Tech Talk

p>To get you in the holiday spirit, we offer a story about how a simple mistake led to a Yuletide tradition carried on by one of the most technologically sophisticated centers on earth. This year, the North American Aerospace Defense Command will celebrate the 50th anniversary of its NORAD Tracks Santa project. Why does the joint Canadian-American air defense operation monitor the flight of a "jolly old elf" on his annual mission to bring gifts to the world's children? Well, it's not because he poses a security threat to the continent.

Technically, Santa Claus violates North American airspace on a regular basis once a year. He files no flight plan. He operates an unregistered vehicle. He lacks a pilot's license. He travels at excessive speed. He touches down and takes off from millions of locations without the slightest permission from any air-traffic control authority. And he knows when you are sleeping and knows when you're awake. All of which might make for some suspicion that this highly secretive individual might be up to something worthy of the attention of NORAD.

The truth of the matter is very different, though, of course. NORAD found itself in the Santa-tracking business purely by accident. The real story begins in 1955 with a typo in a newspaper ad. A Sears Roebuck and Co. store in Colorado Springs, Colo., placed an ad in a local paper with a phone number for children to call Santa on a special hotline. Unfortunately for Sears, but fortunately for children ever since, the number was mistyped. Instead of reaching a phone at Santa's workshop, callers were put in touch with the operations desk of the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) at Cheyenne Mountain, one of the most sensitive control centers of the Cold War.

The matter might have simply led to an investigation by the U.S. Air Force were it not for the fact that it was December 24th and the mistaken callers were all children from the nearby town. Using judicious command discretion, CONAD Director of Operations Col. Harry Shoup decided to order his staff to check their radar displays to see if there was any indication that Santa was making his way down from the North Pole and advise the children accordingly. And in the twinkle of a merry eye, a tradition was born.

The "job" of tracking Santa's progress on his annual flight was inherited by NORAD in 1958, when Canada and the United States joined forces to monitor the skies above North America. Today, the project has become a holiday hallmark.

"I think in the initial stages, back in the 50s and 60s, it was just a novelty kind of thing," said Master Sgt. John Tomassi, Santa Tracking Operations co-director, in a recent press release.

"We've recognized now that people have taken this program as a tradition, and what we can do is educate them," Tomassi continued. "We use the satellites to track Santa, we use the radar, we use jet fighters, but all of those exact same things are what we use to monitor the aerospace of North America. We think of it as a geography lesson, because the different places that Santa visits or sightings that we have, a lot of people haven't heard of. If we can get some children to go and look at a map to find out where Timbuktu is, or where India is, or Pakistan, or wherever, then we feel all the better for that."

With a presence on the Internet in six languages and international television coverage by the media, NORAD Tracks Santa is also a technological wonder. Handled completely on a voluntary basis and funded by charitable donation, the project gets over 900 million hits to its website, 35 000 email messages, and 55 000 phone calls. Technological assistance is provided by Akamai, America Online, Analytical Graphics, ClearCube, ICG Communications, MCI, Windows Live Local, and other providers.

NORAD Tracks Santa is made possible by the people of Cheyenne Mountain and Peterson Air Force Base, who staff the Santa Tracking Operations Center. Its phone numbers—and these are correct—are 877-446-6723 (toll-free in the United States) and 719-474-2111. In two days, they will assemble a small army (make that air force) to keep us all posted on the whereabouts of a most remarkable fellow.

It's a noble effort, in every way.

Happy holidays to all.

We return today to the question of whether it's safe to operate wireless devices, in general, on commercial airliners (see our earlier comments here). With the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) set to auction off radio spectrum to enable in-flight wireless communications on May 10, the issue has piqued increasing public interest, as well as spirited debate among technology professionals.

According to the FCC, its Auction No. 65 will award licenses to the highest bidders for nationwide commercial air-ground radiotelephone services in the 800-MHz band. The licenses will be offered in three band plans: two overlapping, shared, cross-polarized 3-MHz licenses; an exclusive 3-MHz license and an exclusive 1-MHz one; and an exclusive 1-MHz license and an exclusive 3-MHz one. The configurations are mutually incompatible. The plan that receives the highest aggregate bids is the one that will be implemented.

This will toss the ball to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for approval. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal last week (which relied heavily on our content), the FAA has hired the non-profit technical advisory body RTCA (the former Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics) to study the issue and file a formal report by December. A spokesperson for the RTCA committee told the Journal that the report will likely outline requirements for supporters to prove the safety of onboard electronic devices.

The Journal article specifically cites our feature on the topic, "Unsafe at Any Airspeed?", to emphasize the tricky nature of the technical questions involved. The Carnegie-Mellon scientists who penned our summary of their in-flight research pointed to the phenomenon of intermodulation as being a hazard that must be overcome before critical cockpit instrumentation, such as GPS transceivers, can be secured from possible interference from passenger devices in the cabin. New onboard pico-cell antennas allow cellphones and wireless units to operate at low power levels, with correspondingly lower levels of interference. However, until the RTCA study findings are complete, we still won't know just how much of a reduction of risk we can count on from pico-cell technology.

In the meantime, we are caught in the middle. Various commercial operators, such as Lufthansa and American Airlines, have already run successful test programs for wireless services in flight. And it would seem that the traveling public (especially business fliers) would readily embrace the convenience of using their BlackBerrys and Treos as they approach their destinations. But conventional wisdom may be wrong in this instance.

"Of 8000 comments to the FCC when it proposed dropping its ban, only two or three were in favor," the Journal article reports. "The rest, except for the 50 or so technical reports, were from travelers vociferously opposed, arguing that airplanes should be a refuge from calls and emails. Flight attendant unions are also opposed, fearing obnoxious phone habits could lead to air-rage incidents."

Moreover, we asked Spectrum Online readers earlier this month what you thought about the issue, and your response was overwhelmingly negative. Answering the question "Is it safe to use cellphones and wireless devices on airliners?" in our "Your Opinion" poll, only 251 of you thought it was safe. A whopping 468 readers voted unsafe. And 384 more cast their ballots for the "needs further study" option.

As we wrote in this month's "Spectral Lines" editorial: "Like it or not, wireless technology will soon become a permanent feature of aircraft cabins"; however, "we believe the current ban should be kept in place while data are collected and analyzed and while the technical issues surrounding the setup of these networks in the air are sorted out." It's unquestionably a very small price to pay to ensure our safety.

V Scofield responding to A League Of Extraordinary Women, on 3/24/06, said:

I am a female that holds both a BSEE and a BSCS degrees and would like to offer an my insight of why women don't go into engineering. I have found that there is a pervasive attitude that women are incapable of the task and are covertly and overtly discouraged. While I was in school, head of the department stated I would never make it through the program the first time I met him (luckily, he retired the next year and was replaced by a great person). I was constantly asked by my peers in college if I was there for my M.R.S. among other things. Not only did I make it through (one of three females in my class), but I made it through with a double major.

Now my daughter is persuing her BSEE and is finding the same attitude but more overtly.

I believe attitudes are the key to encouraging future women engineers: positive attitudes from others, the individuals' own belief in herself and a skin of steel.

IBM reported yesterday that its scientists have developed a new technique for exploring and controlling magnetism at the atomic level. The breakthrough could lead to the development of new materials for computing devices based on microscopic magnetic phenomena.

"We have developed a window into the atomic heart of magnetism," said Andreas Heinrich, a research staff member at IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif. "We can now position atoms and then measure and control their magnetic interactions within precisely designed structures."

The technique, called spin-excitation spectroscopy, uses a low-temperature scanning tunneling microscope to probe the interactions between spins in individual atomic-scale magnetic structures. The researchers created linear chains of 1 to 10 manganese atoms assembled one atom at a time on a thin insulating layer, and the spin excitation spectra of these structures were measured with inelastic tunneling spectroscopy. They observed excitations of the coupled atomic spins that can change both the total spin and its orientation. Comparison with a model spin interaction yielded the collective spin configuration and the strength of the coupling between the atomic spins. They found that chains with an even number of atoms had no net magnetism, while chains with an odd number of atoms showed net magnetism, according to the IBM announcement.

"This kind of exploratory research is essential for the long-term future of the computer industry," said Gian-Luca Bona, manager of science and technology at the Almaden center. "Sometime in the next couple of decades, it will be impossibly difficult to continue improving transistors and other traditional microelectronic circuit elements by simply shrinking them. We will then need alternative structures and, perhaps, altogether different ways of computing. Techniques like this can help us gain the knowledge needed to create those alternatives."

IBM said its scientists expect to use spin-excitation spectroscopy to:

• 'Explore the limits of magnetic data storage, by engineering the energy required to flip the collective orientation of a small number of magnetically coupled atoms.'

• 'Determine the feasibility of spin-based wires and a spin version of the molecular-motion cascade.'

• 'Investigate how engineered spin interactions could be applied to quantum information systems, such as quantum computers.'

More information on spin-excitation spectroscopy is available at IBM's Web site and at the online publication Science Express.

April kicks off with our annual roundup of the hottest, coolest, techiest rides on the planet. In "Top 10 Tech Cars" author John Voelcker gathers the most formidable collection of automotive inventiveness of the last year into our pages for your amazement. As you might guess, this year's theme is the great debate over what engineers can do these days with the automobile in a perfect world and what they ought to do in our imperfect world of fuel and emissions concerns.

Let's be wild for a moment and start with the perfect world fantasy of limitless supplies of non-polluting fuel and care-free motoring without a single worry over cost. In that abstract environment, you might choose to drive the 11th entrant in our Top Ten, the Veyron 16.4, from Volkswagen's (that's right) Bugatti division, "the fastest, most powerful, most expensive production car in the history of the automotive industry." This monster boasts an 8.0-liter, 16-cylinder engine and four turbochargers (16.4) that produce 987 horsepower of pure oomph. The Veyron goes from stop to 186 mph in 16.7 seconds—and can crank it up to 254 mph. Its carbon-fiber/aluminum body, front and rear air diffusers, and massive rear spoiler are a sci-fi dream. For US $1.2 million, it's yours (if you can get your hands on one of the 50 available for sale this year). Whew!

Back in the real world, ahem, where most of us really live, there are plenty of choices amidst the price continuum. Going from large to small, let's travel through our Top Ten's technical merits.

2007 Chevrolet Tahoe/GMC Yukon: Not exactly tech heavyweights (but decidedly heavy), the SUV twins do offer an upgraded OnStar service that opens a dialog between you, your vehicle, and your vehicle's manufacturer. OnStar monitors dozens of functions such as acceleration, braking, steering angles, body roll, oil pressure, fuel level, and even can tell when a vehicle is being driven "too aggressively." If OnStar determines the car's on-road activities are too extreme, an operator calls to make sure everything's all right.

2007 Mercedes-Benz E 320 Bluetec: This model boasts the cleanest diesel engine in the world. To crack the vast U.S. market, it needs it. With strict emissions requirements in most states and a lack of the cleaner diesel fuel used in Europe, few diesels make the trip across the Atlantic. To achieve a cleaner-running engine, Mercedes-Benz employs three catalytic converters in the Bluetec, a 3.0-L turbocharged V6 diesel that generates 208-hp and gives you an economical 35 miles to the gallon of fuel.

2006 Chrysler 300C Heritage: This four-door sedan offers a V8 engine that automatically shuts down four valves when the load is light. It comes with the new SmartBeam headlight system, which uses forward-facing CMOS image sensors (a "camera on a chip") built into the interior rearview mirror to switch on the high beams when needed. The technology keeps the brights switched on until it detects either the headlamps of oncoming vehicles or the taillights of vehicles ahead.

2007 Lexus LS460: The leading U.S. luxury brand comes with an alphabet soup of advanced automotive electronics. The latest trick up its sleeve is a new system that automatically parks the car for you, with just a little braking on your part, using front and rear cameras and software that controls both the electric power steering and the "drive-by-wire" electronic throttle. Its Vehicle Dynamics Integrated Management system even helps you drive it in difficult circumstances.

2006 Volvo s60: An inexpensive option on several Volvo models, the Blind-spot Information System (BLIS) uses camera modules on each door mirror to send signals to LED displays warning of other vehicles in your way as you change lanes. The cameras process 25 images per second in a signal-processing chip, which uses software stored in the camera's flash memory. A control processor supervises I/O, data transfer, and communication among the components.

2006 Volkswagen Passat: The midsize Passat sold in the U.S. offers an optional 3.6-L VR6, with two banks of three cylinders at an angle of just 10.6 degrees, making it light and compact and capable of 280 hp. It features an electronic stabilization program that monitors speed, cornering, braking, input from the drive-by-wire throttle, and other data to compensate for slipping traction or sliding tires faster and more precisely than a human can.

Concept Ford Reflex: This subcompact sports diesel hybrid debuted at January's influential Detroit Auto Show. It's powered by a 1.4-L turbocharged diesel engine mated to a parallel 30-kW electric motor that drives the front wheels and an additional, 15-kW electric motor to drive the rear wheels and provide all-wheel drive. The combo produces peppy pick up, letting you move from 0-60 mph in less than 7 seconds. Solar panels on the roof and in the lights help lighten the load on the Reflex's high-voltage batteries.

Mitsubishi Concept-CT MIEV: This proof-of-concept compact four-door hatchback uses four electric motors on the wheels themselves. The Mitsubishi In-wheel Motor Electric Vehicle system is mated to a three-cylinder, 1.0-liter gasoline engine located behind the rear seat but ahead of the rear axle line. Its experimental electric motors follow a hollow-doughnut construction, in which the rotor goes outside the stator instead of inside it, conserving space and reducing weight.

Subaru B5-TPH: The Turbo Parallel Hybrid demonstrates the concept of matching a turbocharged 2.0-liter horizontally opposed "boxer" engine (256 hp) with an electric motor-generator (13 hp), just 58 millimeters thick, between the engine and the transmission. The all-wheel-drive compact coupe also introduces manganese lithium-ion batteries that offer 50 percent greater power density than the nickel-metal-hydride batteries used for hybrids today, as well as faster recharging.

2006 Subaru R2 Type S: Down at the tiny end of the automotive spectrum come Japan's kei cars, which are so small they qualify for free parking on the island nation's crowded streets. Still, they do offer some interesting features. The R2 Type S comes with: all-wheel drive with a continuously variable transmission; a 658-cc, four-cylinder engine, with dual overhead cams, a supercharger, and an intercooler. It can move from zero to 62 mph in about 10 seconds and will take you 42 miles on a gallon of gas.

So, ladies and gentlemen, start your imaginations and your engines—big and small.

When James D. Meindl went off to college in 1951, he planned to get a degree from the Carnegie Institute of Technology, in Pittsburgh, that would enable him to design heavy electrical equipment for Westinghouse Electric Corp., where his father worked. As fate would have it, he was prevented from doing so, because the two men who taught the power engineering program left the department. So began the twisting road that led Meindl, the recipient of the 2006 IEEE Medal of Honor, to become an educator. And what a road it has been, Senior Editor Tekla S. Perry explains in "Wizard of Watts".

Meindl, an IEEE Life Fellow, got his bachelor's degree from Carnegie in 1955 and, on the advice of a mentor, decided to pursue postgraduate work in microelectronics, the opposite direction from which he had set out. His first project involved explaining the loss of radio-frequency signals transmitted through coaxial cables operated by the military. He soon became an expert in Maxwell's equations and solved the cable problem within 24 months. This newfound expertise thrust him into the emerging field of semiconductor engineering.

With a Ph.D. from the future Carnegie Mellon University, Meindl landed a job at Westinghouse, just not the one he had planned originally. Instead, he was hired to operate the silicon-controlled rectifiers that manage the control rods of a nuclear reactor. However, after a year of burning out transistors, the U.S. Army requested he repay its contributions to his education as a member of the Reserve Officers' Training Corps with a stint in active service.

He reported to the Army Signal Research and Development Laboratories, in Fort Monmouth, N.J., where he was assigned to work in the revolutionary world of integrated circuits (ICs). There, he met Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments and, on travel, Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor Corp., in Palo Alto, Calif. These gentlemen briefed Meindl on how he might go about solving his charge of developing an IC that could work at a power level low enough to be used inside a helmet as part of a radio receiver. He stayed at Fort Monmouth for eight years, two as an Army officer and six more as a civilian. (This period resulted in a haircut that has stayed with him throughout his entire adult life.)

In 1967, John Linvill, then chair of the electrical engineering department at Stanford, made Meindl an offer he couldn't refuse—working on an electronic system that would enable blind people to read. It used a camera to take a picture of the letters on a page and then translated that picture to a tiny pad of vibrating pins. Linvill needed someone who could design custom-made, low-power chips in order to make the device portable. Meindl went out to California and helped to create the chips in the Optacon, the first optical-to-tactile converter. "That was the most thrilling moment in engineering work that I have ever had," Meindl told Perry.

As a teacher at Stanford, Meindl began to develop a reputation as an indefatigable champion of his students' projects, which concentrated mostly on developing new low-power sensors and circuits—and seeded Silicon Valley with some of its most promising young stars.

After two decades as a professor at Stanford, Meindl accepted the post of provost of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in Troy, N.Y. Life as a provost, however, was not as rosy as he had anticipated. The Baby Boom had ended by the mid-80s, and enrollment in American universities dropped precipitously. Cutting budgets and raising tuitions simply was not the cup of tea for a man who enjoyed inventing and educating. So in 1993, he joined the faculty at the Georgia Institute of Technology, in Atlanta. As the Joseph M. Pettit Professor of Microelectronics, he pursues one of his passionate interests: optimizing the arrangement of interconnect wires that string blocks of logic circuitry on microprocessors.

Meindl is the director of the Interconnect Focus Center, in Atlanta—an R&D effort he organized eight years ago with the help of 13 U.S. universities—which investigates the impediments of interconnects to microprocessor performance. His team has developed a mathematical method to predict the distribution of interconnect lengths within a chip. It enables designers to select the optimal widths for wires to produce maximum performance at the lowest cost possible.

Between running from classroom to boardroom to research lab, Meindl serves as Georgia Tech's site director for the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network—on the latest of his professional passions, next-generation microelectronics. At 73, he is running as hard as ever. Still, he told Perry, it is fundamentally in the service of his students, who have come to populate the leadership of the microelectronics industry.

We congratulate Prof. Meindl on a career in service to his country, his profession, and his many well-mentored students on earning an award, the 2006 IEEE Medal of Honor, so richly deserved.

It reads simply: "For pioneering contributions to microelectronics, including low power, biomedical, physical limits and on-chip interconnect networks."

Power from wind is a growing energy resource in these days of expensive petroleum. The question that lingers over the nature of wind is its intermittency. We are at the mercy of the weather when it comes to harnessing the force of rushing air. This does not play nice oftentimes with the power grid. In "Taking Wind Mainstream", author Karl Stahlkopf explains that new technology is available to help solve the problem.

No one questions winds enormous potential. In the United States, just 0.6 percent of the land would have to be developed with wind farms to provide 15 percent of the nation's electricity, according to Stahlkopf. Plus, wind is both price-competitive and price-stable. Still, turbines only turn when the wind is blowing. How do we store energy from wind's peaks of production to balance it against its lulls? Two words: power electronics. Using large semiconductor devices, we can enable wind farms to provide rapid response to fluctuations in grid frequency and voltage.

Stahlkopf is the senior vice president and chief technology officer at Hawaiian Electric Co. (HECO), which has been in the wind power business for years. He writes that power electronics can be integrated with new storage technologies to keep shifts in wind power production manageable. (And developing larger supergrids across continents will also help to distribute wind power across whole regions, balancing areas where the wind happens to be blowing with those that may be becalmed, while simultaneously spreading the burden of providing backup power.)

HECO has a proof-of-concept program it has developed to put together power electronics and storage technologies. They call their system the Electronic Shock Absorber (ESA), which has been operating since January on the Big Island. According to Stahlkopf, the ESA absorbs power briefly when it detects a sharp increase in the instantaneous output of the wind farm by a strong gust and injects power when the bluster dies down. The ESA system also can regulate reactive power (the product of current on a transmission line that is alternating out of phase with its voltage).

Stahlkopf argues that this is a problem that can be solved with intelligent R&D and upgrading of transmission technology. Most importantly, it has a payoff that will be enormously valuable to the challenges of producing clean, renewable energy at an affordable rate, as well as ensuring the reliability and security of the power vitally needed to run our economies.

It's a powerful argument. Give it a read. This may be one case where the answer really is blowing in the wind.

p>When the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) passed through the U.S. Congress in 1998, few knew the impact it would have on technological innovation. Some eight years later, a war of words has erupted over the controversial provisions of the landmark legislation. In one corner stands a large group of technologist who believe it is crippling innovation, and in the other corner the entertainment industry weighs in with the argument that the copyright laws have ushered in a new era of content distribution via innovative devices of all kinds. Who's right? That's up to you to decide.

In this month's article "Death by DMCA", authors Fred Von Lohmann and Wendy Seltzer write that copyright is being turned from a limited-term incentive designed to encourage creative artists to a broadly scoped transfer of wealth from the public to the private realm. They claim the DMCA has washed away entire categories of new devices and has become de facto technology regulation.

In an accompanying sidebar, "DMCA Brings Good Things to Life", author Fritz Attaway responds that the DMCA gave innovators and creators an effective means of protecting themselves against thieves who try to beat the system by unlawfully making copies and redistributing movies and other entertainment.

Lohmann is a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit group based in San Francisco devoted to protecting civil liberties and free expression in the digital world. Seltzer is a visiting professor of law at Brooklyn Law School, where she teaches Internet Law and Information Privacy and writes about free speech online.

Attaway is Executive Vice President and Special Policy Advisor to the Motion Picture Association of America.

Each side makes its best case in our pages this month.

The brief of Lohmann and Seltzer is that a law enacted to stifle digital piracy has done little to accomplish its goals but has done a great deal to interfere with the freedom to develop new electronics. Further, they say pending legislation—such as the "Analog Hole" Bill—will go even further in taking design decisions for product features out of the hands of engineers and into those of federal regulators.

Attaway asserts that rather than discouraging innovation, the DMCA has fostered an innovative environment that has given consumers greater access to movies, TV shows, and other copyrighted material than ever before, advancing new technologies as well as new business models. He urges the Congress to pass the Analog Hole Bill to help ensure that consumer choices are not undermined by the risk of theft, by laying out simple rules of the road for programming and equipment.

Read their articles, do the research, and make up your own mind. Then you might want to write to your representatives on Capitol Hill.

With a 60-gigahertz radio chip in your high-definition DVD player, you wouldn't need a cable to connect it to your high-def TV. As more and more devices are connecting to one another wirelessly, this would seem to be a no-brainer to make. One problem: price. Such chips—made with expensive gallium arsenide technology—are available. They just don't present economies of scale. Only recently have researchers been able to build chips in this rarified portion of the spectrum using inexpensive (and easy to package) silicon, according to Spectrum Senior Associate Editor Samuel K. Moore in this month's story "Cheap Chips for Next Wireless Frontier".

Moore fills us in on what's going on at two advanced labs working on the problem—and what the IEEE is doing about it.

At the University of California at Los Angeles, a group headed by IEEE Fellow Behzad Razavi is set to unveil transceiver components built in a widely available and inexpensive silicon process technology. At IBM's Watson Research Center, in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., a team led by Brian Gaucher recently completed efforts on making millimeter-wave radio chips using silicon-germanium technology.

Gaucher's group built separate transmitter and receiver chips with antennas set right in the plastic package, eliminating the need for interconnects and economizing on packaging. The chips communicate at 630-megabits per second over a distance of 10 meters. Razavi's team is making key parts of their transmitters and receivers using 130-nanometer and 90-nm silicon CMOS manufacturing technology—the same process used to make microprocessors.

Razavi told Moore that his team is trailing Gaucher's at present, but they hope to overtake IBM coming down the stretch. He points out that radio chips, and 5-GHz Wi-Fi radios in particular, started out in nonstandard transistor technologies, but engineers found a way to get ordinary silicon CMOS to do the same job for less money.

Whichever team wins the race to the easiest-to-manufacture, lowest-cost 60-GHz radio chip will reap substantial rewards. Many will mark the breakthrough in high-speed silicon as an important advance, including the IEEE. The year-old IEEE 802.15.3 Task Group 3c is already at work on specifications for such chips in a 2-Gb/s short-range, personal area network, according to Moore. And companies such as Fujitsu, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Philips, and Samsung have pledged to participate in writing the standard this fall. (The next meeting of the task group is scheduled for 16-21 July 2006 at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego, Calif..)

We'll all win with what these engineers come up with.