Humancasting is a peer to peer video personal video streaming system currently under development. The system will be totally open and support open standards. Developers are currently seeked. — Submitted by Oliver Willis

By Tina Gasperson
News Editor
On Oct. 13, a terminally cute Dust Puppy could be the next new model for Quake III players. That’s the day Loki Software and Userfriendly.org announce the winners of their Quake III Arena skins and levels contest in which contestants will vie for prizes in one of three categories: maps, skins, or models.

All entries must have a UF theme, and sorry guys, no vulgarity is allowed. The contest ends on Oct. 11, and the winning entries will be displayed at the Annual Linux Showcase in Atlanta on the 13th.

To create designs, Linux users can take advantage of Loki’s Linux SDK, which includes the port of Q3Radiant, a program that previously was only available for Windows.

Loki Entertainment is well-loved in the community for its dedication to bringing the best in gaming software to Linux, as well as its sponsorship of several development projects intended to increase the number of tools available to open source game developers.

The Quake games are immensely popular among geeks, an audience that makes up most of Userfriendly’s readership, probably because the comic strip takes a hilarious look at life from the viewpoint of the Un*x/Geek community.

Most of the characters are human, but Dust Puppy, with his fuzzy head and stringbean legs, is unarguably the cutest and most identifiable denizen of the strip.

Since Userfriendly character AJ (among others) has been known to drool over Quake III from time to time in the strip’s history, coming up with the idea for the contest was just a matter of time.

“Because there have been so many Quake references made in the strip and the characters and fans all love the game, we knew it would be a big hit,” says Erik Loptson, PR coordinator at Userfriendly.org. “[We wanted to give them] the opportunity to use their creativity and skills to actually bring the characters into the game.”

The sponsors don’t expect the Quake contest to become an annual event, mainly because there are so many other games slated for porting to Linux in the future. “We hope to work with Loki on these as much as possible,” says Loptson.

Loki and Userfriendly aren’t expecting to be overwhelmed with entries for the contest, so your chances of winning may be pretty good — if you’ve got the talent. “Our best guess is that we will receive 30 to 40 entries in total across all of the categories.” Loptson adds, “The skins category will see the highest response, as it requires the least amount of time.”

Entries will be rated on a scale of zero to 10 “frag puppies,” and the top winners in each category will receive two games of their choice from Loki, an autographed copy of each of the two Userfriendly books, and a real live (OK, maybe not alive) Dust Puppy. Second place winners get one game from Loki and a Dust Puppy, and each honorable mention will also get one of the cute little critters.

Quake is not the only game Loki has brought to the Linux community. Some of the applications the entertainment software company has ported to Linux include SimCity 3000, Heroes, Heretic, Railroad Tycoon, and Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns.

In fact, Loki CEO Scott Draeker made a point of announcing that the Kohan game for Linux was slated for release at just about the same time as the Windows version.

Now, if Loki could just get the big name game developers to look at Linux first.

Linux PR: Digital Creations, publishers of the Open Source Zope Applications Server, and Kaivo, a leading Open Source solutions provider, announced that Kaivo will be developing and delivering Zope training worldwide.

LIFE releases the latest version of it’s ERP software package — D.E.A. V2.0 — under the Open Source GNU General Public
License, from the Life webpage.

Sun’s recent $2 billion acquisition of Cobalt Networks immediately inflated market values for the sector’s Top 3 companies, reports Upside Today.

Sun Microsystems, Inc. today announced it will establish an
Accessibility Technologies Lab to work on technology development for people with disabilities, according to PRNewswire, the lab will work to develop an assistive technologies
framework for utilities, device drivers, and voice interaction capabilities
for the upcoming GNOME 2.0 — a free, open-source, and easy-to-use user
environment.

osOpinion article concludes, “your best bet to stay safe is sadly still to upgrade soon and often.”

According to this Linuxnewbie article, you don’t have to be a genius to figure out ways to circumvent Carnivore.

Investors and consumers alike are wondering what’s in store for the company’s next quarter century – and if its best days are behind it, from the Boston Globe on ComputerNewsDaily.

Story from The Wall Street Journal on MSNBC.com News proclaims, the latest creation of the 21-year-old programmer enables users of AOL’s wildly popular Instant Messenger to delete the ads from the online
chat program and what’s more, a Web site owned by Nullsoft — and ultimately AOL — has been giving away the software.