Web Site Helps Lesbian Parents Have Children
HATTORI: We all know people will try to sell almost anything over the Internet. Now, women wanting to have a child without a father involved can turn to the Web. Gavin Morris explains.</s>GAVIN MORRIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Conception without the complications. A simple surf, select and click, and sperm of your choice is sent to your door. It's parenting without paternity, an attractive proposition for some lesbian couples keen on a family, but frustrated by the rules of society and the regulations of fertility clinics.</s>JOE LEECH, LESBIAN PARENT: We have been discriminated against by everybody. We have contacted clinics. I have been in touch with people who have actually accessed clinics, and the amount they have to pay every month has been phenomenal. It has been the price of a small mortgage.</s>MORRIS: Then, Joe Leech and her partner Julie Williams found this Web site launched last month. They've already raised two children, but they wanted more. Now, they can ask the father's race, eye color, even height and weight, but never his identity. At ManNotIncluded.com, the man hardly matters. Take a look at the company's logo.</s>JOHN GONZALEZ, MANNOTINCLUDED.COM: We wanted something that would, in a way, encapsulate what we do and the public that we work for, and that was just great. You know, it was almost like when you get a toy at Christmas, and it says batteries not included, but you still get the toy.</s>MORRIS: But children and families are no playthings, say ethics groups.</s>JOSEPHINE QUINTAVALLE, COMMENT ON REPRODUCTIVE ETHICS: I find it particularly objectionable and difficult to understand how men could set up a Web site where they show a picture of a male and then put a cross through him, so they themselves are writing the male out of reproduction just to make a quick buck.</s>MORRIS: But Joe and Julie are convinced the site will catch on. After all, in a lesbian family, who needs a male when you have e-mail?</s>HATTORI: Well, on to more conventional uses for cyber space -- game-playing. This week, Sony unveiled an adapter for hooking the Playstation 2 to the Internet. Daniel Sieberg gets us plugged in.</s>DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN CORRESPONDENT (on camera): It's good news for anyone trying to find someone to play video games with. Sony is the first of the current console manufactures to allow its Playstation 2 users to play games online. Sega did it with its Dreamcast machine a couple of years ago, and now Sony is leading the charge of the current console manufacturers onto the Internet. We have the adapter right here. It goes for $40, and is available as of this week. It offers users a chance to have a dial-up or a broadband connection. There are a couple of ports on the back here where you'd connect your cords. And then once you've got the adapter, you plug it into the back of your Playstation 2. You will need an existing Internet service provider, or ISP, or broadband service in order to use it. Some software does come with it, though, to help you get started. Not all of Sony's games will be available to play with the adapter. However, Sony does say more than a dozen titles will be available by the end of the year to play online. So what about the competition? Well, they are closely on Sony's heels. As for Nintendo with its Game Cube, they are having a slightly different approach. They've made plans for Japan only at this point. They haven't announced anything immediately for the U.S. market. They will, however, have separate adapters, one for dial-up, one for broadband, and as we see, September 12 in Japan. As for Microsoft with its Xbox service, it's different entirely. People who have an Xbox don't need to get an adapter; it's already included in the machine. However, they will have to pay the $50 per year fee to get this broadband-only access as of November 15. It's called Xbox Live. So as these game console manufacturers solidify their online plans, the question remaining at this point is will gamers buy into the idea?</s>HATTORI: You might not think of Indiana as a tech Mecca, but a man who lives outside Indianapolis has a created home that might be the next best thing to Bill Gates' estate. Jeff Flock took a tour.</s>SCOTT JONES: I use a special card, and I just hold it up to the stone, and I just heard that click.</s>JEFF FLOCK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Scott Jones unlocks the door to a world where fireplaces ignite, drapes close, televisions appear all as if by magic, where the ceilings play music, you do e- mail while working out, and everything is safe and secure. (on camera): I got to believe there's wires running where we can't see.</s>JONES: There are miles and miles of wires.</s>FLOCK (voice-over): Scott Jones' home, all 27,000 square feet of it outside Indianapolis, is both showcase and laboratory for the technologies he develops. He's his own lab rat. (on camera): Everything is right here.</s>JONES: Everything is right here.</s>FLOCK (voice-over): He shows his touch-screen panel throughout the house like this one that run light, security, heat and cooling, video and audio libraries.</s>JONES: I can rip. I can burn. I can do all of those things.</s>FLOCK: His speakers are embedded in the walls and the ceilings.</s>FLOCK (on camera): I'm trying to hear where these are coming from. (voice-over): Behind the plaster.</s>JONES: I wanted great sound quality throughout the house, but I did not want to have ugly speakers.</s>FLOCK: His alarm clock neither beeps nor buzzes.</s>JONES: So music comes on and the drapes open.</s>FLOCK: And the lights go on and the shower starts running.</s>JONES: Sorry, but you won't be able to get in through there.</s>FLOCK: A fingerprint reader gives only him access to the wine cellar.</s>JONES: I hope your cameras can pick that up, but the front gate is now opening.</s>FLOCK: In most rooms, you can see all the security cameras as well as open any gate or door on the property. Motion sensors flash red as we move, or enter.</s>JONES: Is somebody were to open that door right there, we will see the door open right there. Yellow is an open door.</s>FLOCK (on camera): Standing outside the front door, I wouldn't even know I was being watched, unless of course I knew where the little pinhole video camera was, but, in fact, I am potentially being watched in every room in the house, as well as on the Internet, where, if Scott is traveling, and so chooses, he can call it up, open the door up and let me in from half a world away. (voice-over): Then again, who needs to open their door from Paris? Or any of this?</s>JONES: Way back, a few decades ago, nobody wanted their phone answered by a machine. (voice-over): Scott Jones should know. He got rich developing voice mail. The money financed Escient Technologies, a company that develops these systems to run houses like these one with the 20-seat movie theater, wine cellar, aquarium, bars, antiques.</s>JONES: And the slide.</s>FLOCK (on camera): And the slide I've heard about, which I hear is not just for kids. (voice-over): Indeed, it is mostly for grown-ups whose work is play. Like Scott Jones. (on camera): What drives you with all of this?</s>JONES: I like to build things and I like to change the world.</s>FLOCK (voice-over): One house at a time.</s>HATTORI: I think what we have here is a case of gadget overload. Well, time for us to push some buttons and make way for a commercial break and the latest headlines from the CNN newsroom, but don't go away. We'll be back in a few minutes.</s>ANNOUNCER: Still ahead on NEXT@CNN, books you can't call a page turner, even if you can't put them down. Colorful protests and contentious topics at the Earth Summit in Johannesburg. And the things you can learn about people from the rings on their cell phone. That, and much more, coming up.