quake is still alive and well, especially quakeworld. you can get started at www.nquake.com which includes ezquake (though there are many clients to choose from now). quake champions is a newer alternative, but certainly doesn't have the same feel or gameplay. everyone is still hanging out on irc and discord (discord.quake.world)

why is the dec logo being used for everything 'digital' now, did i miss something?

The first thing I do when setting up a new box is to turn that useless key into the control key it should be.

try snooping on my sparcstation classic running netbsd, i dare you. but ignore my crt please (http://www.newscientist.com/blog/technology/2007/04/seeing-through-walls.html)

Especially considering that the firmware is loaded via a driver whenever the camera is activated (like many wireless chipsets), is this really news to anybody?

There are no guarantees, but I'm much more concerned with what Microsoft/Oracle/Cisco does than what Redhat, Ubuntu, or OpenBSD throws into their builds/source.

this is essentially what (http://nixos.org/) or (http://www.gobolinux.org/) do, though the former has much grander goals.

I have two of them, you get pretty good at 're-levitating' it after a while being that every time someone bumps into your desk it stops, definitely worth the trouble though. I do wonder why a van de graaf generator was left off the list though :-)

Chromium is a good hand-eye game, you directly control a space-ship using the mouse. Reminds me of crystal quest on the mac, I still have an LC hooked up for that purpose.

Placebos never work, by definition.

"Something of no intrinsic remedial value that is used to appease or reassure another."

as did i (sparcstation 5)... :-( good thing upgrading is easy.
and yes, you shouldn't have any difficulties.