doobman writes "I found an article here that is a summary of the upcoming Quake III and all the multiplayer only hype. But the kicker is, in the middle it says that "Quake 3 will be on shelves for Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems". " Now if I can get good 3d support, I'll be content. Course I'll still suck, but I don't think any port will solve that problem.

Several folks wrote in to tell us that 3dfx has announced the Voodoo3 boards. The 2D/3D combo card can do 8 million triangles per second but has no 32-bit rendering. To bad 3d support under Linux still sucks. Quake would be smooth. I figure between Mesa and xig that should change this year. Standard 3d will make modern games much easier on Linux. I think Diablo 2 is coming soon... that would be a swell port.

An anonymous reader writes "Some French students have started to code a parallel version of Mesa 3.0 (PMesa). They can reach a very good speedup (between 1.2 and 1.8). " SMP and OpenGL? Neato. That Mesa Quake thing is looking smoother all the time.

Shane McLochlainn writes "The Dallas Observer Online is reporting that Ion Storm, who employs ex-ID Doom/Quake hacker John Romero is in severe financial & personnel difficulties. Apparently most of the team programming the debut flagship game, Daikatana, have jumped ship to rival Games company Gathering of Developers (GoD), founded by ex-Ion Stormers. "

First up is a pretty cool Slashdot bit: drwii sent us a link to Scanned in Proof that Slashdot is actually in the Feb print edition of PC Magazine. Spiffy. An anonymous reader sent us a wired article explaining Wired. Wired the deal with MP4s. `PEZ sent us a couple of links to more information about the 'Yepp' MP3 player- The samsung announcement and the Yepp Web Page will quench your thirst for knowledge. svetz wrote in to say that Gnome 0.99.3 is on. desertAngel was the first to squeel that 2.2.0pre7 is out. Alron Dameon-ArkMoon wrote in to say that LinuxBox.com is providing free hosting for Open Source developers. schvin wrote in to plug portico.org, a new *Nix tips and tricks page. saturated wrote in to say that apparently Linux Now! is back on line after a little absence. Michael Howard sent us a must see penguin image. ToiletDuk sent us a great pyromaniac web site- fireballs with bic lighters? Don't burn yourself. soren.harward wrote in to tell us that stomped.com has Quake III Arena movies if you're curious what your future will look like. cynbe sent us a link to an amusing piece called The Last Dinosaur and the Tarpits of Doom: How Linux Smashed Windows. It's funny. I think.

In a recent e-mail conversation with Timur Tabi (of Win32-OS/2), I asked him about opening the source to Win32-OS/2 and collaborating with the Wine crew. For instance win32-OS/2 has some Direct X support, allowing Quake 2 3D-Now, and Destruction Derby II to run. And this was his reply: "We have already announced our intent to release the source code as well as use code from WINE. The announcement was made at Warpstock". Timur gave the Win32-OS/2 speech at Warpstock. update In related news, Wine 990110's out.

Cmdr_Pooky asks "I have recently took a long gander at Thrustmaster's Fragmaster. I must say that it is quite impressive looking but I was wondering if anyone out there had any practical Quake 2 experience with it. I see a trend of first person shooter controllers coming out by various but my problem with Thrustmaster is they sometimes will use generic drivers and not device specific for a particular os. Has anyone out there used the Fragmaster yet? "

click the link below to read my ramblings written while trapped in concourse C of O'Hare airport yesterday. I booted my laptop and typed till I got bored. It's strange.

pavewrld sent in a couple of links. The first is over at MacWorld Online and announces the new PowerMac G3's, which look similar to the iMac. The second announces the new iMac's, which now come in a variety of colors. Also in Apple news, NikT wrote in to say that Mac OS X server was announced, and it will include Apache and BSD 4.4. Finally, Ethan Butterfield wrote in to let us know of Steve Jobs' keynote address at MacWorld Expo. Apparently Apple has licensed OpenGL from SGI, and John Carmack demoed Quake 3 Arena on one of the new G3's. You can read more at Macintouch. Phew! With MacWorld Expo going on, the Apple news is nonstop.

Evangelion writes " Zoid was interviewed at the Daily Dementia with regards to Linux, Quake, Server ports for Half Life, and more. If you can tolerate cheesy talk shows, check it out."

After a long night in the darkroom working on photography projects, nothing will make me happier than cleaning out the submissions box. So hit the link below and read the huge flood of stuff that has been accumulating while I've been trying to vanquish my end-of-the-semester projects. There is a ton of cool stuff in there worth checking out.

An anonymous reader wrote in to say "The 3D shooter Quake was one of the first games to allow the recording of a "demo" - ie, a game could be recorded for later perusal. Especially demos of the pros in action have been much in demand. Of course first you had to download the often large demo files - and of course you had to wait untill the game was finished. This may all change with the release of " FleetSpy", a streaming demo viewer. " Now if only there could be super bowl calibre commercial breaks for mind boggling special effects and fetching of snacks, we'd have something.

Stacy Doster from Linux Expo wrote in to tell us about LinuxExpo 99, coming this may. I've attached her blurb after the link where you can read who's gonna speak and other stuff. Check out the website for information and registration.

TreZ writes "Numerous advertising parodies on Microsoft, Apple, and even Linux can be found Here. The "Linux is More Geeky" ad parody is of particular interest to /. readers. I did not realize that J.D. Power and Associates had a Geek Rating.. " A lot of those things look really funny (the Womb Raider one and the Compaq one both look good). Course, I don't have a pdf viewer installed. Isn't that always the way? You'll need one if you want the chuckles- from what I can see, its probably worth it.

John Carmack wrote in to send me an email that he received from Bob Young at Red Hat. He says "I was dissapointed to receive this today... We aren't interested in being out own publisher, and I want to work with a linux specialist that can provide customer support. If any of the other major linux companies want to pitch us a publishing offer, I want to hear from them." Red Hats reply is below. Hopefully there's a company out there willing to make a ton of money distributing id's games...

Following up on all the fun I had with my new scanner yesterday is a challange, but I'm up for it. This time I scanned in a half a roll of pictures of me and my roommates. As with yesterdays post, this probably won't interest you in the slightest, but what the hell. It amuses me to death to do this. Hopefully this weekend I'll scan in some of my photography projects too. Don't bother clicking on unless you want to see a bunch of jpegs of geeks.

CrusadeR writes "John Carmack, lead programmer at id Software, stated that user modifications to Quake 3 will no longer have to be compiled separately for each platform. Instead, Q3 will utilize a dynamic ANSI C interpreter similar to Quake 1's QuakeC system. In other words, the linux community will no longer have to wait on a mod to be ported to run a server (Carmack even pointed out that half of the current Q2 servers run linux). Furthermore, Zoid is working on the linux port in parallel with the rest of id's Win32 efforts, which means that the Linux version of Quake 3: Arena should be released simultaneously with the Windows one. Also, Carmack noted that id Software has contacted Red Hat Software with regards to a publishing deal for Linux versions of id Software titles. " Crusader is a LinuxGames.com regular contributor. Great site for Linux Games (duh!)

levanti writes "I recently discovered using XQF that Linux holds a little less than half (43%) of the Quake servers around the world. Windows holds 52%. If anything would indicate that games (at least server-side) need to be ported to Linux, this would be it. Source: list of 1240 Quake II servers from master servers. (id, PlanetQuake, Telefragged, Minos, iNET, Australia) "

Alan LeFort wrote in to mention something that I'm gonna post even though its a little strange. They are setting up an apartment complex where they are taking into consideration, and in fact targetting geeks as residents. Cheap bandwidth, IPs, Hubs allowed, all OSs allowed, but they're only in Houston. Local Linux mirrors, local quake server, 10 megabit net access. Sounds like utopia. I've attached his whole message below if you're curious. I just find the geek commune idea interesting I guess. I wonder how long before bandwidth is as essential as phone.

It's all fun and games out here at ALS, hopefully I can sit down now and actually get the summary out before either netscape crashes again, or something else occurs that forces me to leave the safe haven that is the Slash/Themes/Meat booth. Hit the link and read the deal...