Slashdot Mirror

inotocracy writes "At John Carmack's Quakecon 2005 keynote he promised that the Quake 3 Arena source code would soon be released-- turns out he wasn't just pulling our leg! Today it was released, weighing in at 5.45mb, it makes for a quick download and a whole lotta fun. Developers, start your compilers!"

Today's Slashback calls out to you with puppy-dog eyes, pleading with you to read on for addenda, errata, et cetera regarding previous Slashdot stories and other updates from the world. Read below for ... the all-singing, all-dancing, topless, hatless and reckless Cue Cat review (one night only) ... one reaction to Stephen Hawking's idea of the world's (human) life expectancy ... some Official Words from the Quakemakers ... and as usual, a few bits and pieces.

Just stick around and collect on this bet. mindriot writes "The German climatic researcher Manfred Stock has rejected Stephen Hawking's theory which states that man would not exist on earth for another 1,000 years. To him this seems rather unlikely. Stock expects that, in 50 years, mankind will have switched to alternative power resources. Read the german article here." Oder, wenn Sie nicht Deutsch kann, bitte Babelfish benutzen. It's a much more optimistic view of things, but hardly the words of a Pollyanna.

CD-Rs are cheap, cheap, cheap. David Hume writes: "Fox News is reporting that '[a] three-judge panel decided to allow the popular service to continue allowing users to share music files over the Internet, pending further deliberations.' ... "The judges seemed to need more information from the recording industry and were more antagonistic to the RIAA," said copyright expert Leonard Rubin, who observed the proceedings."'

Overall, it sounds like Napster is taking neither the "shoo-in" or "dropped anchor" tacks that many people predicted. The article points out (and presumably the judge knows) that peer-to-peer file transfers have long since left the gate.

Well, they are the guys who make it, after all! You might remember the stink raised by the release of the Q3 1.25 patch. Now Bob Mintern writes: "iD Software, in hue of their current Point Release for Quake 3 1.25, has released a FAQ highlighting sevral issues of the 1.25 patch and what it breaks. The FAQ can be located here. I wonder when the "offical" patch will work and everything will be normal again..."

After this I'll try to shut up for a while about it, OK? There's been so much about the CueCat that perhaps you (and / or digital convergence) are sick of hearing about it. I pledge not to mention it for at least a week, on penalty of an early bedtime or perhaps more vacation days. But today, you must deal a few I thought were neat ;) First, bk1e asks the musical question: "Why :de:claw your :Cue:Cat when you can get it :spayed in about two minutes with a soldering iron? Simply solder on one jumper and it acts like any other barcode scanner." Heh.

Or, even without doing that, hangel points to this "A CueCat decoder for Zope by stevea," which includes source. Specifically, this one will let you scan in a book's bar code and look it up on Amazon.

Finally, photon317 writes: "There's a make-fun-of-DC site at www.digitaldivergence.org." This I leave to your own judgement, but as R. Crumb might say, not everything is for everybody. Think iBrator.

gabedude writes "Quake3 Arena Demo is released for Linux." At long last it's here, and Linux players can start joining the fun. You can find it at the Quake 3 Arena page. I'm still hoping to snag one of the special tin versions, but this will let me get in some fragging.

Geek Dash Boy writes "I noted on Stomped that Quake 3 Arena has gone gold. There's no official news item on the Q3A web site, but two of the folks working on the game updated their .plan files with the news. " Mmm...much fragging to be done.

We're being barraged with submissions that the Quake 3 Demo Test for Linux is now available, along with Win32 and Mac versions for the OS-challenged. I just tried it and the download was maxing out my DSL line, so I guess the Sandpiper guys are on the job.

It seems like everyone and their dog wrote in with the news that the Quake 3 Demo Test is now available for download. Win32 only at the moment, although that probably won't stop most of you. Highlights include single player mode with bots (it says here), and a new map. And it does look very pretty.

It seems like everyone and their dog wrote in with the news that the Quake 3 Demo Test is now available for download. Win32 only at the moment, although that probably won't stop most of you. Highlights include single player mode with bots (it says here), and a new map. And it does look very pretty.

Jacek Fedorynski writes "New Linux version of Q3Test has just been released. Here is the list of mirrors. " You know the drill-go get 'em.

Gaza wrote in to send us an Essay written by John Carmack to help in making GL drivers for Linux. Its kinda techie stuff, but its still interesting.