Slashdot Mirror
Domain: bluesnews.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to bluesnews.com.
Stories · 112
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ZD "Objective Reporting" Not Just For Linux
keefer writes "Since I know /. readers are generally fans of various ZD magazines anyway, I thought I'd pass this along that I saw from Blue's News. The gist is that programmer Randy Pitchford at Gearbox Software gave a .plan update talking about a piece Family PC(a ZD mag) did relating to some under-17-year-old supposedly being able to pick up Half-Life: Opposing Force, an M-rated game (17+), without incident at a CompUSA store. However, um, the game isn't even done yet, let alone gold or on the shelves."I thought I'd post this in the YRO section for a couple of reasons. One is that it's starting to reverberate, and has generated at least one counter-editorial. But the second is a larger point. Half-Life and similar games are marketed to adults, not children; the 20-30 year old age group purchases almost all of these types of games. Yet attackers want to restrict the sales of these games to anyone on the basis that they're unsuitable for children. The fact that Family PC misjudged the game's release date when making up their article (remember, this had to be written months ago to make it to publication now, they probably forecast that the new game would be on sale by now) makes the attack more obvious, but these sorts of attacks happen all the time from the "save the children" crowd. (Family PC makes most of their income from advertising filtering software and similar snake-oil parental protective measures.) This is how you whip up the troops to go censor the internet or whatever other target you have in mind.
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No Next Q3Test
Jacek Fedorynski writes "The Quake god recently interviewed on Slashdot, John Carmack, updated his .plan with word that there will be no next version of Q3Test - the next release will be a full demo with bot support and one more map (for beginners). The date of the release hasn't been set yet. Carmack also comments on the new Macintoshes. " -
Carmack on next Q3 test; parts open-sourced
SithLordBill writes "Looks like there will be another Quake3 test due in mid-September. This one will include single player bots as well as the Virtual Machine (written to interpret game mods). Anyway, Carmack will be releasing the VM and its modules (as well as the modified compiliers, LCC and q3asm) will be open-source as to give mod developers a head start. Check out his most recent .plan update -- there's a bunch of cool stuff there. " -
Carmack on next Q3 test; parts open-sourced
SithLordBill writes "Looks like there will be another Quake3 test due in mid-September. This one will include single player bots as well as the Virtual Machine (written to interpret game mods). Anyway, Carmack will be releasing the VM and its modules (as well as the modified compiliers, LCC and q3asm) will be open-source as to give mod developers a head start. Check out his most recent .plan update -- there's a bunch of cool stuff there. " -
Hercules Closes Its Doors
ewhac writes "Blue's News is among the first to report that Hercules Computer Technology, one of the longest-standing names in the PC graphics card industry, is going out of business. Hercules' latest claim to fame was the fastest manufacturer-supported implementation of NVidia's TNT2 Ultra graphics chipset, clocking in at 200MHz. People who pre-ordered Hercules TNT2 Ultra cards but who have not yet had their credit card charged are not going to receive them. However, if you happen to be nearby Hercules' Fremont, CA, headquarters and show up in person, they will sell you a TNT2 Ultra for $200 (regularly $250). How good a deal this is without any continuing driver support is unknown." -
Kingpin client for Linux available
philgross writes "Foul-mouthed ultraviolence is now available for the Linux community with the port of Kingpin." Grab the rpm or the tarball of the file. Almost as much fun as Grand Theft Auto. -
How Doom got its Name (from John Carmack interview)
Yumpee writes "DOOMWorld interviewed John Carmack recently. The site itself is a bit sluggish but Blue's News had this snippet on how Doom got its name: Carmack: There is a scene in "The Color of Money" where Tom Cruise shows up at a pool hall with a custom pool cue in a case. "What do you have in there?" asks someone. "Doom." replied Cruise with a cocky grin. That, and the resulting carnage, was how I viewed us springing the game on the industry. " -
Q3Test in "a few weeks"
Jacek Fedorynski writes "Graeme 'Zaphod' Devine of id Software updated his .plan, in which he wrote that the test of Q3A that everybody expected to be out in March will be out in a few weeks. I can't wait much longer. " -
Quake Source in Late 99?
Anthony Fuentes writes "According to this .mp3 interview with John Carmack (@37:15), he is planning to release the source to quake in late 1999. Doesn't sound like he has completely committed, but cool none the less. " -
Raven needs help to port Heretic II to Linux!
strredwolf wrote in to send us a link to Raven Software's John Scott's .plan on Blue's News . It says "Linux version. We are all Windows peeps here at Raven. We are extremely unlikely to do one, although subcontracting this out may be an option. What is involved in doing a Linux port ? All our servers are NT based, so testing would be another problem." You can e-mail him through the .plan link above. -
Interview with SIN creator about linux SIN
Sam Rowe writes "I found this interview with one of the guys from Ritual about their game SIN running on Linux. My source was Blues News." -
Carmack on Rhapsody
William Lachance wrote in to tell us that John Carmack's .plan file has updated with interesting stuff about Rhapsody. finger johnc@idsoftware.com for the whole scoop. James M. sent in this related link to blue's news where Carmack is quoted as saying that as part of the MS/SGI deal, MS owns OpenGL, so it is unlikely that there will be rhapsody (or Linux or Be) OpenGL.