ElGrandeBurrito asks: "I just picked up an iPAQ to replace my trusty Palm, but there's a catch I didn't realize: This little toy is more integrated into the MS line of products that XP is! My company uses the Netscape suite of products for mail, calendaring and LDAP, so I need a way to synch my iPAQ's 'Contacts' database to a Netscape PAB.NA2 file, an LDIF file, or even better, to our LDAP server through field selection. I've found solutions for every application except 'Contacts'. Help!"

It's been impossible to avoid the hype on this film. Even if you avoid TV, the whole web has been bursting with bits, ranging from eBay to CNN.com. The AOL Time Warner conglomerate demands that you watch this movie. And you know what? So do I. Just watch out for all the strange people at the theater wearing cloaks and pointy hats. I thought Star Wars had freaky fans.

loteck writes: "Tom's previewed this latest toy that allows health savy gamers to peddle their way through flight simulators, racers and even first person shooters. Someone is providing a plethora of compatible games by which to Quake or Carmageddon yourself to that six-pack that you've always wanted." I wonder if this would burn more calories than the floor-pad from the old Nintendo system.

A few weeks ago, you asked Kent M. Pitman about Lisp, Scheme, standards, and other things -- He's answered your questions below, at length. At such length, in fact, that only the first eleven of his answers are shown below -- expect more shortly! Thanks, Kent.

Yes ladies and gentleman Pixar is back with its latest full length computer animated film, Monsters, Inc. And I braved crappiest theater in all of holland to see it opening night. My review follows, and although I've tried hard not to give any spoilers, I'll give away a few things that hopefully won't hurt anything for you. But the short review is that I liked it, but if you've read enough of my reviews, you know that I love eye candy kids movies, so be warned.

dbowden writes: "Recently, Slashdot ran an article about a humanoid robot which runs Linux. It weighs 121 lbs, uses two 750 MHz Pentium III processors, and runs RT-Linux. It also requires a technician to push around a huge power supply that's attached to the robot by an umbilical cord. I found another robot, Baps, which only weighs 6.6 lbs (3 Kg), runs on a single 133 MHz Pentium processor with 32 MB of RAM and 48 MB of flash memory, and is based on a child's toy that was designed in 1888. It also runs on Linux, but requires very little power to move (it can be run on CO2 cartridges), so it doesn't require an umbilical cord, or bulky power supply." (He's also got some tips on building your own below.)

An Anonymous Coward writes: "Here is a neat new toy. It is an MP3/CD portable that not only plays music files, it burns them. Called the RipGO, it was just released by Imation and runs about $400. The article includes a photo of the player."

batro writes: "The main page says it all: 'Everything slower than 10 Mbps is just a toy!' This is a nice writeup (with pictures!) of how a 100 Mbps community fiber network in northern Sweden came into being." And if over a grand in connection fees doesn't suit your locale (this took nearly complete neighborhood participation), Nurotek writes: "Check out Proxim's latest press release. They claim that they can push 100Mpbs via the 5Ghz RF band. Wonder if this will work ..."

Anonymous Coward writes: "Yup, much to my disbelief, it looks like Planetweb are still determined to try and profit off of the dc with their new DC browser version 3.0. According to the site, 'Users will now be able to access the multimedia features on Web sites using Java and play games written in that language..." I'v given up all hope on the DC, but maby a few of you out there...." Since these are officially EOL (even if not completely out of stores), you might be able to pick up your next web-browsing toy at a yard sale.

hendridm asks: "Universities seem to push being well-rounded, or knowing a little bit about everything but nothing about anything in particular. They attempt to teach courses that could help you succeed in your lifelong career, whatever it might be. It seems to me that it would be better to teach skills that would help us in the first 10 years of employment. As a senior Information Systems major in a state university in the Midwest, I can think of countless examples that support this idea." Of course, a well-rounded education can be a good one, it just depends on your definition of 'rounded'. It doesn't exactly do students a favor by exposing them to the forrest until they have a good grasp of the concept of the "tree", which is hedridm's main point. Do any of you know of curriculums that are good examples of a true well-rounded education?

FortKnox writes: "Through the blessed portal memepool, I stumbled across the new arcitecture toy, Atollo. These new building toys can build any type of shape with only two pieces. The two pieces can be connected in many different ways allowing both rigid and flexible connections. " MMmm. Toys. Anyone else remember Construx? I loved those things too.

FortKnox writes: "Cool cool stuff, here. This Y! article talks of a substance that can morph between liquid and solid by the presence of a magnetic field. Now this is something you can make into a cool toy!"

Slide100 writes "Just found the coolest desktop toy while browsing my latest R/C Aircraft magazine ( It's a 4" long tracked R/C vehicle with plenty of torque and a 200 foot range. Four frquencies are available (racing, anyone?). You can also get a single board B/W UHF transmitter for remote telepresence! Check the website for more information"

Last week you asked Sam Lantinga , developer of the Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) about SDL and other issues related to gaming. He's responded with answers about the SL port to Sony Playstation, game audio, DirectX, his new job at Blizzard, and more. He even drops some hints about some interesting gaming developments to watch out for.

A reader writes "Saintsong, our favorite manufacturer of tiny PC's (see here and here) is at it again. They've released the TX2 version of the Cappuccino PC everyone drooled over not to long ago. It's designed by Gingko corp., the same folks who designed the iMac. The new unit includes 2 Firewire ports and an additional 2 USB ports over it's predecessor, the Cappuccino GX1. Unfortunately it appears that Saintsong is only distributing it in kit form, so you'll have to supply your own socket 370 processor, RAM, hdd, etc. No prices are listed, but it's still a slick looking toy."

The popular media's coverage of the Dmitri Sklyarov case is a scandal. 26-year-old programmer and encryption gadfly Sklyarov has been languishing in jail for almost two weeks now, and the popular media has paid almost no attention to his truly outrageous arrest. It's a case that has the ugliest implications not only for the press (online and off) but for open discussion of technology, and especially for the First Amendment, now clearly being undermined in the name of copyright protection by the DMCA. This is the opposite of what copyright law was meant to do.

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is really a technological fairy tale, the story of some software that wanted to be real actors in a real movie. Not so fast. It would take a platoon of Blue Fairies to take code this far. I've never played the game, but it has to be way more fun than this movie. How sad that the first studio film ever with human leads played by non-actors is so lifeless and plastic. The voices are out-of-sync like those Japanese sci-fi movies. At least the film could have had the decency -- give Tomb Raider some credit here -- to hire a real actor and have a little fun with itself. Dr. Lara Croft understood what she was created for -- to kick a lot of butt. Dr. Aki Ross, played here by some code with too much lip balm, is more like Enya, a new age scientist whose weapons are dreams and wiggly spirits rather than guns and bombs. Bring noseplugs to this stinker. And don't worry about the ending being given away here. I couldn't tell you what it was if I wanted to.

Michael Cook writes: "Ars Technica has just posted a follow up to the review of the original Espresso PC (Slashdotted here(1), and here(2)), a review of the new and much-improved Cappuccino PC! It finally has ethernet and now it's truly possible to have a server farm in a bread box!" This is a slightly off-the-wall review of this promising machine, considering (among other things) that the review unit was stolen, but it sure sounds like a worthy non-toy toy.

Give director Simon West credit for navigating some tricky ground. Some movies have been greatly influenced by video games -- The Mummy's Return -- and still others were literal, and stinky spin-offs (Mortal Kombat and Super Mario Brothers for instance) but Tomb Raider is one of the most expensive, ambitious and closely watched of this new hybrid-cinematic format -- the game that not only inspires a movie but becomes one. Games have come a long way. The movie is perhaps too faithful to the game that inspired it, raising the question of whether games and films can really mix. And Angelina Jolie is stellar bungee-jumping in those silk pj's.

(H)elix1 writes: "I'm sure /. is about to be hit with this, but CNET just released a story about a web bug detector plug-in for IE called Bugnosis by the Privacy Foundation. An interesting toy, but the thing that grabbed my attention was the Web Bug Gallery. It would seem our beloved slashdot has them as well. Course, so did CNET, but that is a different story...." I think improved cookie-handling is much more useful in preventing tracking, but this is interesting because it provides visible feedback about tracking efforts.