taggedfordeletion was one of the many, many readers to beseige us with news of the announcement from a company called Indrema of their Indrema L600E set-top box, a Linux-based gaming machine. Actually, it promises a lot more than gaming -- the company touts it as a "Web console" that will also serve as a Web browsing platform and (wonder of wonders) MP3 jukebox. As taggedfordeletion points out, "The Internet capabilities of the box are especially promising, including support for DSL and cable modems."

As a followup to the software licensing question on Tuesday, I've decided to open up a topic on the discussion of software patches, software licensing and the relationships between them. How large must a patch become before it isn't considered a patch? If a patch comes with its own license, how does that affect the license of the original program? (Read More)

Note: This is the second of two installments. In the Digital Age, who owns ideas? Culture is being redefined by games, sites and new animation forms. Do we really want to throw kids who love technology, music and movies in jail? Laws like the DMCA don't promote morality or lawfulness, they undermine it. Ideas can't be contained or sold any more. Even Thomas Jefferson said so. Read more.

In a world splitting increasingly into real and virtual geographies, who owns ideas? The free music wars are just the first in a series of political, cultural and legal struggles that are putting the very idea of copyright and intellectual property on the table for the first time. Read more.

Scott Draeker writes, "Here are my responses to the questions you sent, and a few others that had been posted." All we can say in return is, "Thanks, Scott. We really appreciate the time you took to do this."

Moo-ha-ha. CmdrTaco is on vacation (and sending his e-mail to /dev/null, so please don't even try), so I'm doing Quickies this week. On to the good stuff. DigitalDaedalus wrote in to tell us about the SGI 404 pages. Cute. For those with that not-so-fresh feeling, dodobh wrote in to tell us about the Slashdot Purity Test. No, I won't tell you my score. In the 'ear candy' bin, casret told us that they posted the results of the XMMS plugin contest. Time for some stuff from the 'exploding stuff' bin. Aardappel wrote in about Fisheye Quake, and Kintanon caught my eye with Fun With Grapes. Charles Helfenstein told us about the anti-cubicle. Very cool. Fanmail used the force and wrote in about George Lucas In Love. With all the X-Men hype going on, Link wrote in about Mutant Watch. Smurfy cared to share AIEEE, the Acronym Interaction, Expansion and Extrapolation Engine. fwfr told us about the Sim-William Shatner. You'll need Flash. Last but certainly not least, The Welcome Rain wrote in to tell us about your friend and mine, Robot Frank.

John Carmack of id wrote Quake III, but Loki distributed the Linux version. Loki Entertainment Software has been described by happy puppy as "...the most visible Linux gaming company," so who better to turn to than Loki President Scott Draeker for word about game development and porting for Linux? Scott's an extra-cool guy, so we expect extra-cool answers from him. We'll post them sometime within the next week, so please keep an eye out.

TraCer00t writes, "Ever not gotten a job because you weren't Quake-educated enough? According to this MSNBC article, the University of California at Irvine will start giving out B.A.'s in Quake. Imagine what studying for the exams must be like!" As you might expect, the coursework is (an interdisciplinary approach to) designing and coding games, not playing them.

The Beacon School is a selective secondary public school on West 61st Street in New York City. It is a place where students are encouraged to work with computers and technology, not just to run educational software, but to write code, administer networks and troubleshoot hardware. Long on knowledge but short on cash, Beacon is a textbook example of how Linux and Open Source make the impossible possible in education.

GuavaBerry writes, "John Carmack's latest .plan update is really really interesting. Apparently a modmaker is trying to derive work from the newly GPL'ed Quake source without releasing source to his binaries, and Carmack isn't happy about it. The debate is chilling, but we must appreciate Carmack's no-nonsense approach to enforcing his rights under the GPL. "

Nom Anor writes "A couple from South America is going to celebrate their wedding today... on a Quake2 server! The bride and groom will say "I do" as the male and female grunt models inside a Quake 2 Battlegrounds server to be hosted by M-Web's Gamezone, a popular South African gaming work. The judge will preside over the ceremony through his computer in his Cape Town home. "

ScUmM_BoY writes "Someone had enough spare time to create Textmode Quake for Linux. It was the Link of the Day over at User Friedly, and the Web page includes some (blinding) screenshots. Keen!" I really don't know what to say. I am aghast. Update: 02/12 22:19 by michael : Okay, okay. So it was posted to Slashdot a year and half ago. It's still cool.

If you click the read-more link below you will be treated to an excerpt from our own Jon Katz's new book Geeks. Regular readers know my aversion to paper books, but I've read this one, and it's worth your while. Katz explores Geek culture by following a couple of geek kids from Idaho to Chicago. It's a true story, and Jesse and Eric are Slashdot regulars. We don't feel right writing a review of the book since we'd be sadly biased, so read this chapter, and make up your own minds about it... but I hope you enjoy it. This is a story that I think many of us will understand.

Kurt Gray is one of Andover.net's coolest people and most senior employees. He's a programmer and long-time Slashdot reader. Indeed, Kurt was the one who originally suggested that Andover should buy Slashdot. Now Kurt (along with the rest of us) will be working for the merged VA Linux/Andover combination . Today, in a rare public appearance, Kurt shares his thoughts on Andover's rapid growth and changes, the VA Linux buyout, and the notes he took during VA Linux CEO Larry Augustin's speech yesterday at Linux World. (Click below to read.)

I've gotten the first round of details about Transmeta's *two* new chips (Thanks Chris!). It's very cool - x86 compatible, Linus has written "Mobile Linux" to run on the chip, and totally insane power consumption. Click below for details - and we'll be updating this story throughout the day so check back again for more. Update: 01/20 02:33 by E : David Cassel, who was at the unveiling, sent in his notes and some great quotes from the unveiling. His take is appended to the end of this article.

BigMeanBear writes "Finally the highly anticipated Quake 3 Source is available for mod makers to hack away at. Go get it and make some mods!" The id server seems to be overloaded right now, so you might try some other locations.

Time for an etoy.com news roundup. The Etoy artists are still operating under a ridiculous injunction that bars them from operating a website at their domain. NSI caved to what they perceived as a court order and put the entire domain on hold, so email is blocked too. And Monday's meeting with the judge turned out to be merely a status conference which, according to Etoy's lawyer, "took all of 45 seconds." Nothing was decided, and the injunction remains in effect. But there's good news about the trademark. Click to read more.

It's that time again. Yep, we're back with another episode and it's a special one. We talk about the Quake source release, Everything 2 and much more with special guest Darrick Brown.

ESR as chimed in to say his bit on the recent quake problems that popped up following the source release. Its definitely a problem that will happen again and something that needs to be handled. Read what he has to say about it.

Stargazer writes "Well, looks like people are having problems with Quake's release under the GPL. It's not a conflict with the license, but rather, mean-spirited people are now creating clients which give them an unfair advantage, to say the least. John Carmack ponders this problem in his .plan file, and offers, unfortunately, a closed-source solution. "