Universal Access to computing and the Net is edging closer to reality. One company after another is now offering computing equipment and Net access to new employees. enRamp announced last week that it's offering a program to provide complete technology benefits to associates and their families. This is definitely a great moral (and business) idea whose time is coming. (Read More).

Polo writes: "I always though it would be cool to create something like this. Here is a look at the 'Audiotron,' a standalone device you hook to your stereo system and that networks with your PC to play MP3 files. This version uses that strange HPNA network standard (sends network data over copper phone wiring without interfering with the phone calls). Future versions will support ethernet and USB. Now if someone got this working with Linux, you could serve your MP3 library to multiple rooms in the house as separate streams. Obsolesence nears for my 200-disk CD changers ... " Hmm. What happens if you already have HPNA networking? That aside, this looks like a good toy for the MPAA as well.

Professor Pollack put a lot of time and thought into answering your questions, and it shows. What follows is a "deeper than we expected" series of comments about Artificial Intelligence and intellectual property distribution from one of the acknowledged leaders in both fields.

treble writes, "Of course the military has had these playthings for ages, but The New York Times is running an AP story about a Japanese 'Compact Copter' for general consumption. It's become my newest wish-I-could-afford-it toy. The coolest things of note: No license required in the U.S., and top speed of 60 mph. Imagine a swarm of these things rising in the air for rush hour commute." All I can say is that the traffic jams would be ... interesting.

Brian Ristuccia writes, "It looks like the ACLU has decided to help Waldo L. Jaquith, Lindsay Haisley and Bennett Haselton, three folks who were running mirror sites of the recently released Cyber Patrol paper and decoding software, respond to the subpoena and confusing e-service messages that have been sent to them via e-mail by Cyber Patrol's law firm."

A few weeks ago we ran Keep It Legal to Embarrass Big Companies , detailing Peacefire's decryption of X-Stop's blacklist. Then just a few days ago, we noted that CyberPatrol's encrypted list had also been cracked. Well, Mattel, the maker of CyberPatrol and a Big Company, decided it didn't like to be embarrassed -- so it's filing suit against the coders in Canada and Sweden. In addition to demanding the removal of the decryption utility, Mattel is also seeking the logfiles of the Swedish ISP that hosts the decryption utility, to identify everyone who has downloaded it to date. Update: 03/16 6:50 PM EDT by J : Today's news was filled with Mattel's PR lies about their suit. Analysis follows.

Brian De Palma can direct fun movies, even good movies, but never go into one of his movies expecting too much. Written by the brothers who gave us Predator and Wild Wild West, his awful latest Mission to Mars opened this weekend. YRO authors Michael and Jamie were so appalled by this piece of work that they insisted on panning it together, and Jon Katz added his own, slightly hopeful voice to the flaying. Read more for serious spoilers ...

Moo-ha-ha. CmdrTaco is on vacation (and sending his e-mail to /dev/null, so please don't even try), so I'm doing Quickies this week. On to the good stuff. DigitalDaedalus wrote in to tell us about the SGI 404 pages. Cute. For those with that not-so-fresh feeling, dodobh wrote in to tell us about the Slashdot Purity Test. No, I won't tell you my score. In the 'ear candy' bin, casret told us that they posted the results of the XMMS plugin contest. Time for some stuff from the 'exploding stuff' bin. Aardappel wrote in about Fisheye Quake, and Kintanon caught my eye with Fun With Grapes. Charles Helfenstein told us about the anti-cubicle. Very cool. Fanmail used the force and wrote in about George Lucas In Love. With all the X-Men hype going on, Link wrote in about Mutant Watch. Smurfy cared to share AIEEE, the Acronym Interaction, Expansion and Extrapolation Engine. fwfr told us about the Sim-William Shatner. You'll need Flash. Last but certainly not least, The Welcome Rain wrote in to tell us about your friend and mine, Robot Frank.

A sequel to the original, Fantasia 2000, is a series of animated shorts based on eight works of classical music, including one segment from the original Fantasia: The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Review by Joshua Marinacci.

Matthew Mastracci has sent in the first in a series of features comparing the various productivity type apps under Linux. This week is an application I haven't used since college: Word Processors. Specifically he looks KOffice's KWord and Applixware's ApplixWords. Other word processors (including StarOffice Writer, Corel's WordPerfect 8, AbiWord and KLyX will follow).

If you click the read-more link below you will be treated to an excerpt from our own Jon Katz's new book Geeks. Regular readers know my aversion to paper books, but I've read this one, and it's worth your while. Katz explores Geek culture by following a couple of geek kids from Idaho to Chicago. It's a true story, and Jesse and Eric are Slashdot regulars. We don't feel right writing a review of the book since we'd be sadly biased, so read this chapter, and make up your own minds about it... but I hope you enjoy it. This is a story that I think many of us will understand.

Bookwyrm writes "This was just an interesting technology toy/tidbit I ran across. Metacreations and Minolta have teamed together to develop what appears to be a modified digital camera that allows you to take '3D' images. The camera stores/digitizes the image data in such a way that Metacreations' software can (re)construct a 3D model of objects in the picture along with their textures. While mildly neat in itself, it would be interesting to consider how far you could develop this technology. Could you do real-time 3D capture using a video camera with these techniques (and sufficient computer power)?"

artiste writes "The NY Times tech section is reporting that eToys is dropping the suit against the artists group, etoy." (Free reg. required to read). eToys "dropped" the suit earlier, but not all the way. This time it looks like they've really and truly surrendered. They're even paying etoy's legal bills. Click Below to read etoy's e-mailed press release.

I personally consider Steve Wozniak the biggest "star" we've ever interviewed on Slashdot. I was s-o-o happy when he agreed to do this interview that you wouldn't believe it. Many excellent questions for him were submitted Monday. Click below to read answers to the 11 questions we felt best represented the hundreds y'all sent in.

On November 10th 1999, Ramsey Electronics of Victor, New York, was raided by the United States Customs Service for allegedly manufacturing and distributing 'Electronic Surreptitious Intercept Devices' as defined by Title 18 USC, Section 2512. We spoke to both Ramsey Electronics President John Ramsey and Joel Violanti, the federal prosecutor on the case, to find out exactly what happened, and why. (Click below for more.)

Yesterday, while the management of eToys was faxing, calling, and emailing the media to get its story out, its legal team had sent a very different message. You probably saw our pointer to the Wired story which claimed the toy company had "given up." No such luck. The story behind the scenes was a little different. Click for more.

Last week, The Bazaar, an Open Source meeting and exhibition, was held for the first time in New York City. It was not a well-attended event, with fewer than 3000 registered visitors, and the view from the show's main floor was downright dismal because most of the people there spent most of their time in tutorial sessions, not cruising the (sparse) display booths. But it was still an event many found valuable. Here are some "show tales" from Slashdot readers who were there. (click below)

Robin William's "Bicentennial Man" is a rare Hollywood offering, a mainstream sci-fi romance. Syrupy and a bit circular, it's true to the Isaac Asimov story that inspired it, and is actually thoughtful about some of the issues humans may have to confront if -- as so many futurists predict -- AI machines evolve into some sort of species in the 21st Century. Like "Toy Story 2," this movie has an absurd plot, but is sometimes graphically dazzling, showing how computer animation is becoming an art form of it's own.

Quite a number of people recently, includingWrexSoul wrote to say "Are you tired of waiting for the judge's findings-of-law in the Microsoft case? There's a Mad Libs-like toy on Brunching Shuttlecocks where you can have some automatically generated for you by a pack of disgruntled Keebler Elves. " Boy, I sure am *verb* about *subject*

TheDarkpoint sent us a new device sure to be on all neat-nik geek Christmas lists. It's an automatic vacuum cleaner. Cool little device and the polite gift for those who just aren't quite up to clean-snuff.