The average American child plays videogames forty-nine minutes a day. Some play for much longer and over many years. There are few studies of the effects of gaming, but some traits are increasingly obvious: gamers are often independent, strategic-thinkers and problem solvers. Their interactive instincts often collide unhappily with the traditions and institutions of a static, passive world. Gamers are the new artists, visionaries, and story-tellers of our time, sparked by astonishingly inventive new technologies like the PS 2. Ready or not, they will become increasingly influential. Third in a series.

Reality Master 101 writes: "Saw this on Voodoo Extreme: id Software's Todd Hollenshead made some very interesting posts on Quake 3 World about Quake 3 on Linux. Calling the sales "disappointing" and saying the support was a "nightmare" due to the "multiple versions and everchanging kernels", he said there will not be a retail version of Q3 Team Arena. One thing I found especially interesting was that he said "retailers don't want it". Not good news for the Linux shrink-wrap software movement."

Robert writes: "VoodooExtreme posted a hands-on preview of the mysterious 3dfx Voodoo5 6000 video card from the I/ITSEC (http://iitsec.org) Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference which comes equipped with the first-ever published benchmarks of Quake III. Formerly the Voodoo5 6000 was planned to be a retail product, but its high price tag and need for an external power supply led them to sell the rights to it to Quantum 3D, where it will be used in Visual Simulation industry..." I always thought a video card was a selling your video short ;)

The pace of cultural change in the western world has accelerated so rapidly that it's reached the breaking point, according to the late anthropologist Margaret Mead. And that was before the Net, and the ascent of role playing and electronic gaming. No longer a subculture, gaming is becoming our ascendant culture, growing more than any other cultural form, sparking a moral panic and affecting the way people think, play, learn, communicate and work. First in a series.

Here are some more of the Slashdot comments (and sobering e-mails) that Jon Katz inspired when he started writing about the frustrations of high-school life in Voices From The Hellmouth and subsequent columns.

Jack writes "Has anyone else noticed that the best search engine out there, Google, now generates links for some of its search results which point back to Google before redirecting you to the site's URL? I can't help thinking they'll be using this information to sell targeted search results and measure how effective it is. I guess they have to make a buck, but this could be the start of a very slippery slope. It's also interesting to see which search queries generate tracking results. For example, "Quake" generates them for every link." The monetization of Google proceeds...

Submissions about the P4 flow in like the tides, so here's a batch of them. Rooster sent us the Hot Hardware take. TBM sent us Ace's extensive comparison of the P4 and K7. Piete submitted a fairly negative review of the chip (between the RDRAM thing, the motherboard thing, and the fact that the chip just isn't much faster for normal use, that's not surprising). Slashdot Minion sent in Hard OCP and Sharky Extreme's respective reviews (including 200fps Quake).

Here is the next in our Hellmouth Revisited series; below is Jon Katz' column "The Cost of Being Different," a look into what it means to grow up and face high school for a painfully large number of kids. What would make things better? Will being different always cause so much suffering?

Not every nerd career takes place entirely behind a flickering CRT. Ellen Knowlton Wilson takes a peek here at a book which exposes one of the hotter fields for those with a nose for sulfur, feet like leather, and a penchant for scientific danger: studying volcanos.

Jon's Hellmouth series stands as one of the most important things that have ever appeared on Slashdot. When the dust settled following its original posting, we started talking about ways to get its message to those outside of the Slashdot community. Read on to see what we decided, what happened, and finally the first chapter of the Hellmouth book.

An unnamed correspondent writes: "The Tech Report has posted a review of AMD's 760 chipset. This is the one that includes a 133 MHz DDR bus, with support for 133 MHz DDR (a.k.a. PC2100) SDRAM. Benchmarks were done using a 1.2 GHz Athlon, and include everything from memory bandwidth tests to a variety of Quake III scores; they even attempted Linux tests, but Linux and the 760 wouldn't play nice." For another point of view, Fr0child writes "Today is the day that AMD officially announces their DDR SDRAM supporting chipset, the AMD 760. They promise "Increasing Memory Data Rate by Up to 100 Percent," which is quite promising to say the least. Of course, who would sit back and believe what a manufacturer says without verification? Anandtech has taken an in depth look at all the performance and features of the AMD 760. Looks like the combination of DDR + Athlon easily topples the RDRAM + Intel platforms out there."

W. Starlight writes: "LinuxWorld Australia has a good article about a new type of PC game gadget called the CLAW (claw.com.au). The CLAW simply plugs into your keyboard port and has nine programmable buttons to make playing 3D shooters games like Quake easier. Also, the CLAW needs no device drivers or other software to work, hence it is operating system independent. The review has photos of the CLAW being used with a mouse to play Quake. I can't wait to try it myself!" From the number of people who sent this in, this must be second only to the Fountain of Youth among objects of untapped desire.

risotto writes "There's always that dilemma of whether to upgrade your CPU or your video card first. There's a useful piece that shows some of today's fastest 3D accelerators but on lower end systems like an Intel Celeron 700 and a AMD Duron 700. There's some pretty big performance jumps to be had by throwing a T&L capable Geforce 2 GTS into a low end system in Quake III and the like."

Snaller writes: "'Established architectural virtual reality modelling systems tended to be very expensive, Mr Richens said. "We get slightly better results using a £30 game running on a £150 graphics card. So it's extremely low-cost virtual reality.'
The man saying this is Paul Richens, director of the Cambridge University's Martin Centre for Architectural and Urban Studies, and he's talking about a project to use Quake 2 as means to visualize new buildings. It's difficult for people to read architectural plans, but if you can "run" around in a virtual building you get a much better idea of what it looks like. The project is quite serious and is intended to let architects' clients see what the end product would look like - of course the guns and monsters just had to go, lest clients start to get trigger happy and blast away. 'They were doing that originally but we had to take the guns out -- the head of the department didn't like that at all,' Mr Richens said." It's a fascinating project -- reminds me of my longtime hope to see driving games used to simulate actual upcoming trips, to learn what exits will be like, etc.

Recently you asked Indrema founder John Gildred about the Linux-based console system his company plans to introduce. Here's what he has to say about its hackability, strategy, developers and more -- thanks for the in-depth answers, John.

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.

rentaghost sent us a sharky bit about a mouse feedback device that actually connects your audio output to the mouse to add vibrations. It's OS independent, too. If you're not interested in the cheaper stuff, check out Vision Station: a domend screen and 3d sound projection? Of course, the scariest version is a whole room. You thought quake gives you motion sickness now.

The word "Internet" was uttered precisely once in last night's presidential debate, and I don't have to tell you the context. You already know the topic was Columbine, and you already know the Net was being blamed for mass murder. What our Republican candidate failed to mention is that his party's bogeymen, the evil Internet and its evil twin violent entertainment, have brought about a new era of peace. If we really want less violence in our schools, we obviously need more violence on our Internet.

C'T has published some new TM5600 benchmarks. Sony's new Vaio notebook uses 10W per hour to power 128 Mb of RAM (112 Mb useable), a 12 Gb Hard-drive, an ATI Rage Mobility Gfx controller and a 9 inch display (resolution: 1024 x 480). This compares with 15-22W for a normal notebook with a bigger display. Intel's Pentium III was usually 50 percent faster at a given frequency, but sometimes virtually no faster and sometimes twice as fast. Code-morphing's impact was measurable: some programs (Quake III and pov run on desk.pov) ran 10-20 percent faster the second time they were run.

Today's Slashback calls out to you with puppy-dog eyes, pleading with you to read on for addenda, errata, et cetera regarding previous Slashdot stories and other updates from the world. Read below for ... the all-singing, all-dancing, topless, hatless and reckless Cue Cat review (one night only) ... one reaction to Stephen Hawking's idea of the world's (human) life expectancy ... some Official Words from the Quakemakers ... and as usual, a few bits and pieces.