A word from the editor
Authors: Lee Newton 
Published: August 2005

Welcome to the third issue of the ACM Computers in Entertainment magazine! In this exciting issue we present eight articles on a diversity of entertainment technology topics including Internet movie piracy, performing arts, animatronics, robotics, music, games, and interactive television.

To get started, the Interviews section features video interviews with our distinguished advisory board members Leonard Kleinrock and Richard Edlund. Leonard talks about nomadic computing, embedded technology, smart spaces, ubiquitous computing, ethics, the roles of the government, and the future of the Internet. Richard speaks of movie visual effects, digital cinema, digital cameras, and technical Oscars.

In the Movies and Performing Arts section, Sai Ho Kwok investigates the file-sharing patterns of pirated movies over BitTorrent peer-to-peer networks and offers suggestions on the design of an anti-piracy strategy. W. Scott Meador et al. describe an experimental dance performance featuring live-motion capture, real-time computer graphics, and multi-image projection produced by a cross-departmental team of faculty and students at Purdue University.

In the Animatronics and Robotics section, Ray Dominey et al. discuss their integrated technology for raising the level of interactivity and realistic animatronics in amusement park dark rides. John D. Decuir et al. detail their use of Sonys AIBO entertainment robots to improve young childrens reading comprehension in a classroom setting.

In the Music and Games section, Magy Seif El-Nasr et al. present a real-time lighting design to automatically adjust lighting in an interactive scene where the camera and character movements are unpredictable. Myriam Desainte-Catherine et al. examine their research on early-learning games using a joystick as a Dolabip instrument for electro-acoustic music education in schools.

In the Synopsis - Books and Software section, Eddie Schwalb introduces the technologies, standards, and business issues for interactive television (iTV). Doug Twilleager et al. provide an overview of the server, desktop, and mobile technologies that are available to build a networked game with Java technology.

I hope you will enjoy this issue of the online magazine. Before you dive into the exciting content, I would like to share with you the latest headline news about our distinguished editorial board advisors Alan Kay and Quincy Jones:

On April 19, 2004, Dr. Alan Kay was named the 2003 winner of the A.M. Turing Award for pioneering many of the ideas at the root of contemporary object-oriented programming languages, leading the team that developed Smalltalk, and for fundamental contributions to personal computing. The A.M. Turing Award is the most prestigious technical award in computer science and is accompanied by a prize of $100,000. Earlier this year, Alan and his colleagues won the engineerings highest award - the Charles Stark Draper Prize from the National Academy of Engineering - for their vision, conception, and development of the worlds first practical networked personal computers. Both the Draper Prize and Turing Award are considered the equivalent of Nobel Prizes for their fields - engineering and computer science, respectively. In June, Alan was named winner of the 2004 Kyoto Prize in advanced technology, his third major scientific award this year.

On May 16, 2004, nearly half a million people attended Mr. Quincy Jones all-star humanitarian concert "We Are the Future" at Romes Circus Maximus. In the tradition of "We Are the World,"the successful concert marked the launch of a worldwide initiative aspiring to create a sustainable chain of support for children in war-ravaged cities. The concert was broadcast on MTV, MTG/VIASAT, XM Radio, and Yahoo! webcasts. More information can be found at http://www.wearethefuture.com/concert_press.html

I wish to express my admiration and gratitude to the legendary Alan Kay and Quincy Jones for their immense contributions to society. We are most fortunate to be working with the most innovative and philanthropic individuals in the world. A growing list of our distinguished editorial board members can be found at http://www.acm.org/pubs/cie/acmcie_editorial_board.pdf

Now its time to dive into the magazine and send me your comments and feedback. Thank you very much for your continuing support.

Sincerely,

Newton Lee

Editor-in-Chief

ACM Computers in Entertainment

Los Angeles

June 2004