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.

Yes, fresh from the carnage that is Thanksgiving, it's another mind-blowing episode (14 if you're counting) of GIS. Download, listen and enjoy.

This week Bruce Perens ^[?] learned the hard way that Open Source development has become a popular spectator sport. Or, as I described it a few days earlier, a performing art. Like it or not, things are changing with Open Source development, with the Internet, with the way online news is gathered and spread, and with Slashdot. More ->

C|Net recently made waves with its "Top 10 Hacks" story which seemed to say that Hack==Website Defacement. Derek Glidden found that wrong. And I'm glad he did because he's proposed that we do our own top 10 hacks. He's written a fabulous article, and challanges us to come up with a real list of hacks: The good stuff. Not the script kiddie stuff that the media likes to use to generate extreme headlines. Read this story. Its a good one.

mochaone asks "I've always admired the Slashdot crew for putting together a great site that has vastly contributed to the internet experience. I have an idea for a website that I think has great potential also. I would like to know how slashdot (or any other webcompanies) got started and what tips they might offer? Should I use webhosting services or provide content on my own computers? What's a typical server setup -- separate boxes for web servers, database, banners, etc? T1 line or T3? How often should I backup data if providing content on my own computers and should I store backups offsite? Any other tips are welcome. More interested in the high-level, architectural issues rather than the "Use Debian over Redhat" or "Use Python over Perl" issues. I think those have been covered in other Ask Slashdot features. "

So as many of you know, COMDEX is in vegas next week, and for the first time, I'm actually going. Andover.Net will have a booth in the Linux Pavilion, and Hemos, CowboyNeal, Scoop, and myself will be consuming oxygen there for most of next week. So if you're going, stop in and say hi. We're going to be having a little contest (a Linux install race) and the winners will get fabulous prizes. Its going to be BYOD (Bring your own distribution) so we'll see who comes out on top. We'll have machines for people to get their news fix. We're gonna try to broadcast Geeks in Space segments live. And if any open source developers want to run BOF sessions or something about their projects, contact Josh and try to schedule some time (this is gonna be real informal). Also, if any of the distributions wanna have a rep play in the install contest, let him know too (I've already got a Sucke- I mean Vict- I mean Volunteer from Debian: Hi Shaleh..)