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...

-=Colossal=- writes "What? You don't get PC Gamer and you can't wait till tomorrow to see the Quake Arena pictures, or your sick of seeing those blurry pictures taken by a digital camera. I couldn't let you wait any longer. You can view the scanned pictures here. " Totally worth the download time. Absolutely stunning.

Nate Fox writes "Mesa 3.0 has been released. Now all of us quake fans can play without beta drivers ;)" Visit the official Mesa Homepage or else the official Mesa FTP site.

bobz writes "Announcing Textmode Quake!
From the README: "It's just what it sounds like. Rather than those trendy colored pixels that seem to be all rage with the kids these days, Textmode Quake uses plain text characters for its rendering. The graphics-challenged need not feel left out any longer. Play Quake at a text terminal, in an xterm, or over a telnet session! Good lord, the world just got a little better. " This is not a joke...well, it's not a lie. Quake really runs in textmode. Wheee! " I'd like to thank the creators of this for giving me a reason for living.

Hetz Ben Hamo got the exclusive scoop from SciTech, makers of the Display Doctor, with more information about what the soon-to-be-released beta will have, as well as future plans. This is good stuff-more games, more display-related materials (obviously). Click below to get the full message.

Kevin sent us a link to an early story about Quake III Arena. As you would expect, it will feature new multiplayer stuff and a new graphics engine to make everything prettier. And if id follows their pattern, we'll have a Linux port as well. To bad 1999 is a long way off.

Jeff Monks writes "Computer World has a short article about SGI's newest Cray machine - 2,048 processors! I bet it plays a mean Quake... "

greg writes "I found this story on the front page of the LA times. Its all about the phenomenom of LAN parties and people who participate in online communities seeking real face to face contact, and of course quake. "

Finally, a few minutes to clear out the submissions box. First up Dave Whitinger wrote in to tell us that Three Point's news has expanded in 3 lists (Press, Security and Software News). Han-Wen Nienhuys sent us a link to a project he has been working on called LilyPond. It is a sheet music layout program ala TeX. Looks pretty excellent (if you're into that sorta thing :) Bill Lynch wrote in to warn us that Dave "Zoid" Kirsch (Linux Quake Port Guy) would like some comments on support of linux libraries. Stomped has a link to Dave's .plan file. Albert Strasheim wrote in to plug a Linux t-shirt design contest. Winners get Amazon credit and free shirts, so you designers out there may want to hop over (wonder if I should submit DFTP:) Finally, Brian Vincent sent us a link to something from Graphon called GO-Global that accelerates X apps 300-1000%. AIX and Solaris already use it, but now there's a linux port.

BeOS Central reports the BeZilla team has a working alpha port of the NSPR code. All things considered, it's going at a fairly rapid pace! The site also notes John Carmack has some bits in his .plan disucssing the loaning of the Quake 2 source to be for development purposes. Seems as if Be's got hardware accelerated QL Quake 2 going! Also, one of their readers seemed to imply there is a working Adobe Photoshop port out there somewhere. Some good news for you Be fans out there!

Well folks, its friday, and I'm ready for the weekend. And I'm gonna celebrate by cleaning out the submissions box. What follows is a fairly sizable list of quickies that have been built up over the last week or so. First off, Felix Finch sent us a link to IllusionWorks.com. It is exactly what you would expect. Kinda cool. Frank Berger sent us a link to a Chicken Conversion for Quake II. What a strange world we live. Oliver Fischer, the guy who was working on those Linux Keyboard Keys has updated his page with more information for anyone interested. Mike Roessing wrote a sort of zd parody. It's friday, you might enjoy reading such thing. Christopher Lee sent us a link to a NY Times Writeup on VA Research and Linux. Fict wrote in to tell us that the latest issue of Phrack is now online. Matthew Miller wrote in to say that Red Hat is selling, well, Red Hats like the one in their logo. Fict wrote in to send us a link to Denounce.com (uber cool fake news site) one MS buying Linux.

Alexandre writes "You can read here or here That the Unreal port would be too hard to make because the game was designed for Windows and license in mind instead of portability (blah!) So i guess we'll have to work on the new Heretic source code :) " To bad... I would've bought Unreal too.

I've got a ton of these things building up, so here we go: Daniel Gould wrote in to tell us that Toshiba will be bundling Solaris with PCs. G. sent us a link to a salon article about trendy technology. A leather mouse? Yowsers. Don Rude wrote in to tell us about a Quake 2 Southpark Total Conversion. Kick ass. Many folks wrote in to tell us that Debian.org has recieved an excellent face lift to corrospond with the Debian 2.0 Beta Release. Lastly, Chris Frost wrote in to tell us that this weeks themes.org victim is tigert (possibly the most talented gimper out there).

Several people have written in with an idea that has merit. And Jason Skomorowski has written a fine article explaining some of the ideas behind using Linux as a video game OS. The thought is that Linux is provided with new games, and you could boot Linux from the CD to play games. Sound brilliant? Lame? Read on and see what you think.

Robin V. Stacey has written an excellent feature on installing an alternative operating system, and the troubles he encountered while doing it.

ron writes "Dave Taylor (worked on doom and quake, started crack dot com, etc.) has posted an interesting new processor design, dubbed "The Pinky Processor" a nice read, check it out: " He also linked Slashdot (via TCWWW^TM) in his plan file. We got a lot of hits yesterday, I suspect that's why. Openly developed processors are definately a new frontier. Interesting to see what will come of it.

Andrew Taylor wrote in to tell us that Blizzard is at again. This time they are suing Micro Star for using the Campaign editor to design and sell new levels, which violates the license agreement. Wolf3D/Doom/Quake became legends because of exactly what companies like Micro Star is doing. Seems depressing that Blizzard needs to sue companies for it. Gamespot has details.

Eric Clark wrote in to tell us that Carmack has updated his .plan (finger johnc@idsoftware.com) for damage control on the recent stuff about ID Software's backdoor onto Quake Servers (You can read A security advistory if you are unfamiliar with the mess). Similiar to Blizzard's recent StarCraft mess, they say it was just a debugging thing. I still haven't made a decision on this stuff, what do you guys think?

Josh Plautz writes "Don 'Onethumb' MacAskill from Ritual Entertainmenthas updated his .plan file with the news that Ritual might just be looking for someone in the Dallas area who is willing to work on porting/maintaining SIN (Ritual's upcoming FPS) on Linux/BeOS. Read his comments at Planet Quake". I also got an email from Thad Parker of M8bius World Studios who talked about Millennium Diner, a sci fi edutainment game that they would like to try to port to Linux. If you would be interesting in helping that venture, go to the games's site, fill out the 'help us' form, and mention Linux. We all know Linux needs more games, perhaps a few brave souls can lend a hand filling that gap. Some (ahem) other companies could learn a lesson from these guys.