After many reader requests, we're finally getting around to interviewing the famed, mysterious CowboyNeal. He's more than a poll response, you know. He's the guy you go to if you have problems with your Slashdot user account -- or if you just generally need a cheerful face on a day you're feeling a little down. But who is the "real" CowboyNeal? Here's your chance to find out. Post questions below. We'll send 10 of the highest-moderated ones to Da Man and run his answers as soon as he gets them back to us.

Well, we try to avoid posting stories about Slashdot, but I figured at least a couple of people would want to know that we'll be speaking at the O'Reilly P2P conferences. For those of you registered, we'll be speaking at the collaborative journalism panel along with Dan Gillmor (Hi Dan) and Dave Winer (Hi Dave) and moderated by Katie Hafner from the NYT (can you fix that required login thing?). Anyway, it's on Thursday, Feb. 15, 11:15-12:00, in San Francisco. Come on by if you are attending the conference.

So, ever had a question you wanted to ask the various folks behind Slash and/or Slashdot? A healthy assortment of Slashdot coders and authors (like krow, cliff, roblimo, jellicle and timothy) will be on hand for a BOF session at the Linux World Expo on Wednesday, January 31, 2001, Room 1E11, 6:00 p.m.-7:30 p.m. So, if you happen to be around, feel free to join us and have your questions answered. And of course, the Slash and Slashdot folks will also be at random times in the OSDN booth on the show floor, so please stop by. Hope to see you there!Update: 01/15 12:55 PM by H : Rob and I won't be able to make itto the BOF -- outstanding plans -- but you can catch us on February 15th at the O'Reilly P2P conference in San Fransico. We speak at something like 11:30 AM or so, on a panel - but we'll be at LWCE as well.

Slashcode 2.0 ("Bender") is officially in beta. We now have themes, plugins, an abstacted database layer (MySQL support is beta, PostreSQL is alpha, so finally the rivalry can be settled ;) a journal system for users, a spiffy template language, better mod_perl usage, ways now for other languages to talk to our authentication layer, and oh so much more. Best of all, the code has been massively scrubbed and de-Taco-spaghettified(TM). You can find a copy on the ftp server. Hopefully the beta phase will be fairly short, as once its over, we'll get to move Slashdot, and have a clean codebase to which we can add all those features we've been wanting for so long. Thanks to Tofu, Krow, CowboyNeal, and Pudge for the toil. And good luck to everyone out there interested in poking at it: this version will give you much more joy then the last one *grin*

Kagato writes: "HDTV is starting to roll in many markets now, and the question on many peoples' minds is how do I record all this high quality content? Two years ago Panasonic made a HDTV recorder for the consumer market, but for some unknown reason the product was pulled from the market. Now JVC is bringing out its D-VHS recorder, but instead of using the conventional Y/Pr/Pb inputs they now use a DVI input. On the surface DVI (similar to firewire) is a good thing: high speed audio and video all on one cable. However, it seems the express reason for using DVI is for high-bandwidth digital content protection (HDCP). Hmm, sounds a lot like CSS..." One of the more disturbing aspects of HDCP is that it has a blacklist of devices that it will expressly not work with that can be updated by the manufacturer. If your VCR is on the blacklist...no video for you.

Well, it's been a long time since we've had an update to the radio section, and that's partly due to us not recording the show very often. Also, it's in part that we lost this show and found it later, or something. So anyway, from deep within the GiS vaults is yet another episode. It features special guest Jamie McCarthy, from Slashdot's own YRO section, as well as Dune discussion, anti-aliasing lust, and more.

So Hemos decided he should stop back in Holland to visit some family, pick up some comic books, and eventually visit the Blockstackers office. We felt that was reason enough to record a new episode. We talk about TiVo hacks, the Napster/BMG agreement, and I ask everyone for Bloody Mary recipes.

After another extra long pause, we're back with another installment, this time with Chris DiBona, man of many titles, and also the benevolent soul who found me a place to sleep at ALS. In this episode, we talk about bootable Linux games on CD, SQL, life as video game art, fancy chairs, and a healthy dose of anime as well.

Quite a number of people have e-mailed me wondering about a log for Thursday night's chat. Well, the fine folks at Slashnet have put together a a HTML version and a text version. Again, thanks to all who participated - we hope to do it again soon.

Well, I join slashdot (aka the "sinister Andover keiretsu") full-time today. It seems worthy of a story, although I'll limit it to the YRO section since those have been my traditional stomping grounds. There's no real news below, just some rambling and question-asking, but I hope it will be interesting nonetheless.

Oddly enough, Hemos and I are speaking at MIT tonight, but at different times and places. I'm speaking at 7pm at the lecture hall about whatever comes to mind (bring questions because my agenda is wide open). Hemos is speaking at Bartos Theater in the MIT Media Laboratory at 20 Ames St. on campus at 5pm as part of their Media In Transition series. Normally we tend not to plug stuff like this, but this should be fun, so if you happen to be in the area, swing by either talk. I promise to embarrass myself by stuttering and rambling, proving that I speak just as badly as I write!

After a super long break, We return with a smaller than usual crew, but with special guest Geoff "Mandrake" Harrison. We talk about KDE/Debian issues, price changing, GPG vs. PGP and more. We don't know when our next episode will be, so savor this one, and find it at TheSync.

Chaoli the Grey asks: "Long before everybody and their mother used the Internet there were neo-pagan and occult ftp-archives and newsgroups. Margot Adler notes in her book _Drawing Down the Moon_ that among neo-pagans, '[an] amazingly high percentage [works] in computer, scientific and technical fields'. Appendix B in the Jargon File states that 'There is a definite strain of mystical, almost Gnostic sensibility that shows up even among those hackers not actively involved with neo-paganism, Discordianism, or Zen.' But has the interest in things mystical and occult among computer geeks watered down after the masses found computers and the Net? Do hackers still believe in magic or practice a mystical religion?" A risky question, as most of us have beliefs that we feel strongly about, but it is an interesting question nonetheless. So those interested in sharing what they believe in, please feel free. I'm sure others may find it interesting. The one thing I do ask is that you not judge people based on the information that is shared here, as all that is bound to do is cause problems.

GUNTHER asks: "I've always wondered what the difference is between a "Geek" and a "Nerd." I think of a geek as one who is interested in sci-fi, computers, role-playing, anime, and the like. I think of a nerd as one who is interested in math, physics, and technology. I consider myself much more of a nerd than a geek. I've done a bit of searching on the net for the difference and everyone seems to have a different opinion. Some say that nerds are just social outcasts. Some say that geeks are just arty nerds. Slashdot is "News for Nerds" but most people here seem to refer to themselves as geeks. What do you think, is there a difference between the terms? Which do you prefer (if you prefer either)?"

In this week's episode, we're back from the office move to discuss Microsoft buying Bungie, the new release of GNUCash, stupid processor naming schemes, the BT hyperlink patent, and more. This might be the last episode for awhile, as the Mackie (our mixing console) broke and I just shipped it back for repairs, so hang tight while we get it fixed.

In this week's episode we talk about the AMD Thunderbird, the "opening" of the Playstation 2, and not much else. (except for the ever-impending Krull invasion) If you've got a high tolerance for pain, give it a listen.

Back from our trip to Boston, we return with a brand-spanking-new episode. Nate was gone working on Everything2, but that didn't stop us from discussing the new Slash code release, efm, web crawlers, GNOME 1.2, and more.

pudge writes "Yo. We released slash-1.0.3. Bug reports and CVS and file downloads are on SourceForge. Slashcode is now hosted at Exodus with Slashdot and Freshmeat. " The scary part is that now Slashdot and Slashcode are totally synched up... which means programmers can e-mail diffs instead of bug reports and feature suggestions (hint hint hint!)

At the request of countless users, we're happy to finally present a summary of the new setup over at Exodus. It's the result of over 6 months of work from a lot of people, so shadouts to Adam, Kurt, and Scoop, Team P:Pudge, PatG & Pater for the code, and Martin BSD-Pat and Liz for getting the hardware and co-loc taken care of. Now hit the link below and see what these guys did:

We're back after the server move with a brand-new episode. This week we talk about the Cold War plot to nuke the moon, DVD recorders, the new Motif release and its license, as well as plenty of conspiracy theories.