draws ­on ­the ­ elaborate aesthetics­ and­ roman­ ‑ tic ­worldview ­of ­19th‑century ­ England to­ envision­ how­ things­ ­ Smight ­have ­looked ­had ­a ­few ­key ­tech‑ nologies ­been ­developed ­further. ­It ­con‑ jures ­a ­gaslit ­cityscape ­filled ­with ­steam‑ powered ­robots, ­mechanical ­computers, ­ ray‑gun‑toting aeronauts,­ and­ monocled­ ­ mad ­scientists. Steampunk ­diehards ­talk ­and ­dress ­ as ­if ­they ­lived ­in ­such ­a ­world. ­Some ­ stay ­in ­character ­all ­the ­time—whether ­ at ­a ­steampunk ­gathering ­or ­the ­super‑ market. ­Slattery, ­46, ­takes ­things ­a ­bit ­ more ­casually. ­Most ­of ­the ­time ­he’s ­a ­ regular ­guy: ­a ­Linux ­system ­adminis‑ trator, married,­ with­ two­ daughters.­ It’s­ ­ when he­ walks­ into­ his­ garage,­ crammed­ ­ with ­metalworking ­tools ­and ­hunks ­of ­ brass ­he’s ­found ­at ­the ­town ­dump, ­that ­ he ­becomes ­Jake ­von ­Slatt, ­proprietor ­of ­ the ­Steampunk ­Workshop. ­ On ­a ­recent ­summer ­afternoon, ­he ­ parks ­the ­Steampunk ­Car ­at ­his ­home ­ in ­Littleton, ­Mass., ­and ­guides ­a ­visitor ­ through ­the ­property. ­In ­the ­backyard ­ sits ­a ­school ­bus ­converted ­into ­a ­fully ­ equipped ­Victorian‑style ­recreational ­ vehicle. ­On ­his ­office ­desk, ­he ­keeps ­a ­ brass‑adorned ­PC ­“fit ­for ­the ­office ­of ­ Queen ­Victoria ­herself.” ­ “I’ve ­always ­been ­fascinated ­at ­this ­ blend ­of ­the ­old ­and ­the ­new,” ­he ­says, ­ “particularly ­when ­there’s ­an ­element ­of ­ anachronism—something ­out ­of ­time.” Steampunk ­has ­its ­roots ­in ­the ­1980s ­ as a­ type­ of­ speculative­ fiction,­ its­ name­ a­ ­ tongue‑in‑cheek derivation­ from­ another­ ­ literary subgenre,­ cyberpunk.­ But­ in­ the­ ­ past ­few ­years, ­the ­movement ­has ­been ­ “steamrolling,” ­as ­Slattery ­puts ­it, ­with ­ the ­emergence ­of ­steampunk ­fashion, ­ music, ­and ­design. ­ Feeding ­this ­growth ­are ­the ­pipes ­of ­ the ­Internet. ­If ­the ­computer ­hackers ­of ­ the ­1980s ­had ­hobbyist ­clubs, ­the ­steam‑ punk community­ has­ Facebook,­ YouTube,­ ­ and ­online ­forums ­like ­Brass ­Goggles, ­ where ­they ­philosophize ­about ­their ­life‑ styles, ­discuss ­novels ­like ­The Warlord of the Air ­(1971), ­by ­Michael ­Moorcock, ­and ­ Lord Kelvin’s Machine (1992), ­by ­James ­ Blaylock, and­ share­ photos­ of­ their­ hand­ ‑ made ­prop ­weapons ­(“This ­is ­Chekhov, ­ the ­newest ­darling ­in ­my ­personal ­arse‑ nal, a­ rotary­ ‑dial gun”).­ “It’s ­about ­a ­society ­that ­is ­learning ­ to ­bubble ­up ­on ­networks,” ­says ­sci‑fi ­ writer ­Bruce ­Sterling, ­coauthor ­with ­ William ­Gibson ­of ­The Difference Engine, ­

52 NA • Ieee Spectrum • october 2008 www.spectrum.ieee.org antIque aRtIfIceR california artist richard “datamancer” Nagy calls his latest creation the Archbishop [left], a gothic-themed wooden frame with stained glass and brass embellishments that houses a high-powered pc and a liquid-crystal display. It comes with a brass keyboard [top], a drawing tablet disguised as an antique book, and a curious back story: in July, a 5.8-richter- scale earthquake almost knocked the Archbishop to the ground, but Nagy jumped over a worktable and saved it. His steampunk portfolio also includes a handcrafted wooden case that looks like a Victorian music box but is actually a laptop computer [middle and bottom]. It has a copper keyboard, leather wrist pads, and a clock- winding key to boot it up.

photoS: JoNAthAN SpRAGUE/REDUX

www.spectrum.ieee.org october 2008 • Ieee Spectrum • NA 53 a ­1990 ­novel ­that ­many ­steampunk ­fans ­ “imitating­ ­19th‑century ­upper ­class ­is ­ cite as­ a­ big­ inspiration.­ ­“That’s ­the part­ ­ rebellious ­or ­revolutionary.” ­A ­poseur ­ that’s ­really ­weird ­and ­new ­and ­remark‑ posted ­ a ­ mocking ­ video—“Keep ­ it ­ able about­ steampunk—not­ the­ brass,­ top­ ­ brassy!”—on ­ his ­ blog. ­ And ­ Design hats, ­and ­whalebone ­but ­that ­it’s ­digital ­ Observer ­published ­a ­harsh ­critique ­ and ­rootless ­and ­headless.” by ­one ­Randy ­Nakamura, ­who ­called ­ steampunk­ ­fabricators ­“mediocre ­hob‑ he desire to make things ­ byists” and­ characterized­ the­ movement­ ­ is ­ an ­ integral ­ part ­ of ­ the ­ as ­“closer ­to ­Disney ­than ­punk ­or ­sci‑fi.” ­ steampunk­ ­ movement. ­ Steampunk ­fans ­regarded ­the ­criti‑ Drawing ­ inspiration ­ from ­ cism ­as ­pointless. ­What’s ­wrong, ­they ­ fantastical ­works ­like ­Jules ­ asked, ­with ­some ­Victorian‑era ­fans ­ tVerne’s ­Les Voyages Extraordinaires ­and ­ who enjoy­ building­ stuff,­ adding­ that­ the­ ­ H. G.­ Wells’s­ The­ Time Machine, stea­ mpunk ­ movement ­does ­strive ­to ­find ­a ­deeper ­ adherents embrace­ the­ do­ ‑it‑yourself ethic,­ ­ ideology. ­“If ­you ­can ­imagine ­another ­ and ­they ­prize ­unique, ­intricate ­designs ­ world, ­it ­can ­allow ­you ­to ­creatively ­con‑ over disposable,­ bland­ creations.­ front the­ challenges­ of­ the­ present,”­ says­ ­ “It’s ­part ­art ­and ­part ­just ­tinkering ­ John “Manyjohns”­ Shamberg,­ a­ member­ ­ with ­stuff, ­trying ­to ­create ­something ­ of Kinetic­ Steam­ Works,­ a­ San­ Francisco­ ­ that ­no ­one ­has ­really ­tried ­to ­do ­before,” ­ Bay ­Area ­arts ­group, ­whose ­creations ­ says ­I‑Wei ­Huang, ­known ­as ­Crab ­Fu, ­ include a­ 10­ ‑meter‑high steampunk­ tree­ ­ an ­artist ­and ­animator ­based ­in ­Dixon, ­ house. ­“This ­is ­where ­steampunk ­gets ­ Calif., who­ has­ built­ a­ collection­ of­ steam­ ‑ its ­depth, ­by ­combining ­a ­recognition ­ powered ­mechanical ­critters. of ­a ­rather ­dystopic ­past/present ­with ­a ­ Another artist,­ Richard­ “Datamancer”­ ­ utopic ­imperative.” Nagy, ­is ­even ­trying ­to ­make ­a ­living ­out ­ As ­steampunk ­grows, ­the ­discussion ­ of ­it. ­He ­recently ­relocated ­from ­New ­ will ­probably ­continue. ­The ­question ­is ­ Jersey ­to ­California ­to ­be ­at ­the ­“fabrica‑ how the­ movement­ can­ remain­ true­ to­ its­ ­ tion ­headquarters ­of ­the ­U.S.,” ­he ­says. ­ DIY and­ anticonsumerist­ principles.­ Will­ ­ His ­most ­famous ­creations ­are ­a ­laptop ­ steampunk evolve­ into­ something­ ­lasting— computer ­disguised ­as ­a ­music ­box ­and ­ or will­ it­ disappear­ like­ thin­ vapor?­ retro‑futuristic ­keyboards. Von ­Slatt, ­Crab ­Fu, ­and ­Datamancer ­ ack at the Steampunk are ­among ­the ­most ­prolific ­steampunk ­ Workshop, ­Slattery ­is ­not ­con‑ contraptors. ­But ­they’re ­far ­from ­alone. ­ cerned about­ where­ things­ are­ ­ Countless ­steampunk ­artifacts—a ­Jules ­ heading. He’s­ having­ too­ much­ ­ Vernian ­water‑cooled ­PC ­with ­brass ­ fun, he­ says,­ creating­ things­ and­ ­ pipes ­and ­a ­porthole, ­a ­time ­machine ­ B meeting like­ ‑minded people.­ For­ him,­ the­ ­ named ­ Dihemispheric ­ Chronaether ­ challenge has­ been­ finding­ time­ for­ all­ his­ ­ Agitator ­“capable ­of ­traveling ­forward ­ steampunk activities,­ which­ lately­ include­ ­ in ­time ­at ­exactly ­1 ­SPS ­[second ­per ­ finishing the­ steam­ ‑powered car,­ building­ ­ second]”—have­ appeared­ on­ the­ Internet.­ ­ a ­furnace ­that ­uses ­a ­BMW ­fuel ­injector ­ Jacob ­“Jake ­of ­All ­Trades” ­Hildebrandt, ­ to ­melt ­metal, ­and ­maybe ­steampunking ­ a ­student ­at ­Michigan ­Technological ­ a ­bulldozer ­he ­saw ­on ­Craigslist. University, is­ currently­ building­ a­ steam­ ‑ “My ­wife ­has ­been ­extremely ­toler‑ powered TV­ in­ his­ dorm­ room­ and­ docu­ ‑ ant,” ­he ­says, ­“even ­on ­a ­few ­occasions ­ menting ­the ­process ­in ­his ­blog. when I­ found­ myself­ signing­ e­ ‑mails to­ ­ Recently, steampunk­ appears­ to­ have­ ­ her ­as ­‘Jake ­von ­Slatt.’ ­” ­ o reached ­an ­ebullient ­point. ­Brass ­and ­ clockwork items­ labeled­ “steampunk”­ are­ ­ TO PROBE FURTHER Learn more about proliferating ­on ­eBay ­and ­Etsy. ­Already, ­ steampunk at Aether Emporium (http:// there’s a­ steampunk­ interior­ design­ blog,­ ­ etheremporium.pbwiki.com) and Brass a ­steampunk ­cookbook, ­and ­a ­soon‑to‑ Goggles (http://www.brassgoggles.co.uk). open ­steampunk ­boutique ­in ­New ­York ­ To see more steampunk artifacts, visit City. ­Media ­coverage ­in ­outlets ­from ­The the Web sites of Sean Slattery (http://www. Wall Street Journal ­to ­Maxim Russia—and ­ steampunkworkshop.com), I-Wei Huang (http:// this magazine­ among­ them—have­ helped­ ­ www.crabfu.com), Richard Nagy (http://www. disseminate ­steampunk ­even ­further. ­It ­ datamancer.net), and Kinetic Steam Works doesn’t come­ as­ a­ surprise­ that­ the­ result­ ­ (http://www.kineticsteamworks.org). was a­ bit­ of­ a­ backlash.­ The first California Steampunk Convention One ­ Polish ­ steampunk ­ pur ist ­ (http://www.steampunkconvention.com) took ­issue ­with ­those ­who ­think ­that ­ takes place later this month in Sunnyvale.

54 NA • Ieee Spectrum • october 2008 www.spectrum.ieee.org SteamInG SubcultuRe

born as a literary subgenre [middle left]. Special effects two decades ago, steampunk and film-prop company weta has now materialized in the workshop in New Zealand— creations of a growing number best known for its work on of enthusiasts. early this year, the Lord of the Rings film a strange apparatus named trilogy—offers collectibles like the telectroscope [top left] the limited-edition unnatural connected New York city and Selector ray gun [middle right]. london using a video link— A self-propelled three-story or, if you ask the imaginative Victorian house on wheels, the artists who created it, using a Neverwas Haul [bottom left] transatlantic tunnel conceived is a collaborative project of by “an eccentric Victorian San francisco bay Area artists engineer.” california artist tom and fabricators. Seattle band Sepe shows off hisw hirlygig Abney park incorporates emoto [top right], a “steam- steampunk not only into its electric hybrid motorcycle,” at lyrics but also its instruments, this year’s maker faire in San which include a clockwork- mateo, calif. Hats, goggles, adorned guitar, a flintlock bass and ray-gun props are among hybrid [bottom right], and a the steampunk accessories “tesla-powered keyboard.”

handcrafted by artists like molly photoS, CLoCKWISE FRoM top LEFt: MARY ALtAFFER/ Ap photo; LISA MEKIS; StEVE UNWIN/WEtA WoRKShop; “porkshanks” friedrich of Seattle RoBERt BRoWN; LIBBY BULLoFF (2) www.spectrum.ieee.org october 2008 • Ieee Spectrum • NA 55 tilt backward, to the east, their black faces leaning away from A Less Well-Oiled War Machine the sun. The engineers on the project, from SunPower Corp., Continued from page 32 based in San Jose, Calif., found that if the panels turn west- ward as dusk approaches, the shadows cast by some panels the deputy director of the Navy’s Shore Energy Program. “But onto others lead to a greater loss of efficiency than if the solar if we’ve already collected the wind data, it’ll lower their risk cells soaked up rays while lying more or less flat, at an oblique and lower the price, and that’s the big key for us.” angle to the descending sun. If the Navy follows through, these commercial-scale wind Dictating those finely plotted movements are computer- turbines will be its first in the continental United States. Up to controlled trackers designed by SunPower (which also man- now, the Navy has used them only at offshore locations like San ufactured some of the solar cells, along with Evergreen Solar, Clemente Island, a naval base 126 km west of San Diego, and Sanyo, and Suntech Power). The panels, fixed at a 20-degree Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where four 950-kilowatt wind tur- bines have been spinning since 2005. Because Cuba provides no electricity to the base, a 3.8-MW hybrid wind and diesel- 2 generator plant saves the service $1.2 million a year in the form of fuel that no longer needs to be transported to the island. 121 000 km LAnd OWned by the dOd, AbOut ack in the Mojave desert, far from Guantánamo, equAL in size tO nOrth KOreA a different renewable-energy project demonstrates the B surprising economics that can come into play. A 14-MW southward tilt, rotate from east to west in response to the photovoltaic array—the largest in the Americas—has been gen- trackers’ cues. Each string of a few dozen solar pods has its own erating electricity for almost a year. To a pilot’s eye, the rows of motor and a controller. The controller feeds data to an inverter, black rectangles form dotted lines on the rocky beige landscape which is remotely monitored in the system’s control room. On on which Nellis Air Force Base sprawls, about 15 km northeast a hillier section of the installation, the strings are programmed of the Las Vegas strip. to move along paths that take the terrain into account. “It’s a Every few minutes, hundreds of half-horsepower motors funny sight when something does go wrong, because one row purr as the 72 416 panels tilt a few centimeters to the west. will point in a completely different direction from everything Balanced on stout little concrete feet, 56 hectares (140 acres) else around it,” says Michelle Price, Nellis’s energy manager. of panels follow the sun like worshipful robots. But as dusk To check on the system’s performance, weather stations approaches, the solar panels change their course: they start to throughout the site record air tempera- Continued on page 58

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56 NA • iEEE SpEctrum • octobEr 2008 WWW.spectruM.ieee.Org

401-Qj LN_qtr pg_2.indd 1 8/10/06 10:53:04 AM 1 megawatt-hour—to Nevada Power. As a A Less Well-Oiled result, only the utility can claim credit for the solar energy that, technically, MMA War Machine provides and Nellis consumes. Continued from page 56 The outcome of these business nego- tiations was more dramatic than anyone tures, wind speeds, and solar radiation. at Nellis had expected. The base agreed Visit our website for thousands of standard products A monitoring algorithm uses those envi- to pay 2.2 cents per kilowatt-hour, down ronmental measurements to calculate from about 7 cents, which is what it had www.picoelectronics.com how much electricity the system should originally paid, for the next 20 years. TRANSFORMERS & be generating at any given time. “It was “I’ve received hundreds of phone calls Miniaturized INDUCTORS the first time we installed this tracker from people asking me about ‘the Nellis From 1/4" X 1/4" • Surface Mount in the United States and the first time model,’ ” says Price, the energy manager. Plug-in • Toriodal • Insulated Leads that we did a tilted tracker,” says Julie The conditions may be hard to duplicate, Blunden, SunPower’s vice president but that won’t stop people from try- SURFACE Plug-in Mount for public policy and corporate com- ing—Price has hosted visits from may- munications. The tilting and tracking, ors, senators, and even representatives Blunden says, allow the field to generate of the Walt Disney Co. David Felix, a 30 percent more energy than if the pan- senior manager at MMA, predicts a DC-DC CONVERTERS Low Profile els were fixed in place. second wave of solar projects on mili- Surface Mount • PC Board Mount Single and Dual Output • Up to 10,000V Std. But the cost of all those trackers, invert- tary lands in the near future. “You can ers, cells, and concrete pedestals adds up— see the other requests for proposals that SURFACE Plug-in Mount to more than $100 million, in this case— have been issued since. Davis-Monthan, and breaking even on such a system could Fallon, Edwards, and many others have take half a century. That’s where Nevada’s expressed interest in following suit,” renewable-energy laws come into play, in notes Felix, ticking off the bases that particular the one that requires the state’s could become future clients. DC-DC CONVERTERS High Power utilities to increase the amount of electric- Dumont also expects to develop more Regulated, Up to 400 Watts Up to 100 volts Standard ity generated from renewable sources by solar energy projects, starting with Davis- INdustrial Military 3 percent every two years. That legislation Monthan Air Force Base, in Arizona. “The created a big incentive for Nevada Power, more we put these big ones in, the more we the local utility, to see that the Nellis solar help the industry to reach its prime.” field came into existence. The project started with a voice-mail ne man closely watching the DC-DC CONVERTERS High Voltage pitch left on Steve Dumont’s phone Nellis saga unfold is Chris Archer, Up to 10,000 VCD Output Up to 300 Watts by a solar-energy developer, in 2004. O the deputy base civil engineer at NEW Dual Outputs New Regulated Output Dumont, the energy program manager McGuire Air Force Base, in New Jersey. for Air Combat Command, initially On a recent summer morning, Archer sur- ignored the proposal. But then, he says, veyed his turf with a keen eye for flat roofs “I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation, and unobstructed empty fields. Every few and pretty quickly I saw that this could minutes, a C-17 cargo aircraft took off on a work.” From there, it was a matter of con- delivery run and another came in for land- AC-DC POWER SUPPLIERS vincing others in the Air Force to sub- ing at the base’s active airfield. “They’ve Linear • Switches • Open Frame mit a proposal for the project to Nevada cracked the code on how to do big solar, Low Profile • Up to 200 Watts Power. “It took two years of telling peo- and that makes it easier for us,” Archer ple that it was a great idea, that we think says of the Nellis installation. the economics are there, and that we He has a big job on his hands—to make might even be able to get a good deal out McGuire, 24 km outside Trenton, able to of it,” Dumont says. go completely off-grid by 2015. McGuire is POWER FACTOR Nellis’s energy staff moved ahead. one of two model energy bases chosen by CORRECTED MODULES First, they combed through project pro- the Air Force last year to explore energy Universal Input • 47-440 hz posals that they’d solicited and then efficiency to the fullest extent economi- to 1000 Watts • 99 Power Factor zeroed in on the SunPower system. The cally possible. A base in New Jersey is a base agreed to lease out the land for the logical starting point: between the state’s project at a nominal fee. A financing generous renewable-energy credits and company, MMA Renewable Ventures, a relatively high electricity price (13 cents was brought in to pay the up-front costs; per kilowatt-hour, compared with a Call toll free it now owns the equipment and sells the national average of 9 cents), the Air Force 800-431-1064 power to the base. MMA then sold the stands to gain from easing its draw. In the for PICO Catalog renewable-energy certificates it acquired year since he began his mission, Archer Fax 914-738-8225 for the installation—each certificate usu- has replaced a poorly insulated 2-hectare ally represents the “green attributes” of (5-acre) roof on a warehouse and begun PICO Electronics,Inc. 143 Sparks Ave, Pelham, NY 10803-1837 WWW.spectruM.ieee.Org E-Mail: [email protected]

CYAN prints as Pantone 3268C installing smart meters on large build- ings to track their energy use. In that one year, electricity use Referex on dropped by 14 percent. “We’ve been addressing all the low-hanging fruit,” Engineering Village Archer says with a modest shrug. His task list now includes putting 100 kilowatts’ worth of solar panels on several ware- house roofs, replacing 1970s-era light- ing, and dismantling the central heat- ing plant by installing more-efficient furnaces in some buildings and ground- source heat pumps underneath others. Those units use the thermal stability of the Earth to transfer heat to a building Coming Soon - 200 NEW full-text from the ground through geothermal e-Books available from Referex wells dug about 120 meters deep. “At first I think the Air Force and on Engineering Village! McGuire struggled with what this model- energy idea means,” says Joseph Bogdan, Enhance your engineering research with Referex – soon with McGuire’s energy manager. Now that the over 1800 eBooks across 6 subject areas: team of civil and electrical engineers has gained momentum, he and Archer think » Electronic & Electrical Engineering » Security & Networking they’ll be able to halve the electricity con- » Materials & Mechanical Engineering » Computing sumed at McGuire from its 2003 level » Chemical, Petrochemical & » Civil & Environmental by 2011. They are also in the beginning Process Engineering Engineering stages of developing solar and biomass power plants. Visit www.ei.org today for more information or Specifically, they want to install Engineering Village Whitepaperad_1/3:Layoutemail us at [email protected] 1 9/12/08 12:38 PM Page 1 a 2-MW solar array in an empty field between a dormitory and two day-care centers on the base. Archer periodically checks out the location, just a minute’s drive from his office on base. “Can you imagine?” he says, hands on his hips as Download free he scans the field on a recent visit. “These children will grow up playing right next to all these solar panels, and to them it’ll white papers on look completely normal.” He’s optimis- tic that a 6-MW solar installation on a brownfield on the edge of the base won’t be far behind. “I think we’re going to be able to carve out a deal, maybe even better than what Nellis did,” he says. To meet McGuire’s routine electrical demand of 12 MW, they’ll need some- thing on that scale. But not every base has access to Learn more about the technologies that interest you renewable-energy incentive programs from the authoritative voices within your field. or giant naturally occurring geothermal resources. The Army has a similar goal of five net-zero-energy bases by 2015, Expand your personal know-how. where, over the course of a year, the base Download a free white paper today! or buildings would produce more energy on site than they consume from the grid or from other fossil sources. In states that lack strong support for renewable energy, www.spectrum.ieee.org/whitepapers keeping it affordable can be challenging. That was William Stein’s experience during his decade as the energy mana- ger at Fort Huachuca, in Arizona. Using ®� a c o m b i n a t i o n Continued on page 60

WWW.spectruM.ieee.Org mAy 2008 • iEEE SpEctrum • NA 59 A Less Well-Oiled War Machine Continued from page 59

of third-party financing and small sums from the Army, he trimmed electricity use by 1 percent at a time when the base and its population were expanding. In addition to replacing ineffi- cient lighting and repairing a broken solar-heated pool, Stein procured several rooftop solar panels, installed a 10-kW wind turbine, and put in two of the military’s first solar-collector walls. Here, the sun’s radiation warms a heat-collecting panel installed parallel to a building’s exterior, most commonly sev- eral centimeters away from its south-facing side. Fans draw the heat into an air cavity between the panel and the building, and that air in turn provides heat and ventilation for the occu- ready.set. pants of the building. Such solar-heating systems have since become a hit on Army bases—this past spring, Fort Drum, in New York, finished installing 50 solar walls made by Toronto- accelerate! based Conserval Engineering. “We’re trying to be leading edge, bleeding edge, but the prob- lem is we get a lot of resistance,” Stein says. “It’s not all doom and gloom, but we’ve got to turn the ship very, very slowly.” His work won him the title of energy champion and got his face on a poster in Army offices in Washington, D.C. He now accelerate! manages the national program for the Army’s net-zero-energy CAREERACCELERATORFORUM bases, which his boss, Don Juhasz, hopes will be the service’s main contribution to meeting the Defense Department’s man- Autumn Online date of 25 percent renewable energy by 2025—once they figure out how to do it. Conference & Exhibition Some military employees hope that the arguments for October 16, 2008 renewable energy are compounding in their favor. This past February, a report released by a Defense Science Board task In-Demand force on energy strategy concluded that the vulnerability of the national electric grid to attack or failure could compro- Engineering Skills for the Next mise the ability of domestic bases to carry out their missions. 5 Years...Are You Qualified? Though each base has backup diesel generators to power criti- cal buildings, well-placed renewable-energy technologies could stretch a base’s supply of diesel fuel, if not replace it, in Webinar 1: Are You Management Material? an emergency. Who Will Fill the Management Slots in the Future? The reasons to deploy renewable-energy technologies are Mark Finger, Vice President, Human Resources, compelling, but Brad Hancock, the DOD’s associate director for National Instruments energy and utilities, sees a gap between what the bases want to Dr. Akash Deshpande, Chief Technology Officer, do and what they can do on their own. “We’re mostly looking ARC International in the 100-kW to the little-smaller-than-a-megawatt range, to Industry companies need executives who can lead have security of energy and to lock in electricity prices,” he says combined technical/line management teams that of the projects that the department chooses to fund internally. deliver results quickly and on budget. “We want to produce enough renewable energy, but we’re still struggling with the life-cycle cost issues.” Webinar 2: Career Opportunities in Consumer Chris Tindal, the Navy’s shore-energy manager, sums up the Electronics – What Technical Skills Are Most military’s operating philosophy succinctly. “If we can buy more in Demand Today? ships, more planes, more bullets, that’s what we’d rather do than Stuart J. Lipoff, Partner, IP Action Partners put our money into infrastructure,” he says. In other words, Steve Koenig, Director of Industry Analysis, that’s why military dollars are always in short supply for domes- Consumer Electronics Association tic energy projects. But that position also explains, in light of an The spectacular growth of the consumer electronic uncertain energy future and a handful of stunning economic suc- products sector is requiring semiconductor suppliers cesses, why some individuals are inching the military toward a to work more closely with CE producers to bring cleaner, more sustainable stance on power. Their work is really CE products to market faster. paying off, too: as Hancock sees it, the military is “more than on track” to fulfill its vision for 2025. With some bases supplying Sign up today! their own electricity and vast empty stretches of military land www.spectrum.ieee.org/caf being used to produce power, the U.S. military, at least at home, is at the forefront of an energy revolution. o

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billioN. ThaT’s an to none in its fervor to text is the $100estimate of how much Philippines. last year, Filipinos sent the world’s 3.3 billion cellphone users 155 billion messages. That’s more spent to send 1.7 trillion text messages than four messages per day for 1750 last year—more than hollywood’s every man, woman, child, and baby. worldwide box-office receipts, global Filipinos embraced messaging dur- music sales, and U.s. video-game and ing the political protests of the late PC-game sales combined. 1990s, because it was then the only in fact, those movie, music, and unmonitored form of communication. Annual Messages gaming revenues will come to acision, an sMs service provider Sent, Billions only about half the Us $130 billion in the Netherlands that handles 1500 that short message service (sMs) about two-thirds of the world’s text will bring in this year, according to messages each year, has noticed a the market research firm informa generally “eastward wave of adop- Telecoms & Media. tion from the UK to scandinavia to The United states came late to the Western Europe, then Eastern Europe, sMs revolution, but with a fourfold asia, and finally the americas. Europe increase in the past two years, its sMs traffic has peaked,a sia is near its 1250 total texting now puts it second only peak, and america will be peaking in a to China. but the country second couple of years.” —Steven Cherry

Worldwide Revenue, 2007 Top Five Texters, 2007 1000 (U.S. $, billions) (Billions of messages)

SMS 456 100 750

80

1992 1 60 18.8 Games First SMS message (“Merry Christmas,” 500 sent by Neil Papworth 197 of Sema Group, using 2 19.3 Music a PC, to Richard Jarvisof 40 160 155 Vodafone)

3 88 20 26.7 Hollywood 1993 250 First commercial SMS deployment U.S. 0

1 China U.S. Japan Philip- India SOURCES: U.S. video-game and PC-game sales ACISION, CTIA 2 pines Global music sales 0 3 Global Hollywood box-office receipts 1992 1995 2000 2005 2009

SourceS: ifPi, riaa, mPaa SourceS: ovum, Quantifica 707 000 000 000 Number of text messages, Number of text messages sent, per person, sent by 43 New Year’s, 2007–2008 SourceS: aciSion, itu 1Filipinos in 2007 Source: ovum 76 NA • iEEE SpEctrum • octobEr 2008