He starts by clearing up my error in saying he was a Unix co-creator in the original Call For Questions. From there he goes on to answer your questions both completely and lucidly. A refreshing change from the politicians and executives we've talked to so much recently, no doubt about it.

Slashdot readers both contributed and helped moderate questions for the New Voters Project Presidential Youth Debate. You can read the answers below, but if you'd like to see an expanded introduction, thumbnails of the candidates, and different formatting, go to the Youth Debate page. And that's not all: We're supposed to get candidates' rebuttals on or about October 17, so don't touch that dial!

Omega1045 asks: "I am a software developer, writing client/GUI software in C# (.NET) on Windows and server software in a UNIX environment. I have used Linux in the past as a firewall, server and more but have never used it seriously as a desktop. What Linux distro and tools should I look to for a switch? I definitely still need to run Win2k (in a VM would be preferable) for testing and other purposes, but want to live as much of my monitor facing life as I can in Linux. I also need the best laptop and Wireless PC Card support (D-Link in my case) from the distro I choose. Have any Slashdot readers gone this route? What are your recommendations?"

Alaa and his friends at Linux-Egypt put a lot of thought into answering your questions. Alaa wrote, "we felt there was much misinformation or lack of information about egypt while reading the comments so I kinda used each question to inject some extra info," which makes this Q&A worth reading for insight into Egyptian society even if you have no particular interest in Linux. Thanks, Alaa and Linux-Egypt.

Ben Crowell writes: "The economics of college textbooks is goofy, because the person who picks the book isn't the person who has to pay for it. Combined with the increasing consolidation of the publishing industry, this has blown the lid off of textbook prices over the last decade. But remember what the World-Wide Web was basically about before the Dot-Com Detour? It wasn't about marketing dog food, it was about democratizing publishing. Many textbook authors these days are using the internet to bypass the traditional publishing system, making their books available for free downloading. Although MIT's Open Courseware project gets most of the press, the movement started before that, and is going strong. In this article, I've reviewed five calculus textbooks that are either free as in speech or free as in beer." Read on for Crowell's take on each of the five books he's selected -- and pass the review on to any math teachers you know.

What is the point of Mac OS X Server? Mac OS X is Unix. I have Apache, bind, sendmail, (and whatever I want) already on here. My Mac OS X box is a server already, right? I have a home network with a half dozen Macs, and have a box that does some serving, and I want it do more. So, I set out to figure out what this Server thing is. (Read on for the rest.)

Alex Moskalyuk writes "Remember those 'how-to' and 'home improvement' books that you enjoyed reading as a little kid? In the first half of the last century there was a variety of books, with names like 'Boy Mechanic' or '1,000 Projects for a Boy,' which would give a teenager a variety of projects to work on productively. Building bird houses, creatively reusing helmets from World War I, and later different projects that had to do with radio and transistors - in the pre-television age all that guaranteed some creative time for geeks (whether kids or adults) and allowed them pick up skills, necessary perhaps in real life." Alex reviews below a book that fills a similar niche for the present day, outlining all 13 projects in Linux Toys: 13 Cool Projects for Home, Office and Entertainment. Whether you'd consider all of the projects toys is up to you.

Xen Team writes "The University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory Systems Research Group is pleased to announce the open source release of Xen, a virtual machine monitor for x86. Xen lets you run multiple operating system images at the same time on the same PC hardware, with unprecedented levels of performance and resource isolation. Even under the most demanding workloads the performance overhead is just a few percent --- considerably less than alternatives such as VMware Workstation and User Mode Linux. This makes Xen ideal for use in providing secure virtual hosting, or even just for running multiple OSes on a desktop machine."

Roland Piquepaille writes "Scientists from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed a "smart brick" which can monitor a building's health and report its conditions wirelessly. "This innovation could change the face of the construction industry," said Chang Liu, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Illinois. "We are living with more and more smart electronics all around us, but we still live and work in fairly dumb buildings. By making our buildings smarter, we can improve both our comfort and safety." Built into a wall, these bricks could monitor a building's temperature, vibration and movement. Such information could be vital to firefighters battling a blazing skyscraper, or to rescue workers ascertaining the soundness of an earthquake-damaged structure. These researchers also think these devices could help monitoring nurseries, daycares and senior homes. You'll find more details in this summary."

neiljt writes "As a UK-based IT worker living about a 90-minute journey from London, I am interested in the idea of working from home, or teleworking. In the UK, however, the take-up of this practice has been less than frantic. My own immediate plan is to find work at home here in the UK, however my ultimate aim would be to find employment, which gives me the freedom to live where I choose. What barriers exist to working in the UK for a non-UK (e.g. US) employer. What about a UK citizen living outside the UK working for a UK or US employer? (Feel free to substitute your country of residence)"

So the E3 Expo in Los Angeles is finally done, and we wrap up our coverage with a look at the best of the other booths at the show, from Activision through Take Two to Eidos. Plus, we take a quick trawl round the evil troglodytic dungeon that is the Kentia Hall, deep below the main expanses of E3. Read on for info on virtual ping-pong, Starsky And Hutch, and Futurama....

Earlier today, Sony's pre-E3 press conference here in Los Angeles announced their PSP handheld console, as we've already covered at Slashdot Games. But there were plenty of other important and interesting announcements in the Sony briefing that we can summarize here, in the same way as we've done for Nintendo's and for Microsoft's pre-E3 press conferences. Read on for info about Gran Turismo 4, Eye Toy, the next Grand Theft Auto, and more..

Today we present Piers Anthony's responses to Slashdot questions about topics ranging from Linux shortcomings to female sexuality. Piers asked us, in a followup email after we received his answers, if we considered them "too feisty." Hah! Is there such a thing as "too feisty" for Slashdot?

mouseman writes "Geodesic Systems, a maker of memory management/debugging software, has a live demo of their Linux product running on the Mozilla nightly builds. It's pretty damn slick -- it detects memory leaks and can show where in the code the leaked memory was allocated and actually recover (GC) the leaked memory. The Mozilla reports actually look pretty good, which jibes with my own impressions of how much it has improved -- see for yourself."

You asked Stanford Law professor, author and general voice of reason Lawrence Lessig some great questions about rights, law, and the electronic world. Lessig has has gotten back with some fittingly thoughtful answers -- some optimistic, some discomfiting, some biting. Read on to find out what he's got to say.

Over the last few months, I've had a number of AskSlashdot questions about quiet computers, what hardware to get, and other items for assembling a mega-machine that won't knock the roof off. I've put the finishing touches on my own mega machine -- if you're looking at doing the same thing, or are just curious about the hardware involved, you can find out about what I built.

We need a broader discussion about the tech world's growing and sometimes simplistic anxieties about free speech, privacy and other civil liberties in the wake of last Tuesday's attacks. It's been suggested that while thousands have lost their lives, millions more are in danger of losing certain rights because of the new wiretapping and surveillance authority the Justice Department is seeking. Those are valid worries. But there is a new reality in the post-World Trade Center world, one that now may have to balance some rights against others and prepare for aircraft-bombs, biological and chemical attacks,and horrific assaults on civilians. As bad as it was, it could have been much worse. I'm not sure I'm ready to tell those kids whose parents didn't come home last week that they and others down the road just have to suck it up because people may be unwilling -- even temporarily -- to lose any measure of privacy.

Last week you asked Bradley Kuhn, VP of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) questions about working with RMS, his views on software freedom, and much more. He's answered at length below, on everything from becoming a saint to the "web app loophole," perl, and the next iteration of the GPL.

Dorm writes: "The American Solar Challenge, a 2300-mile cross country solar-powered car race begins on Sunday in Chicago. The 10-day race follows old Route 66 (parallels I-55 from Chicago to St. Louis, I-44 from St. Louis to Oklahoma City, and I-40 from Oklahoma City to Los Angeles) to downtown Claremont, California where teams will cross the finish line on the afternoon of July 25th. If you live along the race route or will be in the area, take a look at the media stop schedule on the ASC site and stop by to see some of the cars during the race. Some teams (including ours, Iowa State) will also be displaying their cars Saturday on the front lawn of the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, where the race begins on Sunday." The submitter has more info about Iowa State's entry below.

Really. He does. Quite eloquently. Clay Shirky's answers to our questions could easily be turned into an all-day seminar on where the Internet is today as a communications medium, where it might be 10 years from now, and how it is going to get from here to there. This is information you need if your career or business is affected by the Internet in any way. Lots of good debunking, too, of everything from WAP to the myth of increased media homogenization, all put forth with enough humor to keep even Clay's most depressing thoughts from bringing (too many) tears to your eyes.