After another hiatus, we've returned with a new installment of news and craziness. We talk about the Mars Polar Lander, Doubleclick, EverQuest, and more. You can find it in the usual place.

You asked for it; you got it. We asked Jon Katz your questions, ranging from the community to religion, and he's offered up his responses. If you can't get enough of our resident gasbag, check out his interview at Playboy, too.

I have gotten a stack of e-mails lately requesting an interview with Jon Katz. And last Friday, after we got Jon up on the little stage in our LinuxWorld booth, where he engaged in a live two-hour dialog with over 100 Slashdot readers and other show attendees, I got the same request in person - over and over. Jon is, without doubt, the most hated Slashdot Author, but he is also the most-read, the most-discussed, and the most puzzling, at least according to the e-mail I get about him. It's time to stop guessing about Jon and why he writes what he does the way he does, and to simply ask him! One question per post, please. The question and moderation cutoff time is Wednesday noon, U.S. EST, at which time I'll forward 10-15 questions to Jon via e-mail. Answers will appear Friday.

I've attached below an open letter from Bruce Twickler and Larry Augustin (Andover.Net and VA Linux Systems respective CEOs) on the subject of the merger and what it means. The letter says almost everything, but I just wanted to say that VA employees will still use submit.pl to get their stories posted like everyone else... and I'll continue to reject most of their stories (just like everyone else). The contracts we had written to guarantee that Slashdot remained editorially under our control under Andover.Net continue unchanged under any ownership. And VA is smart: they know not to tamper with Slashdot.

Well, we're finally closing in on the end of the show (Sleep! I can sleep again!). We're sending out as much streaming audio at mp3-2.thesync.com:8000 as we can - and hopefully we'll have video again by 3 PM EST. Jon Katz is here signing Geeks and will be on at noon EST. The show ends at 4 PM EST - so get it while you can. Update: 02/04 07:06 by CN : Footage from the Beanie awards is available over at TheSync now. See who won, who got hugged, and who got slagged. *grin*

As you may have heard, VA Linux and Andover.Net are gonna be joining up. We thought it would be dishonest not to say something about it, but as you probably understand, we're sorta restricted in what we can say. Of course, you can say whatever you want, and you can read the press release if you're curious about some of the details. Creative control of Slashdot will remain where it always has been.

We're now streaming audio live from the LinuxWorld show floor. You can get it at mp3-2.thesync.com:8000 (and thanks to TheSync for making this happen). Hopefully we'll have video coming out soon. You can now see our fancy dandy live webcam.

Well, we've done one more show before we leave for LWCE from where we'll have multiple icecasts throughout the week. In our latest episode, we talk about the Slash code release, Kevin Mitnick's encrypted data, and the DoubleClick fiasco.

I'm not planning on announcing each and every release of Slash here, but there were several pretty significant problems in the v0.9 release of Slash (mostly the fact that my e-mail was hardcoded in one spot so I'm getting status report e-mail from dozens of new Slashlings as they pop up). Please Upgrade! Details about the release, and future announcements will mostly be posted at Slashcode.com, so if you're using the code or just interested, bookmark it. Second is the matter of Server51. We had a little miscommunication over here and let the cat out of the bag on this when we released Slash v0.9: S51 is Freshmeat's new open source hosting site. It's still very alpha, and only hosting a few projects, but since it's already getting a fair amount of curious visitors, feel free to poke around and send suggestions... it'll be ready for mass consumption "when it's finished" of course ;)

I'm excited to announce that after countless hours of hacking and slashing through piles of perl, Slash 0.9 is finally out. It's definitely a long ways from 1.0, but we think you'll be able to download it from the FTP Server or the CVS Server and, assuming you are comfortable installing mod_perl and mysql, get your own Weblog up and running in a reasonable amount of time. The improvements and changes are too many to list here, but it's almost a full rewrite since the last release. And credit where it's due, Patrick Galbraith has really pulled it together... as both thanks and punishment, he is now the coordinator for Slash. We are starting up a mailing list to coordinate devel. Finally we also are happy to note that we have decided to use the GPL as the official license for the project. There are several other notes below.

We're back with yet another episode to celebrate the fact the world didn't end, and that this time of the year is extremely slow as far as news in concerned. We talk about T.Rex purchasing, Nate's new nickname, and more.

You asked the questions Tuesday. Today, in response, Hemos and CmdrTaco spill their guts. Click below to learn what's going on at the world-famous Geek Compound in scenic Holland, Michigan.

The Andover.net IPO quiet period is finally over. A lot of you have had questions about Slashdot; what's happening, what's going to happen, and so on, that we weren't allowed to answer. Now those questions can be answered, and no one can answer them better than CmdrTaco and Hemos. They're already starting getting stacked up with interview requests from other media, but we decided that you, the loyal Slashdot readers, deserved first crack at them. Submitted questions will be selected by moderators and the usual hangers-on and will be submitted Wednesday afternoon EST. Answers will appear Thursday. (Friday is reserved for Steve Wozniak, who unquestionably deserves a day all to himself!)

Well, before the world goes awry and leaves us in a state of catastrophe, we recorded one last show. We talk about our own Y2K preparation and the recent DVD-related news. If you can still get to a computer, it might be worth a listen.

It's that time again. Yep, we're back with another episode and it's a special one. We talk about the Quake source release, Everything 2 and much more with special guest Darrick Brown.

jtdennis asks: "I just got my Smart Card reader for my American Express Blue card. It's a nifty little thing, but I was wondering if it could be used for other things like logging in to my computer. When I installed it on my NT workstation here at work it added a Smart Card Reader Control panel that said it was a "GCR415 Serial Smart Card Reader (Or Compatible)" Does anyone have any information about this?" Interesting thought. You would need to have the interfacing specifications for the card itself (which I expect are proprietary), but I don't see why this couldn't be done. I just have to wonder if American Express ever expected that this card would be used for such a purpose...

8ballcane asks: "Reading Slashdot regularly, I am sure we have all been privy to the increasing trend of pretrified, grits and yes, Natalie Portman posts, as seen in this story . Moderators have helped in the curtailment of this to some degree, but the sheer amount of these postings has gotten too large. I think that there are many highly intelligent people who read and look at slashdot daily, so I thought this would be the best place to discuss such a problem. The question of the day: How can Slashdot deal with the large amount of off topic and malicious posts from people intent on disrupting all dialog on the subject at hand? " This has always been a problem as Slashdot has grown over the years, and moderation has helped but not solved the problems. What else can we do to help improve the post quality here on Slashdot?

Suck has apparently decided that they need to generate some revenue, and what better way to do that then create a really clever Slashdot parody that I can't help but link. With headlines like 'Red Hat Reports Income' and 'Impossibly Obscure Scientific Discovery Announced' its worth a read. My favorite is the references to my horrible HTML coding style, and the fake headlines in their 'Older Stuff' box. I wonder if I can steal their icons?

Sure, it might be the beginning of winter, but that didn't stop us from having our fun veejay style in this week's show. We talk about DVD encryption, robotic snakes, and more.

A couple of readers pointed us to one of Wired's stories that is journaling the aftermath of a recent Slashdot story. The story was about a web hosting company that pulled a Y2K spoof movie, under pressure from the FBI. The disappointing part is the tone of the e-mails that were sent to the one-man operation. Wired has some samples from said e-mails. Please, before hitting send on e-mails and postings, think about the whole situation. In this case, after checking with legal people, the web-hosting company put back the movie and does not deserve the flame generated against it. The FBI is the culprit in this case, and rather then rail on one guy, we should be banding together to fight against actions like the FBI's. For more discussion read Thoughts from the Furnace, Rob's feature about flaming on the Web.