Slashdot Mirror
Ask the Man Behind the Legend - Cowboy Neal
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.
The name Cowboy Neal comes from a Grateful Dead song, The Other One. It refers to Neal Cassady.
1) Potato 2) Napster 3) Why are you? 4) What makes you Tick? 5) CowboyNeil
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Seriously, linear karma is stupid. IMHO, we need a 2-D or 3-D karma system, to represent the different types of post and style.
eg: Someone with +50 might be a very funny poster, but lousy on facts or a troll at times. By having something like +50/-25/+4, with the first being "interesting/informitive", the second being "funny", and the third being "social", that would give you a much better picture of the poster.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
It was the summer of 1983 and I was on the beach on Majorca, two weeks of holiday in between shuttling tourist groups back and forth from Akron and Paris. That was my cover job, anyway. My real job, the one that bought the house in Majorca, in fact, was mule, hauling meth from the States in boxes marked "feminine napkins" and bringing Chinese "tourists" with fake papers back from Corsica.
On my last trip, the one before retirement, I was busted. A lanky dude with hair like Kris Kristofferson, what must have been a 15-gallon hat, and dusty iguana-skin boots was sitting there, pants at his ankles, using my beach house toilet and pointing a sawed-off shotgun at me in the doorway.
"Don't move, dude. And don't drink the water in Guayaquil."
My question: was that you, Cowboy Neal?
Wordnik, a dictionary project which aims to collect
I think it would be very cool if all slashdot submissions went into a queue where the community could decide what news should be posted. The community ownership of the news that already exist would only improve in my opinion if you did this, and your moderation/meta-moderation system already seem adequate to accomplish the task. Would you consider opening up /. further with this sort of change?
-- Solaris Central - http://w
Being a big guy myself, I have problems find clever t-shirts in my size. So whats a geek to do? Or more exactly whats a Cowboy Neal do?
This Signature does Not Exist !! FNORD
Simple question.
What's the best thing that happened to you since Slashdot started? Conversly, what's the worst?
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That's not what I meant.
Rob's working on Animefu, Hemos does work on Everything 2, and Nate's the brains and looks behind Everything In General.
What keeps CowboyNeal busy when he's not keeping Slashdot running, or mixing some tasty tunes in his recording studio?
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how to invest, a novice's guide
How confident were you during the Andover buy-out? Was it one of those situations where you felt it was a "good deal" or was it "the only deal"?
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When you become a famous hip-hop freestyle break-beat scratcher, will you remember slashdot and all of its wonderous trollies?
If you think you know what the hell is going on you're probably full of shit. -- Robert Anton Wilson
If you think you know what the hell is going on you're probably full of shit. -- Robert Anton Wilson
jdube is who
Which character, if any, in Dragon Ball Z would you want to be?
If you think you know what the hell is going on you're probably full of shit. -- Robert Anton Wilson
If you think you know what the hell is going on you're probably full of shit. -- Robert Anton Wilson
jdube is who
Do you get really tired of listening to the WHO after awhile? Have you programmed any backdoors into the MP3/stereo control program to over-ride Taco's requests for more WHO songs?
what your favorite breakfast cereal is.
Science, like Nature, must also be tamed, with a view turned towards its preservation.
Any thoughts on why Hemos' houses keep burning down?
-=-
Computer geek for hire. Reasonable rates. Email me.
What poll in which you were an 'option', did you find most amusing/entertaining?
What was the most depressing?
-- Chris Chabot
"I dont suffer from insanity, i enjoy every minute of it!"
The first one is about Slashdot while the second one is about you.
1. What was life like with Rob and Jeff in "real life" before Slashdot was aquired by Andover? I'm a Geeks in Space fan and it always sounded like you guys were the best of friends - especially the Kurt bashing part. Did you guys go to school together, how did you come into the picture?
2. Why are you so cool? Do you do special yoga exercises every morning to be so cool? Do you drink a special formula to be so damn cool?
Thanks and when's the next Geeks in Space?
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All browsers' default homepage should read: Don't Panic...
All browsers' default homepage should read: Don't Panic...
Have you ever acted in an independent film in which you sat around eating pudding with other... cowboys?
(To MrP: His name is Jeebus! You will burn for your spelling error!)
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What is your favorite poll that you were a part of? And would that be a poll you nearly won?
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Gonzo Granzeau
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
I'm sure that when you first became associated with Slashdot, you had ideas (maybe fantasies is a better term) about what /. would be like in times to come. Did it even come close? Do you think back and try to identify some singularity, some single moment when you chose Door #1 and in retrospect would now go with Door #2?
Why do you get out of bed in the morning? What drives you to get up and go out into the hard, cruel world and face the legions of trolls and misanthropes you know you're going to have to face during the day? What's the motivation? (Hey, could be worse: I could be asking this of Katz!)
How often have you posted anonymously? do you have a pseudo handle? Have you ever trolled?
Are you getting bored with slashdot? What is the biggest screw up that you did to the site that we never found out? Have you ever used "super moderating power" to mod down posts attacking slashdot editors...? What is your favorite pizza topping and sandwich?
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
When it was capped, I had ~125 (I think)... then I had a submission posted, and it dropped to 50 on the +3 readjust... sucks sometimes. I keep getting bitten by the +2/+3 -1 syndrome... especially since the -1 is usually 'overrated' after you've hit 4 or 5 for the post. Thusly, I bounce between 47 and 50 on a slowly rolling basis... both of which are plenty high to allow the +1 bonus...
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"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
Well, for a new account the current limit is 50 kharma.
For accounts that were in effect before the kharma count was instituted, you kpet your kharma, but you can only go down, ie, I have a triple digit kharma, but if I get modded down enough, my kharma would drop and it would never increase, until I got below 50.
Anecdotally, siggy had a 700+ kharma, IIRC.
George
really, the Slashdot crew is thinking of us when they gave us a kharma cap.
You probably remember the first time you got a positive moderation, it felt pretty good, like, Wow someone likes my work.
When you past 10 kharma points, it was nice, not as good as the first point though.
When you got your first +5 moderation, you were on a high, though not as much as your first points.
When you got 26, and could post with the +1 if you wished, it was special, but still, not as good as the first time.
Face it, kharma is a drug. It's never as much fun as your first time, and if there was no cap, you'd keep setting inane goals (when I get to triple digits I'll stop, I'll have all the kharma I'll need, when I get 200 I'll stop...) to feed your kharma jones, and end up spending all your time reading Slashdot and gathering kharma, trying to recreate that first kharma high.
That becomes ugly real fast, you become a bona-fide kharma-whore. Trust me, Taco has seen the bad sides of severe kharma-whoredom, and he is thinking of us when he instituted the cap.
George
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And not necessarily even a technical question.
"What do you shave, and why?"
http://drteknikal.blogspot.com/
Is there a maximum amount of karma one can earn?
The Max Karma one can achieve is 50. I emailed Cmdr Taco about that a few months back.
Who among us is the current Karma Whore King, and what is their score?
I am currently at level 50.
Is there a cutoff level where you auto-post at 3 or above?
As it stands my current posting only auto score 2.
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
Nope. When they capped karma, they just made it so no positive moderation could be done to accounts with more than 50 karma. They didn't shave karma off the stack, they just made it so you couldn't accrue any more. Positive moderations do nothing, but negative ones bite you. I could score +5 with four +1's and a -1, and only the -1 would have any effect.
When it was capped, I had right around 250, and have managed to dwindle it down to 212 since. I figure if I keep up my regular rate of posts, I'll make it down to 50 sometime in March, 2004.
.sig: Now legally binding!
From the Dead song, referring to Kesey's Magic Bus trip, which Neal Cassidy was driving, generally wired on meth or equivalents.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Your nick is an obvious paean to Neal Cassady.
I mean, even Kerouac would be less hippie. Are you a bonafide longhair (ah, what an industry the tech industry is, I can work for a Fortune 500 company and still have long hair), or is there just something about Neal Cassady that you admire?
He was probably, like many people, a fan of Jack Kerouac's On the Road.
:wq
How often do you vote for yourself in slashdot polls?
-rak (the former holder of account 31337, which mysteriously went foom)
How did you become tangled up in this Slashdot thing with that CmdrTaco guy? How did you guys meet?
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Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
Perfect knowledge and the ability to avoid unintended consequences, what is the one thing you would add to or remove from Slashdot? Would you edit the mod systems, make everyone ACs, or perhaps send all the trolls here?
It may not be just, but it is fair, and that is more important.
I had about 140something in karma when the kap went into place, so it gradually crept down since I speak my mind and make occasional jokes and sometimes people mod i down. But shortly after I was down to about 120, I submitted a story and it was accepted. I think you get a +3 for getting a story accepted. But since I was above 50, it reset my karma to the kapped level.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
The studio told the director to change the line "I wanna have your abortion" after seeing the scene on dailies. Annoyed, they purposefully tried to come up with a line even more offensive to replace it. Needless to say, when hearing the replacement line I'm currently using as my sig, the studio stopped interfering. :-)
On a related note, word is the release of the Dogma: Special Edition DVD is being delayed indefinitely, even though it's been completed for months, because of assholio Disney execs. The film was produced by a Disney subsidiary company, but because of protests by Xtian Xtremists, Disney sold the film off to an unrelated studio. Well, Disney apparently still owns the rights to deleted scenes and some extra material produced during filming, and isn't allowing their use. Columbia Tristar is trying to negotiate with Disney to get the rights to the extra materials, but Disney is being a monumental bitch. Score another one for corporate oppresion and censorship. I'd like to drop that fucking Mickey Mouse into a cuisinart...
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
There is invariably a lot of flamage about bad
/.?
grammar, bad reporting, incorrect facts, and occasionally even completely untrue stories.
Have you considered (or would you) getting an editor and fact checker for new stories before they get posted? How would you see that affecting
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Would you do it again? With the success of /., to the point that even other sites (like cnet, zdnet, msnbc, etc) look to this page to see what the "programming community" is talking about, would you have made Slashdot the same way, or is there a different path you would have taken?
That, or who'd win in a mud-wrestling fight: Linus or RMS?
John "Dark Paladin" Hummel
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Burris
Seeing as in most Geeks in Space episodes Anime quotes and quips spew forth from you, I think we the listeners (and deranged readers) should see exactly how your background in anime developed.
When did you really get into Anime?
What was the first anime movie/series you watched?
Are there any in particular that stick out as being particularly good or "close-to-home"?
If you could be any anime character, who?
Have you seen The Lain?
.cig - what you do after winning a good flame war
That already exists. It's called 'Slashdot Stats'. Look for it in your preferences.
"We obviously need a new moderation category: (-1, Woo-fucking-hoo)" --Mr. AC
So, for those of us who are too lazy to look for ourselves, is there some code so that, when you look at the polls on /. the last response just says "Me"?
My other
What's the story on this? Inquiring optics want to know.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
And yes, I know 5 - 10 years is an eternity.
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Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
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We have fought the AC's, and they have won.
I was an English major in college, and still retain a healthy admiration for Beat-Generation literature. Seeing as the great beat heroes have mostly died off (Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs) -- with the possible exception of Gary Snyder -- I'd like to ask you about Cassady.
What impressed you the most about him? According to the numerous depictions I've read (Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, plus the beat canons), Cassady was some sort of human dynamo, radiating nervous energy and constantly spouting reams of poetic prose. So what did y'all talk about?
Sincerely,
Vergil
Vergil Bushnell
Insects and Grafitti Photos
The maximum would be 50. If you have 50 you can get modded up for a week. If you get modded down your karma goes to 49. Therefore the answer is no, no, no. Because the max is 50 and many of us are there.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Simply:
What is your favorite slashdot troll (i.e. hot grits, not CmdrTaco)?
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Crudely Drawn Games
Why did you choose "CowboyNeal" as your handle? I know everyone hates these questions and all...but really...why cowboyneal? whats up with that?
The anti-salmon
As a windows user about to take the plunge into the rarified air of Linux, I'm curious about where to start?
For my, and the rest of /.'s edification, which distribution(s) of linux do you use? Debian, RedHat, SuSE, other? Why did you choose the distribution?
If its a commercial distribution, could you email me in advance so I can buy stock in the company before your preference is revealed, I'd really appreciate it. :)
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
Or are you just a clever ploy used by Slashdot to have a running gag in all of the user polls they do?
It's a conspiracy I'm working on, you see. A theory if you will. The Conservation of Cowboy Neal, or something. It's a work in process...
J
OK, I asked this of Hemos and he responded. Now I'll ask it of you. Why doesn't Slashdot allow new editors to be interviewed for the site? I would like to try out, and I think I've made a pretty good contribution in my 1 1/2 years here (1/2 year spent being an anonymous coward).
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Why don't you yourself ever post any stories, Cowboy Neal?
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Well that's irony for ya, I guess. With the mod-ups of my recent above post, I just hit 50.
I guess I'll then ask Cowboy this:
Would you do us all a favor and up the cutoff limit of 50 a little?
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Let me give you the lowdown
Since you're probably the only one with real access to all the user records, you're the one to ask:
Who among us is the current Karma Whore King, and what is their score?
Is there a maximum amount of karma one can earn?brAnd finally, is there a cutoff level where you auto-post at 3 or above?
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Let me give you the lowdown
quietly captured in the dark of the night and locked in a warm cell with Christina Ricci styled nymphomaniacal fembots until they die of dehydration!
What are you saying man - waste that on Trolls!
No, please Please PLEASE do this to me! me me me me! please please please!
How'd you get involved in Slashdot, and how can I get involved at the Mass. office?
The problem with capped Karma is it only goes down...
SIG: HUP
This would actually be great.
For a good look at some user-based slashbox-like entities, check out half-empty.org.
Useful glassboxes (as they're called):
Another feature that might be nice is allowing users to rate posts so that we can skim for the good ones. That's pretty subjective, though.
Question for "The Man":
Coyboy Neal, what is your take...
On haiku postings?
/tma
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Like a lot of people, I bet, I frequently look at my user info page to see if there have been responses to my posts, and what moderations I have received. Would it be possible to provide a Slashbox with that information on the main page?
You think I would have learned after I got my ass kicked laughing at Benjamin Dover.
I see far too many obvious trolls being given accounts.
Just today I saw a new poster, Patrick McCrotch. Now, seriously, Pat McCrotch, do you think that's real?
For the sake of Slashdot, please stop the spread of trolls, and don't give them accounts. Please work with the FBI to track down the trolls that are ruining Slashdot, and have them be quietly captured in the dark of the night and locked in a warm cell with Christina Ricci styled nymphomaniacal fembots until they die of dehydration!
Thanks!
He's posted three of them recently.
Does my bum look big in this?
I've been following CowboyNeal's career for years, reading everything he writes, watching all of his movies and eating all of his cooking. Now I finally have a chance to ask him the question that's been burning me up inside: What's Taco really like?
Seriously, can you give us a breakdown of how much time each editor spends actually reading the site they nominally run? Like, time spent clicking on user comments?
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Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
And why? (for the record, Frankie and Amy count, but Tawnia doesn't)
daed si luap
Can you use your connections at slashdot to pick up women?
Douglas Adams
1952-2001 :(
who would win in a fight? You or Taco?