This week, for your questioning pleasure, we have assembled a four-member panel of antitrust experts who are willing to speculate on what might happen to Microsoft next - if anything. But before you start posting questions, please hit some of the links we've provided to several other stories about the potential results of Judge Jackson's Nov. 5 Findings of Fact. (more below)

Monday, when we asked you to Grill John Vranesevich, we got mostly flames (as expected), but somehow we managed to extract 12 hard-nosed questions from the ashes. Sadly, Mr. Vranesevich chose not to respond to them directly, but sent an argumentative screed instead. Below you'll find the questions we sent, followed by Mr. Vranesevich's essay in its entirety (including his original HTML formatting), along with a link to a Forbes story that is, um, not exactly complimentary to him.

Can you say "controversial figure," boys and girls? Within the hacker/cracker crowd, nobody stirs up as much noise as John "JP" Vranesevich, founder and owner of the computer security site AntiOnline.com. This is your chance to go straight to the source and ask John himself what's up with all the sound and fury that always seems to surrounds him. (Punch the "Read More" link to continue.)

Great answers to this week's interview questions. Mick Morgan, of the UK's CCTA [Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency] has turned this Q&A session into a truly detailed primer on how to choose the hardware and operating system behind a high-profile Web site - and has dispelled quite a few myths in the process. You'll want to read this interview even if you're not into server mechanics. It contains enough personal insight and wit to be of interest even to Slashdot's least-technical readers. (Click below to see what we mean!)

Our interview guest this week is Mick Morgan, the man responsible for choosing Linux to run The British Monarchy's Web Site, the huge open.gov.uk Web site, and more than 80 other official U.K. sites. (continued below)

Most people who have any involvement with or interest in cryptography have heard of Bruce Schneier. If you haven't, check his online biography, check the home page for his consulting company, Counterpane Systems, or learn about his seminal book on the subject, Applied Cryptography (assuming you haven't already read it). Our usual interview rules apply: one question per post; moderators select their favorites; editors choose 10 - 15 of the highest-moderated questions and send them to Bruce on Tuesday; Bruce's answers appear on Friday.

Monday's questions for the Cult of the Dead Cow ranged from serious-tech to silly. Various members of the Cult answered appropriately. Great stuff! One warning: if you are offended by strong language or are a hacker under 18, you should not read this Q&A session. The Cult is one of those groups the assorted nanny-censor programs try to keep away from deity-fearing, good-citizen, mass-average folks because they're commie anachist no-gooders. Or something like that. (And we like them that way!) Click below to learn why these people are A Danger to the Established Order(tm).

The Cult of the Dead Cow [cDc] is one of the best-known and oldest groups floating around in the murky world of computer security (on either side of the fence). cDc's best-publicized recent accomplishment is Back Orifice, a program that can be considered either an excellent NT remote sysadmin tool or a cracker's sneaky way into an NT-based network. But there's lots more to cDc than B.O. If you're not famliar with their history, check the cDc files before you post; they go all the way back to 1985. Please confine yourself to one question per post. Tuesday afternoon we'll forward the 10 - 15 questions deemed most interesting by Slashdot moderators and hangers-on to the Cult by e-mail. Answers will appear Friday.

A few days past, we solicited questions from you folks to ask QuakeLaird John Carmack ^[?] . We sent the questions over to him, and he answered. A lot. It's definitely one of the best interviews we've had yet - click below to read more.

John Carmack is, of course, a GameGod[tm] so famous that even stuffy, all-business Forbes.com recently noticed him and Id Software. He's been interviewed about 42 gazillion times - but not by you. So go ahead. One question per post please, and since we expect a huge response, please try not to whine too loudly if our exotic blend of moderation, editorial judiciousness, and random dart-throwing doesn't pop your question(s) to the top o' the heap, which only has room for 10 - 15 no matter how many are submitted. Answers will be posted Friday, as usual, and I'm sure they'll be great, because John's a great guy!

We did the usual Call for Questions thing Monday. We didn't get quite as many as we've had for some other interview subjects here, but sometimes quality is more important than quantity, and we sent Bruce some beauts. His answers are of similar excellence, and are well worth reading even if you have never read any of his work or even if you despise science fiction. So click below, read, and enjoy!

This week's interview subject is author Bruce Sterling. If you've never heard of him (shame on you!) learn a little about him here or type his name into any search engine. He's an interesting dude and one of my personal favorite contemporary writers, and I feel privileged to have him with us this week. Post your questions below, as usual, and, as usual, Slashdot moderators and editors will select 10 - 15 of them, and (again as usual) Bruce's answers will appear Friday and, if he has time, he might jump into the discussion that follows the posting of his answers.

This week's interview guest with Eric S. Raymond. We got a *lot* of good questions, forwarded the moderators' favorites to Eric, and he not only answered the ones we sent him but - extra cool - picked some more out of the crowd and answered them, too. Read the complete session (below) and if you have something you want to add, go ahead. If Eric has time, he'll jump in and respond, because, well, he's just that kind of guy. ;) Note: questions marked with * are the ones Eric added to the moderators' selections.

This week's Slashdot interview subject is Eric S. Raymond. You already know who he is, and may even know that his new book, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, subtitled Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary, will be published by O'Reilly in October. We anticipate lots of questions for Eric. Please try to avoid the obvious ones he's answered thousands of times already, and try to ask only one question per post! We'll forward the selected 10 - 15 questions deemed most interesting by Slashdot moderators and/or editors to him Tuesday afternoon. Answers will appear Friday.

Monday we requested questions for Havoc Pennington, who is (among other things) author of GTK+/Gnome Application Development- and got plenty of them. Today we have Havoc's answers (click below). Read and enjoy!

This week's interview victim ... er, guest ... is Havoc Pennington of Debian and Gnome fame. He's one of the world's most stalwart open source developers, and has recently written a book called GTK+/Gnome Application Development. Please post your questions below. Assorted Slashdot moderators, editors, and hangers-on will select 10 - 15 questions and forward them to Havoc via e-mail Tuesday. Per usual, the complete Q&A session will appear Friday.

Monday we got a whole bunch of questions for Nitrozac, the shadowy, boot-wearing creator of the After Y2k! online comic strip. We tossed out all the "Are you really a woman?" questions; I've talked to her more than once and assure you that she is indubitably female and, as she puts it, "slightly over 25." A little inside note for y'all: Nitrozac has lots of female fans who think Taco and Hemos are "hot." This should give hope to all male, female-lacking geeks out there! But let's have Nitrozac speak in her own (laughworthy) words. The complete Q&A sesion is below. Enjoy!

So there is this fine, 100% geeky online comic called After Y2K! that features such characters as the Techno-Talking Babes(tm), Lord Martha Stewart, "Jeff and Rob, those Slashdot Guys," Mel Gibson, Linus Torvalds, Bill Gates, and the ghost of Ada Byron. But creator/cartoonist Nitrozac remains a shrouded mystery. This is your chance to find out more about this mysterious woman and get a quick peek into the workings of her (obviously) deranged mind. Please post your questions below. The 10 - 15 questions deemed most interesting by Slashdot moderators, editors, and hangers-on will be forwarded to Nitrozac Tuesday. Her answers will appear Friday.

Monday we requested questions for Tim O'Reilly, of O'Reilly & Associates. Tim obviously put a lot of time into coming up with thoughtful answers, which we have published below. We've also invited Tim to join in the discussion here if he can find time, but please don't get upset if he can't. "Busy" is an understatement for this man!

Tim O'Reilly is, of course, the founder and guiding light of O'Reilly & Associates, which publishes stacks of books about programming in general and Open Source programming in particular, along with authoritative Linux manuals and a whole bunch of other stuff. Want to become an O'Reilly author? Ask Tim how. Or ask him anything else. Moderators will select the 10 - 15 questions we forward on Tuesday. Answers will appear Friday, and we cordially invite Tim to join the discussion Friday (if he has time) and add more comments or respond to any questions he found interesting but weren't moderated high enough to make the "first cut."