Martin Garbus and Robin Gross are the attorneys defending Emmanuel Goldstein and 2600.com in the DeCSS case that just had its first decision. Ask them whatever you'd like about the case - we'll do the usual, forward highly-moderated questions and get their answers back to you ASAP. Note that standard, boring questions like, "Where do you go from here? Will you appeal?" are going to be asked and answered in other news stories, probably many times over. This is an opportunity to ask those questions that won't be asked in other news stories.

Mr. Cringely is one of the computer industry pundits quoted most frequently here on Slashdot. His weekly column appears Fridays on the PBS Web site, and almost every week's edition is submitted to Slashdot multiple times. Cringely has been involved with personal computers almost as long as they've been around -- he was one of Apple's first employees -- so in this field he's certainly a "pundit's pundit" who comes by his opinions through knowledge. Please take a look at this bio page on his site, then post your questions below. We'll forward about 10 of the highest-moderated ones to him by e-mail over the weekend and post the answers as soon as we receive them.

Here are the answers to the questions we asked Ian Murdock, original Debian instigator and current President/CEO of Progeny Linx Systems.

Last Tuesday you asked Ingo Molnar, Red Hat kernel hacker, about the means by which his TUX Web server recently achieved such fantastic results in SpecWeb99 . He was kind enough to respond with at-length answers addressing licensing, the reality of threads under Linux, the realism of benchmarks, and more. Thanks, Ingo!

Ingo Molnar is the guy behind the TUX Web server, which produced those astounding SpecWeb results reported here last week. He's agreed to a Slashdot community interview. So ask away at the man who created what appears by some measures to be the world's most powerful Web server at present. Please make Ingo's job easier by first reading the LinuxToday articles (here's the first LW story, and here's the second LW story) commenting on the SpecWeb numbers and the background of how they were achieved, as well as Ingo's informative post in the initial Slashdot story, and the SpecWeb results themselves. The moderators may have no mercy otherwise.

Ian Murdock started the Debian Project in 1993 and was its leader until 1996. Now he's president and CEO of Progeny Linux Systems, a company working on a Debian-based system called Linux NOW. (Bruce Perens is chairman of the company's board of directors, so the place is obviously as Debian as a commercial entity can get.) Please post your questions for Ian below. We'll forward 10 of the highest-moderated questions to him by e-mail and run his replies as soon as he gets them back to us.

A few weeks ago, you asked questions of Ryan Lackey, CTO for HavenCo, a company dedicated to providing secure off-shore data hosting from Sealand, a principality off the coast of England. Ryan has lately survived dental emergencies, the loss of a laptop (it dropped into the North Sea -- how many people can say that?) and other stresses, but he's followed through with some interesting answers. He even has some ideas for how you can make a lot of money, and lists the tools you need to start your own data haven. Kudos to Ryan for taking the time to answer so thoroughly.

Have you ever heard of Chris McKinstry? If not (I hadn't until a few weeks ago), it's probably because he's been moving too quickly in the background for you to apprehend with human vision. In addition to operating the world's largest optical telescope -- the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) at Paramal Observatory (Atacama, Chile) -- he writes and reviews books, hacks consciousness, creates art, and enjoys his family. Chris has agreed to field questions about the VLT, as well as about the upcoming OWL (OverWhelmingly Large) telescope project -- a 100-meter filled-aperture device which would put all current terrestrial telescopes to shame. Please read through the linked sites, then post your questions (one per comment, please) for Chris below; we'll pass along the best ones for his reply.

I've gotten lots of e-mail asking, "Where are Douglas Adams' answers to our questions? Has he forgotten us?" Obviously, no one was forgotten, but the man had a screenplay on deadline and had to work, work, work. Yes, if we had a hall of fame category for "Longest time between interview questions and responses to them," this one would be #1, but it was worth waiting for. Obviously there was never any cause for panic, but all true Douglas Adams fans already knew that, right?

A few days ago you read here on Slashdot about the datahaven called Havenco poised to open six miles off the English coast, in the semi-recognized, undeniably eccentric principality of Sealand. Havenco CTO Ryan Lackey has graciously agreed to answer questions from Slashdot, and to involve others on the Havenco team in answering questions he can't. C'mon -- how can you not be curious about an off-shore datahaven in an anti-aircraft bunker? Ask questions in the space below, and we'll forward 10-15 of the highest moderated ones on to Ryan. [Updated 15:40GMT by timothy:] Remember, many of the obvious questions are answered on the Web sites above or in the comments of the first story. Fire away with meaty technical questions -- they're up for it!

On May 23 we requested questions for Greg Lindahl, chief designer of the new NOAA Forecast Systems Laboratories massive Alpha Linux Cluster. Here are his answers. Fascinating stuff for people interested in big-time parallel computing.

It's a presidential election year in the U.S. (in case you hadn't noticed), and this is the first presidential election in which the Internet is a major factor. Today's guest, Scott Reents, is president of The Democracy Project. Read this essay, A Citizen-Centric Internet , to see what Scott and his people are trying to achieve, then post your questions for him below. We'll forward 10 of the highest-moderated ones to him tomorrow, and will publish his answers here next week.

On May 4, we asked you to suggest questions for an interview with Metallica. It seemed for a while, though, like the interview that emmett had wrangled would never happen -- despite agreeing to speak with us, calls to his agents found that drummer (and frequent spokesman) Lars Ulrich was either "too busy" or "unavailable" for a long time, and we felt pretty much like the winner in a game of "hold the grenade." Yesterday, though, Lars came through for us: after I explained the nature of a Slashdot interview, and how the questions were gathered and chosen, as well as the fact that he was free to be as candid and discursive as he'd like, I spoke with him for more than an hour. Lars seemed impressed by the forum that Slashdot offered and called it "a nice setup" for an interview. You don't have to agree with his conclusions, or with the actions that the band has taken, but you ignore his words at your peril. So without further ado, here are your questions, and Lars, unfiltered.

Greg Lindahl sent in this story last September about a massive Alpha Linux cluster that's being built by HPTi for the NOAA's Forecast Systems Laboratories. What Greg forgot to mention when he submitted the original story is that he's the project's chief designer. What with all the Beowulf (and Alpha) interest around here, we figured he'd make a great interview guest, especially now that the project is well under way. Please post your questions below. Answers to 10 - 15 of the highest-moderated ones should appear within the next week.

We got a lot of (shall we say) slightly impertinent questions for Web Standards Project co-founder Jeffrey Zeldman, but that's okay. He reads Slashdot and knows the nature of the beast, and he's hard-core enough to give as good as he gets. So set your humor module to high, then sit back and enjoy Mr. Zeldman's (appropriately impertinent) answers to the 12 questions we forwarded to him.

While we're waiting for Metallica and Douglas Adams to get back to us, we might as well go back to interviewing "normal" people. This week's (first) guest is Jeff Zeldman, Web designer extraordinaire. Some people in the design business say the best way to learn what the WWW will look like in six months is to keep up with Jeff's famous www.zeldman.com site. Whether or not this is true, he's certainly written one of the best Web design tutorials ever, and is also one of the prime movers behind the Web Standards Project. There is simply no one better to answer any Web design question you care to post below (hopefully confining yourself to one question per post).

Our original interview with two SCO Presidents somehow turned into responses from just one, returned long after they were promised. Anyway, here are answers to your questions about SCO from David McCrabb, President of their Server Division.

Members of the band Metallica have agreed, through their publicist, to answer questions from Slashdot readers about their recent legal actions against Napster and Napster users. They did a live chat interview Tuesday on the subject with a crowd rounded up by artistdirect.com and Yahoo!. Now it's our turn, so let's give them a fine, thorough, Slashdot-style grilling. (more)

Who could possibly know more about Life, the Universe, and Everything than Douglas Adams? Who, despite being Mostly Harmless, could give a better anwer to almost any question you could ask? Could you please post your questions -- one per post -- below? Could we pick 10 of the highest-moderated ones and send them to Mr. Adams by e-mail? Might we allow Mr. Adams a week or more to answer, since he's as busy as RMS but has kindly consented to talk with us anyway?

On Monday, April 17th, we requested questions for Richard M. Stallman. Here, at last, are his answers. Warning: The interview below contains mature concepts and strong opinions. It may not be suitable reading for easily-angered readers whose views conflict with Mr. Stallman's.