According to the 10-Q, March saw Take-Two and 3D Realms renegotiate the original contract for Duke Nukem Forever, which began back in 1997. Under the original deal, 3D Realms was to receive some $6 million from Take-Two to develop the title. Now, the Texas-based developer will receive only $4,250 for the oft-delayed game, when it is completed.

When will that be? Well, 3D Realms now has a fairly large incentive to get Duke Nukem Forever done by the end of the year. The 10-Q also reveals that Take-Two has offered the studio $500,000 in the form of a promissory note if the game sees “commercial release” by December 31, 2006. The deal applies only to the PC version of the game, although it was announced for the Xbox and the PlayStation 2 in 2001 and is rumored to be in development for the Xbox 360.

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If you don’t know vim is vi. Well vi improved.

“The final release of Vim 7 is just around the corner, and it brings a number of new features to the venerable editor, including spell checking, omni completion for several programming and markup languages, tab pages, undo branches, and several other features that are worth upgrading for. “

Linux.com | First look at Vim 7

Network your music with DAAP for Linux

Apple’s iTunes popularized the Digital Audio Access Protocol (DAAP) for simple networked music playlist sharing. Linux users can take advantage of it too. Linux users can choose from several easy-to-use DAAP servers for sharing music, and several DAAP-aware applications for listening to it — as well as discover and tune in to other people’s collections.

DAAP was developed at Apple as a simple extension of HTTP. A good repository of information about DAAP is available at opendaap.org. DAAP clients and servers discover each other through ZeroConf and exchange basic information about their capabilities over HTTP, using the MIME type application/x-dmap-tagged and speaking on TCP port 3689.

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TheOneGreatX.com » Cracking Windows Passwords:

There are multiple ways to crack Windows passwords. The easiest way is to download Cain & Abel and use that (the interface is quite self-explanatory, so I won’t go into that). But that involves installing software. What happens if you don’t have access to a user account with Administrator privileges (because, for instance you forgot the password to the only one). What do you do then? Here’s a tutorial:

VOIP calls are vulnerable to a variety of threats that traditional telephone calls are not. Encryption is one of the essential security technologies for computer data, and it will go a long way toward securing VOIP.

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A great list of replacement shells for Windows. “Shell replacements take the place of the Windows Explorer. That is, they provide a substitute for the System tray, the Taskbar, the Desktop, My Computer, and/or the Start Menu. Usually the substitute is more configurable, flexible, and more attractive than the Explorer.”

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Google hired the creator of Vim, the UNIX geeks best friend.

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Take a sneak peak at Google’s new interface 3/26/2006 11:07:10 AM, by Ken Fisher A new search results interface is in the works at Google. Originally the domain of rumor sites, it’s now possible for almost anyone to get a glimpse of the new look. The existence of a simple trick that enables the interface for nearly any browser makes it all possible. The steps are as follows. First, navigate to google.com (or whatever Google search server you use, e.g., google.co.uk). Second, paste this string into your address bar, and hit enter (and ignore whatever message it spit back at you): javascript:alert(document.cookie=”PREF=ID=fb7740f107311e46:TM=1142683332: LM=1142683332:S=fNSw6ljXTzvL3dWu;path=/;domain=.google.com”)

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Oklahoma city threatens to call FBI over ‘renegade’ Linux maker Our mistake is YOUR problem By Ashlee Vance in Mountain View Published Friday 24th March 2006 20:20 GMT The heartland turned vicious this week when an Oklahoma town threatened to call in the FBI because its web site was hacked by Linux maker Cent OS. Problem is CentOS didn’t hack Tuttle’s web site at all. The city’s hosting provider had simply botched a web server. This tale kicked off yesterday when Tuttle’s city manager Jerry Taylor fired off an angry message to the CentOS staff. Taylor had popped onto the city’s web site and found the standard Apache server configuration boilerplate that appears with a new web server installation. Taylor seemed to confuse this with a potential hack attack on the bustling town’s IT infrastructure.

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Another My sysadmin toolbox article from linux.com I love these articles almost always find some usefull things.

Linux.com | My sysadmin toolbox: