There's almost no political discussion offline about the fuzzy boundaries between human and other "lifeforms" -- clones, cyborgs, mutants, AI. That topic has mostly fallen to Hollywood, which has taken up the issue in a series of movies -- Blade Runner, Gattaca, The Matrix, X-Men. Some of these movies are masterpieces. Some, like "The Sixth Day" are less ambitious. They are just entertaining. (Note: As some of you have noticed, we're doing a regular Sunday tech culture column devoted to certain movies, TV programs, music and books with tech themes.)

Senor-D writes "Shigeyuki Sandou, a LEGO minifig creator from japan, has built multiple scenes from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" using LEGO minifigures. it can be found here in English or here in Japanese. He also did scenes from "The Matrix", they can be found here."

wonko writes: "IBM has begun shipping new monitors that are as much as 12 times sharper than current displays, and 4.5 times sharper than HDTV. These new 22-inch active matrix liquid crystal displays use aluminum-based technology and have over 9 million pixels. IBM will soon be licensing the technology to other display makers, so you could soon see these screens in laptops, PDAs, cellphones, etc. Pardon me while I wipe the drool off my keyboard ..." This is the same high-definition display you read about here earlier. They are not yet in CompUSA, to put it lightly -- first examples are going to Lawrence Livermore -- but the trickle-down effect in a couple of years is promising.

Until this week, I've been unconvinced by those who say the U.S. election process needs to be conducted with computers instead of paper, pencil, and punchcards. I've changed my mind. It's time to take a good hard look at our ancient voting system, and bring it up to date. When today's 14-year-olds go to vote in the 2004 elections, will they still take the pencil from the volunteer, slide the punchcard into the molded plastic, and turn the weird knobs? Or will they use the technology they've grown up with?

Okay, here (as a refreshing break from all the political stuff) is what amounts to one of the most lucid primers on software development management I've ever seen, contained in NEdit leader Mark Edel's answers to your questions. If you ever expect to lead an Open Source project (or a closed source one, for that matter), you need to read this from start to finish, possibly even print out a copy and read it over and over. Great stuff!

mach10 writes: "An article here shows that a scientist has been able to create fibers that collect ambient light, strong enough to power a dotted matrix for display. It can reach 30 times ambient light, and they are soon hoping to expand the area to replace signs on roads. Hrm ... But my sundial watch still doesn't work in the dark =\" Add this to some ultra-efficient light source (like white LEDs?), a low-power processor, human power and some solar cells, and most of my requirements for portable computing happiness would be met.

Over the next few years, says a new book, the sales of software and video game consoles could top $17 billion. Video games already generate more revenue than films. Video games are becoming one of the world's most popular entertainment forms, affecting TV, education, Hollywood, even the Pentagon and the way we view and conduct high-tech, game-like, remote-control military conflicts.

It seems that the latest version of the most popular module for Apache, PHP, has been released as PHP 4.0.3. There are some interesting changes, including some security fixes and extensions in shared memory handling. Of special note are the changes in htmlspecialchars/htmlentities and the ENT_COMPAT mode which allows you to reenable the pre-4.0.2 quote translation matrix. Get yours now!

Lets start this off with some eyecandy from Mdog. Hi res pics of coronal loops meet Rob's First Rule of Art. Wow. Not enough eye candy? tradica noted that Pixar's new movie 'Monsters Inc.' now has trailers available even the the movie won't be out for a year. Course since Jobs is @ pixar, no surprise that I can't watch the clip. Instead of food for your retinas, Nerf97A4 sent in recipes that will never be used on Iron Chef since they all involve cooking with twinkies in some form or another. Deep fried Twinkies? Makes me shudder... maybe instead you should look at jedigeek fouund an online store called CyberCandy which allows you to buy candy from around the world. funferal noticed that a OECD have publshed their Privacy Statement Generator. Ant noted one wizard that that probably doesn't exist in Word. alecto sent us a fun link where you can read 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall which has code snippets to generate the song in languages from APL to zsh. PhadeRunner sent us Mr. T vs. The Matrix. and FlameSnyper sent The Matrix and Ghost in The Shell. One is slightly more serious then the other. An anonymous reader documented filling a cubicle with packing peanuts in case your boss is out of time and you need some help. Speaking of bosses, Need a weapon? WD_40 aims you at a site where you can learn how to create your own spud gun. Course you could do it the old fashioned way: pimp showed us a site dedicated to electrocuting common household stuff. Like, for example, a furby. While on the subject of electricity, loose_change sent in several links about Power meters and how they aren't exactly the best in user interface. A competition followed to try to make a better on. The winner is definitely less hostile ;) CresentCityRon sent in something you don't want to electrocute: apparently MIT students are working on Geek Porn which is pretty much what is sounds like. School officials aren't so happy about it.

The novelty of electronic books can wear out quickly -- now that the potential for distributing books as bits is obvious to everyone right up to famous writers and their publishers, it's not enough that a book be electronic. There has to be a good story. Reader 11131719 contributed this review of what sounds like a killer book that satisfies on both counts, and perhaps one well suited to spark some genuine e-book action.

ManicDeity writes "'Forget the Matrix. It's time for the Grid-' From the good people at CERN who brought us the WWW comes a new network designed for scientific use named GriPhyN (Grid Physics Network). Loosely described 'as a Napster for scientist' it is being developed to handle the massive amounts of information created from the highest energy experiment to date. The article can be found at Space.com. " It was my understanding that this was part of what I2 was supposed to do - but this looks cool as well.

Ex Machina writes: "After nearly 4 years on the net, the great artificial intelligence project Forum 2000 has closed. For the uninitiated, Forum 2000's artificial intelligence constructs -- the SOMADS (who ranged from Tux the Penguin to Einstein) -- answered questions from 'drones' on the Internet. It is being reported on at: Fake Forum, True Meaning of Life, and Conversatron."

Lady and Gentlemen, sit back and brace yourself for the assault of the quickies: AlexPixel sent us the curiously named Bilbo.com which actually sells feet keyboards for key modifiers and mouse clicks. cadfael sent us a sordid tale of a coder scorned. Some billboards: first from Ant we have a windows error and from mazur we have a bit of unix (must be california ;) mmca noted that scientists have discovered why candy wrappers are loudest in movie theaters. IcesTorm-I noted a supposed windows bug that will make ya wonder. DuncMonk sent us a cool comic strip called Sinfest that you might wish to add to your morning coffee. How about the x86 Still for those of you who believe that controlling your stereo, lights, garage door, and neighbors dog just isn't enough for your PC. Not out there enough for ya? How about RSA implemented entirely in javascript? (Doesn't work for me ... I leave that crap turned off ;) And finally to leave everyone on the proper melodic note, gribbly Symphony #2 for Dot Matrix Printers. Fortunately it's available in MP3 just in case you don't have a dot-matrix printer still handy...

Stephen King is conducting a fiendish experiment. He - not his publisher - is putting the first installment of a novel online today, and then waiting to see how many people will pay a dollar for the download. The second part goes online next month, and then when it comes time to upload the third part, King will only release it if enough people have paid for the first two. This is the first high-profile test of a promising artistic compensation algorithm in the post-copyright world -- and when it fails, don't give up on it.

Chicken can run writes: "Kaydara announced Thursday in a press release the port of FilmBox to Red Hat Linux V6.2. FilmBox is a real-time character animation and motion capture system and was the software behind the groovy slow-motion camera fx in The Matrix. What is interesting is that it is the first such system to be available on Red Hat Linux, opening further the door to major 3D production oportunities on the OS."

jesse.k asks: "I'm curious about the copyright ownership of typefaces, specifically homemade copies of commercial faces. I've seen a great deal of fonts made to look like popular movie logos (Bladerunner, Fight Club, Star Wars, The Matrix), and I was wondering what is the legality of this? If one creates a similar looking font from scratch, does this fall under fair use? If one decides to distribute the font, what type of legal issues would it face, even if it is distributed in non-profit manner? I ask this, because even respectable free font archives on the Internet always seem to have at least a couple derivative fonts."

ghjm writes: "I'm typing this from a machine in the computer lab at the Inprise/Borland conference in San Diego, where many new details about Interbase and Kylix have been revealed."

Stoke sent us linkage to iFilm's parody of The Matrix called Computer Boy . I laughed quite hard, although it's about 45 minutes long. Available in Real (note to story submittors: if video clips aren't viewable under Linux, I can't view them to consider them for posting, so don't bother submitting those quicktime clips ;). Anyway, this one is pretty well done. A good edit would do it well: take some of the slower bits out, maybe trim 10 to 15 minutes (especially the beginning: it starts off kinda slow), but there are several really funny sequences, especially towards the end.

mobiux wrote in about the resurrection of Packard Bell PC's. michael.creasy told us about Darth Vader's MBE. An anonymous coward wrote in to tell us about the GameSpy interview of Martin Feldhausen, inventor of the 'extra life.' Thanks for helping me get through all those games! mcryptic shared the link to an online gallery of mousepad art. payneinthe told us that Randal Schwartz uploaded pictures from the Perl Whirl. Another anonymous coward told us about someone's visual response to the loss of Paul Steed at id. HerrNewton noted the symphony written primarily for dot matrix printers, and rasterbator told us about a web site for the distribution of free GNU and Open Source related artwork. Ant sent in the link to Star Wars Origins, and illumina mentioned RSA en/decryption in JavaScript. Have a good weekend, everyone!

nico_DNS writes: ""The Symphony for dot matrix printers is a work which transforms obsolete office technology into an instrument for musical performance. The Symphony focuses the listener's attention on a nearly forgotten technology: the dot-matrix printer. Specifically, it employs the noises the printers make as the sole sound source for a musical composition. Leaving the constituent elements untouched, the process imposes a new order upon them, reorganizing the sounds along a musical structure. ""