As I'm sure many of you know I'm a big Computer Animation nut. And when pixar dusts off the gloves and releases a movie, I really have no option but to be there opening night. This time it proved to be very worth skipping out a half hour early to catch one of the best movies of the year. Click below to read the review.

Quite a number of you out there are into Lego Mindstorms, as evidenced by the number of book reviews that have been sent my way. Below are a couple of reviews, one from Kurt DeMaagd and the other from Will Ware. Click below to get their take on the O'Reilly book The Unofficial Guide to Lego Mindstorms Robots.

AftanGustur writes "New Scientist has an interesting article about a new toy we will all want. It's a card that plugs in one of your PCI slots and allows you to scan the EMF spectrum and read your neighbours terminal. In about 5 years you might be able to get one for just under £1000. (Modern Tempest Hardware costs about £30000) " Excellent. Now I won't have to read over Rob's shoulder all the time.

Anonymous Coward writes "For those of you out there with Alpha hardware, it seems that Compaq is now offering its Tru64 UNIX to 'technology enthusiasts' for a mere $99." A heavily restricted (VERY non-GPL) license is attached to the deal, but it looks like it would be a nice combination toy and "teach yourself commercial UNIX at home" tool.

Most of my friends work either directly on the Internet or in some sort of Internet-related computer field. The Internet is the economic engine driving the curent "long boom" wave of American prosperity, and that wave is starting to spread all over the world. But now and then I wonder if this is such a good thing, and if we might all be better off if the Internet wasn't such an economic juggernaut. (Click Below for more idle speculation.)

Michael Lewis' "The New, New Thing" focuses on mythic Silicon Valley entrepreneur (and Netscape founder) Jim Clark to explain how Silicon Valley really works. It's a great read, but the author perhaps admires his ego-maniacal subject a bit too much.

gergoid writes "Check out this mp3 player hacked onto a small router. The router runs uClinux/ColdFire, a port of Micro-controller Linux on a ColdFire processor. Very neat toy!"

Finally home long enough to compile some quickies. option8 sent us the MacCrate which probably isn't up to code. Course neither is this one (thanks pkr) Speaking of cases, Deega sent us a site where you can get air brushed cases. rafa noted that Propaganda Volume 12 is out. UM_Maverick has started YALS called Linuxtopia.com pq wrote in with a picture that proves that a spell checker is probably a good idea. RoLlEr_CoAsTeR found something on Brunching Shuttlecocks which lets you combine Advertising and Perl: its actually extremely clever. Speaking of perl, ThePixel noted Perl Toys, which I think we mentioned a year or so ago, but with Christmas coming up, it probably is worth checking out again. Especially if you want magnetic poetry. Speaking of stuff to buy, JbirdUAH noted that Copyleft has Slashdot frisbees! Just in time for Winter! jhopson sent us a retelling of beowulf starring people you know. Lexie (who should really ask CowboyNeal out) sent us Eunuch which I'm not gonna explain, but its definitely wierd. motardo noted that Dalnet is for sale on eBay. Ant noted that Google seems to have an interesting result if you search for 'More evil than satan himself'. Speaking of evil, jsfetzik sent us Sinux the Linux for sinners. And how about Captain Zion's link to FsckU-FsckMe(tm) which is not for children, but is pretty amusing. Maybe you'll find auto.pron.org a little more wholesome. Finally, jetpack pointed us to Forum2000, which I'd never seen before, but am glad I did. It was mentioned in a comment awhile ago, and then we were assimilated. Super wierd.

broohaha wrote to us with the online version of Time's interview with Steve Jobs. It's the cover of this week's edition, and gives an interesting perspective into the labyrinth of his mind. The most interesting part is the Pixar stuff, IMHO. Just waiting for Toy Story II right now.

Teflon writes "Patriot Computer Corp has just launched two styled/themed PCs (for kids) -- The Hotwheels PC and the Barbie PC. These two PCs seem to be targeted at kids. I'd have liked to have had the Hotwheels PC as a 10-year-old." A Hot Wheels PC is surely better for a kid than hotwiring a kiddie car, but I find the sexulal differentiation a little depressing, even though I know that's how toys are sold - and that there are strong sexual differentiations in toy preferences. (sigh) I suppose this was inevitable.

Xyloc the Stone writes "The ZORB has got to be the coolest product ever made. It's an inflatable human sized hamster ball. Kinda like in the movie 'The Avengers'. I want one, only problem is, where I go to school, BIG FREAKIN HILL. uh, I'll have to try anyway" Hmmm. AFAIK there is no official toy for Slashdot staff members. Yet. Wonder how much these things cost and if we can talk Andover into buying us one. Hmmmm again.

A reader sent us the link-o-meter to the story about how Clue Computing beat toy giant Hasbro over a 3 year long legal dispute over clue.com (Hasbro owns the Clue board game). Some are hoping that this will mean small business have a precent to call in in the case of legal disputes over names trademarked by different folks-and in related news, Hasbro will be purchasing Wizards of the Coast, Magic:The Gathering card maker, and owner of TSR, Inc.

ChrisGoodwin sent us linkage to a pretty excellent one. Its a Wired Story about a new toy called MP3 Anywhere from X10. It allows you to play MP3s wirelessly on your home stereo by transmitting them over a 2.4ghz connection from your PC. The downside is that it looks like it uses a winamp plugin, so there isn't Linux support yet, but it definitely shows promise. The same device can be used to broadcast video the same way.

chris wrote in to tell us that Registration for the 3^rd Annual Atlanta Linux Showcase is open. First 100 registrations get an OS-Wars T-Shirt (I have one, they rock) brazilian brain sent us an English Translation of an Interview with Alfredo Kojima of WindowMaker fame. Scott wrote in to tell us that the July issue of Daemon News is online and Jim wrote in to tell us that the July issue of The FreeBSD 'zine is out too. geophile wrote in to tell us that Propoganda 10 is out. More excellent background images to consume your free RAM. Very yum. erios23 notified us of a new toy on jwz's webpage. BluBall sent us a Slashdot reference in Salon's Silicon Funnies. Spoofs Linux and Slashdot and even me a bit I guess (well, my name anyway). And finally chrisd (who may be biased on this one) wrote in to say that VA is one of the 10 best companies to work for (According to ZD) ranking amongst Replay, Nokia and Novell. I suspect that Nerf has something to do with it.

SEWilco writes "Gee, imagine that. Lightsabers can really burn people. Um.. oh, yeah, there's a toy recall now on some models. " I have a Qui-Gonn and a Darth Maul saber that I ain't given back.

"The Matrix" and "Phantom Menace" are a great study in contrasts when it comes to looking at movies, technology and geek culture. "Matrix" might be the easiest and cheapest test of geekdom yet. Geeks will almost surely love it. Others might scratch their heads in wonder. This is the closest popular culture has ever come to capturing the strange world of virtual reality.

Twenty years ago, people were delighted to discover "Star Wars" an original movie fueled by the power of mythology and some great effects. This isn't a review (I haven't seen the movie yet) but times have sure changed. "Phantom Menace" is being launched in a cloud of greedy, obnoxious, even shameless hype. Lucas, a self-styled Hollywood rebel, is proving himself to be yet another sell-out, his hypocritical posturing collapsing under the weight of countless toy store tie-ins and inter-galactic pizza and soda promotions.

Colin@sinisterfluid.com writes "The most-hyped line of movie-themed merchandise in history -- for the still unreleased ``Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace'' -- finally went on sale just after midnight Sunday on a studio-imposed schedule,and fans and retailers weren't wasting a minute. Toys R Us stores around the country decided to open their doors at 12:01 a.m. Monday for an all-night selling marathon of toys based on the movie. Wal-Mart and K-mart called in extra staff for their 24-hour stores to handle the post-midnight crowds. Many stores planned to limit the number of items a customer could buy to prevent immediate sell-outs. Fans had been waiting for months to get a glimpse of the vast array of goods -- from action figures to wigs to body lotion to snack food -- tied to the movie, which opens May 19. But LucasFilm Ltd. had signed strict licensing deals that prevented manufacturers from releasing virtually any information about their products ahead of time. As a result, people had been speculating for months, especially on the Internet, about what the toys and other merchandise would be. To see the famed toys for yourself, surf to Toys 'R' Us or E-Toys "

Things have been a bit crazy: server troubles, spent some quality time in the ER after the gf got in accident (she's fine), and unusually stressful 'biz stuff (note:in utopia everyone pays their bills ontime instead of leaving us with a nearly empty checking account, a massive looming bandwidth bill, and all these unpaid invoices? I seem to be balding at an accelerated rate :) As for the images on port 81 of flotsam, I'm sorry about that- those of you behind firewalls will be glad to know that the new server will be in soon and hopefully the dust can settle. Allright, some quickies already: Toddius Maximus wrote in to tell us that Performance Computing has started a bi-monthly Linux Section Anthony Fuentes sent us an Interview with John Carmack webslacker sent us a nice little article on Pixar if you're curious what Steve Jobs' other company is up to. Wouldn't be quickies without Star Wars: James McP sent us linkage to a wired story about a Star Wars fan site featuring toy based mini movies, webslacker noted the new 12" Star Wars figures, and Dave Lowe sent us Star Wars Parody Music More cool movie stuff: patowic noted that Bruce Cambell (of Army of Darkness/Evil Dead fame) has his own web page, which features a sound bite archive And some Slashdot media sightings: Duke of URL noted that the recent Katz/Littleton stories got a mention on Suck. RKemp noted that The Economist noticed too. nene noted that an article about Slashdot appeared in Der Standard (although, with a name like that, its no surprise that it ain't English :)

Since Littleton, the cost of being different has gone up. Thousands of powerful e-mail messages have chronicled an educational system that glorifies the traditional and the normal, and brutalizes and alienates people who are or who are perceived as different under various names -- geeks, freaks, nerds, Goths and oddballs. One of the powerful messages coming out of Colorado is that so many of these "different" kids say they find school boring, oppressive, and utterly hostile, feelings echoed by educational survivors, many of whom are now parents. The hysteria over Littleton has only made things worse. It's time geeks defined and lobbied for some new rights. From their own messages, here are some places to start.