CowboyNeal is the online nickname ("handle") on Slashdot and other websites of Slashdot editor Jon Pater. His handle was inspired by a Grateful Dead tribute to Neal Cassady in their song, That’s It for The Other One, the lyrics of which run: Slashdot (often abbreviated to /.) is a popular technology-related website, updated many times daily with articles that are short summaries of stories on other websites with links to the stories, and provisions for readers to comment on each story. ... This article is a timeline of the most important major events in Slashdot history. ... The Slashdot subculture is a mixture of juvenilia, sarcasm, deliberately bad jokes, intellectual arrogance and highly developed and artistic attempts to provoke outraged responses from other forum users, amuse them, or challenge their thinking on the popular Slashdot technology website. ... Anonymous Coward is a term applied within some online communities to describe users who post without a handle; it is a dummy name attributed to anonymous posts used by some weblogs that allow posting by people without registering for accounts. ... Rob Malda Rob Malda (born May 10, 1976), also known as CmdrTaco, is the founder of Slashdot. ... Jonathan Katz (born 1947) is a U.S. journalist and writer. ... The Slashdot effect is a particular example of how incoming links from a popular website can cause a smaller site to slow down or even temporarily close due to the increased traffic. ... Slash (a backronym for Slashdot Like Automated Story-telling Homepage) is the open source collection of Perl scripts which runs Slashdot, one of the oldest and most popular collaborative weblogs around. ... Slashdot trolling phenomena make up a large subset of the bizarre and complex subculture found on the popular technology website Slashdot. ... Trolltalk (also known as 20721) is a hidden story ID of the online news discussion forum Slashdot, where Slashdot trolls used to converse amongst themselves, often demonstrating new trolling techniques, bragging about successful trolling and insulting each other. ... Slashdot (often abbreviated to /.) is a popular technology-related website, updated many times daily with articles that are short summaries of stories on other websites with links to the stories, and provisions for readers to comment on each story. ... The front page of the English Wikipedia Web site. ... The Grateful Dead was an American psychedelia-influenced rock band. ... Neal Cassady, left, with Jack Kerouac, photograph by Carolyn Cassady. ...

Skippin’ through the lily fields I came across an empty space,

It trembled and exploded, left a bus stop in its place.

The bus came by and I got on, that’s when it all began,

There was Cowboy Neal behind the wheel of a bus to never never land.

He is best known as the target of the usual comic option on Slashdot's poll. In the past, nearly all Slashdot polls contained what is called a "CowboyNeal" option, where one of the poll options is either "CowboyNeal" or some variant. For example, if the poll was "What kind of vehicle do you drive?", the CowboyNeal option may be "CowboyNeal", or "CowboyNeal drives my limo" or even "I ride CowboyNeal's handlebars." This has spread outside of the poll and often jokes will be seen referencing CowboyNeal.

During summer 2005, the former poll editor stopped being in charge and as a result the Cowboyneal option disappeared. From the moment of its disappearance its absence was questioned by the Slashdot community. However in mid-October 2005 it made a welcome return in a poll regarding EULAs. Ongoing events • 2005 Kuomintang visits to Mainland • Bill C-38 (Canada gay marriage) • German Visa Affair 2005 • Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan • Fuel prices • Election of OAS Secretary General • Stanislav Gross scandal in Czech republic Upcoming events Deaths in May May 3: Jagjit Singh Aurora May 3: Don Canham May... A software license is a type of proprietary or gratiuitious license as well as a memorandum of contract between a producer and a user of computer software — sometimes called an End User License Agreement (EULA) — that specifies the perimeters of the permission granted by the owner to the user. ...

See also

• Slashdot subculture

The Slashdot subculture is a mixture of juvenilia, sarcasm, deliberately bad jokes, intellectual arrogance and highly developed and artistic attempts to provoke outraged responses from other forum users, amuse them, or challenge their thinking on the popular Slashdot technology website. ...

External links

• cowboyneal.org
• CowboyNeal's user profile on Slashdot.org