munchkin_tr asks: "With the introduction yesterday of ADSL into Australia, at 64kB/sec (carefully phrased as 512 kbps/sec) load rate on the unlimited plan for close to $50 U.S. ($89 Australian including goods and services tax) per month, does this compare with other countries' DSL services? A 1.5mbps option is availible but limited to 500mb's data download per month. The information is available here and please have a look at the "Acceptable Use" Policy, if you can find it on the site. I found it to be hidden on the Telstra Big Pond Advance Web site. No starting up a Quake listen server - your service will be suspended till the end of your contract!" Are there any readers from Australia who have comments and concerns on this? Please share them here.

Priestess asks: "The story on Slashdot about the Xbox had much discussion on the advantages of coding, games especially, for a fixed platform. This made me start to wonder about all the things built into modern OS's that do nothing other than get in the way for games programming. Multi-User Multi-Tasking Memory-Protected OS's running X through a network socket, etc., are very useful indeed, but do you really need any of these things for a 'put in the CD and play' style OS? Clearly not. So I thought I'd ask, how hard would it be to develop a cut down version of the Linux kernel which basically just booted into single-user mode, perhaps with just a small partition mounted to protect the rest of the OS, dumped an image from the CD into RAM and ran nothing but a quick and efficient OpenGL OS? A Games Only free-OS which could be selected from LILO at boot?" Do you all think there might be a use for something like this? Getting into single user mode isn't all that difficult, but maybe there might be some advantage in having a Linux Games system by simply inserting a CD and hitting the 'on' switch.

Anonymous Coward writes "A new hosted site at PlanetQuake called Multi-Head Gaming has got pictures of Unreal Tournament running on 5(!) monitors and Quake and Quake III Arena running on 2. It has also got a small howto with details how to set it up yourself on Linux and Windows 2000."

Manb writes: "As of a few minutes after 9pm EST the long awaited mod was released for download from a slew of mirrors. Rocket Arena has been hyped to be the premiere addon for the final Quake edition from Id Software. With the releasers saying that it will redefine gameplay by changing the core of the Quake 3 engine it is a very promising release. There even seems to be a integrated mp3 player to listen to your own music while fragging your opponent. Even with a soundtrack to this release it is a must download for any Quake fanatic. It's a little hefty weighing in at 56 megs for the client, a meg for the server, and ~70 megs for the soundtrack it's not for the faint of bandwidth. Check out the homepage here."

shiwala writes: "id software is auctioning the SGI Origin 2000 used to process all of the map data for Quake II and Quake III Arena." Hemos and I have been debating auctioning off the case that was the 2nd Slashdot (for a six months). I've been trying to find the alpha that was Slashdot for the first 9 months of its life (it served the first million pages: if I only knew that we would serve that many pages every day). Probably donate the $ to the FSF or Project Gutenberg or something. Anyway this id box amuses me: opening bid is $7500.

An anonymous reader sent in some Leaked Quake IV Screenshots. It's odd how the Quake seems to be converging both topically and visually with Real Life.

electricmonk writes: "Tom's Hardware has just posted their review of the Cyrix III. They benchmarked it against the older Cyrix designs, and a Celeron, and the Celeron beat the crap out of all of them. They aren't meant for desktops, however, so it really isn't a valid comparison. But it is very overclockable, and runs so cool that it can work without a fan. Quake III on an Internet appliance, anyone?"

Polaris writes "A British company is demoing some really cool tech at the Millennium Dome: you can get yourself scanned and uploaded into a Quake (or other) game (well, just an avatar of you, but a pretty good one at that.) Screenshots are available!" This is vastly simpler then trying to fit yourself into your buddies' flat bed scanner.

Frequent book reviewer and genuine Englishman Duncan Lawie sent us this first-person account of UK Linux Expo 2000. Proof (not that it was needed) that not only is Linux continuing to grow in the UK as elsewhere, but that the disconnect between suits and geeks remains as evident as ever. Read below for good news and medium news -- thankfully, that seems to be as bad as it gets for this transmission.

NT Convert asks: "I'm looking for an embedded firewall solution for my home network - The smaller and cheaper the better. Does anyone out there know of any products, or work being done in this area? It seems a shame to throw a full-sized computer at something like this, especially when the full-sized computer could be used for something important, like Quake..."

Nericus asks: "I'm in the process of linking four separate networks via VPN. Each has its own little DNS sub-domain (lazy, quake, sector13 and overkill) with each possessing its own little branch of resources, here's the problem. I'm looking for a way to authenticate to a server (NIS) in each domain so the owners can have access control to the various resources. The problem lies in the fact that a decent chunk of the machines are running Windows 95, 98 or 2k (no flames, please) and I can't find a simple (re: cheap/free) method of authenticating Windows to a NIS server, M$ seems to think that Unix boxes should authenticate to a Windows box that'll emulate a NIS server, but won't authenticate TO one without third party software. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated (P.S. Yes, I've considered having them authenticate to Samba, but that's a less than elegant solution from what I can tell) "

Following the success of last year's User Friendly , O'Reilly strikes back. This time, it's a collection of 1999's comics (3 January through 11 December). Slightly oversized, with three daily strips or one daily and one Sunday strip to a page, this happy little collection will spruce up your coffee table and bring a smile to your guests. (If you have a coffee table, that is.)

Linux Games have posted this article about Windows VS Linux on 3D performace. They tested Quake III with Matrox G400, NVidia GeForce 256 DDR, and 3DFX Voodoo 3 3000 -- all with their latest drivers (both Linux drivers and Windows drivers). There are some interesting results, and even a few surprises. What do you think about the results?

bigstripes sent us a couple of websites that game chairs: The RocknRide and the Simcraft for people for whom strapping a subwoofer to your chest just isn't enough. Curious what the MST3k guys are doing? bill notes that most of the guys are working on a website Timmy Bighands, although Joel is doing his own thing. QuasEye sent us a link to a review of The Matrix: The Musical. I need footage of this, but it sounds frightening beyond measure. Frank Martini pointed us to a VinylVideo who are hawking a kit that lets your old record player play video. Sun Tzu pointed us to a list of milestones in a programmers life, while jamesoutlaw sent in a site that caricatures common discussion group personalities in Usenet ... and surprisingly enough Many of the stereotypes apply just as well to Slashdot. Schmam notes that Stevie Case, one of the designers for Quake II, now working with Ion Storm, famous for being Romero's GF, and for beating him at Quake, as well as being hot ... well she's in playboy, but you're only allowed to read the article or else I'm telling your mom. Hey, its nice to note that Slashdot took 2 People's Voice Webby Awards one in the Print & Zines and the other in Community. I'm not exactly sure what it proves tho (besides the fact that you guys like us enough to fill out a form) but thanks to those who voted us. May peace and prosperity follow you (and may the Webbies not sell your e-mail address to people bent on selling you toner). And now for the strang(er) part of the quickies, HelLfiRe leads us towards The Stinkymeat Project which is, well, a photo documentary of a plate of rotting meat. Read only on a settled stomach. Richard Stevens sent us an Amazingly Strange cartoon strip: This guy draws inane pictures based on the idiotic titles people send him. If you want something slightly better drawn, mkoscica sent us plif which is really twisted, but funny.

knghtbrd writes: "QuakeForge and QuakeWorld Forever, two of the largest projects based on Id Software's GPL'd Quake source, are teaming up to bring the world what we believe is the best Quake1 engine on the planet. The result for die-hard Quake players? QWF's cryptographic cheat prevention (which stop speed cheaters and auto-aimers cold) combined with QF's support for a zillion different operating systems. Here's a look at what can be expected along with press release. "

halxd2 writes: "Dreadling has finally been released. It's like Quake for Palm. The site says Handspring is not working yet, but they promise to work on it. This is really fun. The shareware version plays very well on my Palm III. I think I'll be buying more batteries."

Athyra writes: "This is chilling news -- Inside Mac Games is reporting that Hasbro has been successful in their attempts to get a number of manufacturers of classic-style games ("taxman," "Missile Defender," etc), claiming that Hasbro owns the gameplay concepts used in these games. Considering how most games are built on just a few stepping stones, this could have a chilling effect -- will the designers of Gran Turismo be sued for ripping off Pole Position? Will Broderbund have to pay Myst's profits to the folks at Infocom and SAGA? And what happens if someone can prove ownership of 3D action games? No more Quake sequels?" Update: 04/20 12:23 by E : It should be pointed out that the companies settled out of court for money, and a promise to not sell the offending titles anymore - no legal precedent was set.

Andy Dodd asks: "OK, this problem is quite strange and I don't know what to make of it. I just replaced my K6-2/300 with a 500 MHz chip, and now my system's reliability has gone way down under Linux. My first thought was that I had a re-marked counterfeit chip, but the crashes are not the random ones I'd expect from a chip that can't handle its clock rate. Under Linux, when I do anything that stresses my SCSI controller in any way, my system is prone to locking up. Starting any application runs a risk of crashing the system (culprits so far include gkrellm, Netscape, and sshd, one offense per app)." (Read on for more info..)

david-currie writes: "Looks like a company called Technopop is developing a Gameboy-styled handheld console based on the Pentium I called Tight. This will allow you to download and play games like Quake and Tomb Raider and provide PDA features They also announce a titanium case and $100 price-point, which could be very nice ... " Total vapor of course, but it's a nifty goal.

mbell writes: "Eurogamer.net's coverage of Razer-CPL has a write-up of a workshop that John Carmack gave on 3d games and hardware. Pretty interesting article, including some talk about id's next game." Kudos to Katherine (Don'tcha love alliteration?) for buying the round of drinks -- and the hints about the potential next game are cool. Think "Not Quake."