langles writes "Perl 5.8.1 has been released. Read the official announcement, then download it from a CPAN mirror near you. If you've been following the Perl5 Porters List, you'll know this version was very well tested before they released it. However, there may be some modules that will need to be fixed before they will work with this release." The announcement also contains full details on incompatibilities and known issues, so give it a once over before upgrading, especially if from a pre-5.8 version.

brentlaminack asks: "Almost a year ago Tim Bray of XML fame said 'when the huge universe of MS Office documents becomes available for processing by any programmer with a Perl script and a bit of intelligence, all sorts of wonderful new things can be invented that you and I can't imagine.' Now that MS has dropped the ball on the XML Office front, and StarOffice has fulfilled its XML promise, where are all those 'wonderful new things?' Is anybody out there writing Perl/Java/whatever programs to take advantage of StarOffice XML? Could this be an opportunity for Free/Open/Libre software to leapfrog MS Office in real productivity as XML proponents have promised all along?" What kinds of new and wonderful things can you come up with?

greenhide writes "As forecast in this story, a new Microsoft worm has indeed wriggled to the surface. The W32.Swen's claim to fame is its professional looking email advertisement that pretends to be a fake Microsoft patch. Earlier viruses have made the claim, but none of them looked this good. It appears to have infected over 1.5 million machines. "

Dan writes "Apache.org's Joshua Slive says that ApacheCon, the official conference of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), announced today the opening of registration for ApacheCon 2003, to be held November 16-20, 2003 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Apachecon kicks off with intensive full- and half-day tutorials that offer real world insight, techniques, and methodologies pivotal to the increasing demand for open source software. Agenda and sessions include topics such as Apache with XML and Java; All Things Apache; and Apache with Perl and PHP."

An aoynmnuos raeedr sumbtis: "An interesting tidbit from Bisso's blog site: Scrambled words are legible as long as first and last letters are in place. Word of mouth has spread to other blogs, and articles as well. From the languagehat site: 'Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe. ceehiro.' Jamie Zawinski has also written a perl script to convert normal text into text where letters excluding the first and last are scrambled."

Read on below for two readers' review of books aimed at Red Hat 9 users: acemics writes with a quick review of Red Hat Linux 9 Professional Secrets, and reader skogs contributes a longer look at Sam's Publishing's Red Hat Linux 9: Unleashed.

The Stunted Leech asks: "I am trying to develop an LDAP interface to an existing customer database and would like to implement a simple LDAP listener that could be queried from e-mail clients. Before everyone suggests importing the data to OpenLDAP or developing a back-end for it, let me just say that it isn't very feasible: I'm the only person assigned to the project, and my company doesn't have the time or hardware resources to maintain an LDAP server. So I'm looking for very simple implementations of LDAP servers, preferably in a scripting language like Perl or Python (we use Perl for CGIs and wxPython for GUI front-ends). I've come across a couple of Java-based ones, but they seemed overly complex - all I need to do is retrieve a contact's e-mail or phone number from our database. Pointers to any sort of simple LDAP servers are welcome, even if they do little more than return the same result to all queries."

Idean writes "Generating a visual representation is often the best way to understand large data sets, but standard tools such as gnuplot often fall short. This article shows how to use Perl/Tk, the standard GUI toolkit for Perl, to quickly build custom plotting and graphing tools."

joukev writes "Perl.com is running an article on pVoice. pVoice is an Open Source communication system for severely disabled children written in Perl. I started this for my daughter in 2001. She's still using it and hopefully the medical world will see that there are Open Source alternatives for these kinds of applications. More information on pVoice can be found on the pVoice website (general information) or on the pVoice Developers website."

Young Grasshoopa asks: "In my 6 years of IT life, I've been a sys admin, perl programmer, and a config. mgmt. engineer. I've recently learned programming in C, and somehow ended up learning a bit of Linux Kernel programming as well. I now have developed a strong motivation to become a Linux kernel developer, but given my background, I am not sure how to approach companies or Open Source Project groups. I ask all those who were in a similar situation - how do you become a full-time kernel developer?"

honestpuck contributes this review of Sams Publishing's Teach Yourself AppleScript in 24 Hours, writing "The market for books on AppleScript cannot be a large one, since there never seem to be many volumes in it; usually only one at a time is up to date and worth the money. Now that O'Reilly's AppleScript In A Nutshell is showing its age (and wasn't that great in the first place), and Danny Goodman's book is even older, I was pleased to hear that this volume had come along." Read on for honestpucks' mixed impressions of the book.

libertynews writes "KPLUG President Kevin Pedigo has just announced his latest project -- RPMPAN, an archive of CPAN Perl modules in RPM format, generated nightly."

jmays writes "New Line is re-releasing 'The Fellowship of the Ring' and 'The Two Towers' except this time, in their respective extended versions. When? Once each week for the two weeks prior to the opening of 'The Return of the King.'"

Richard W.M. Jones writes "mod_caml is a set of bindings between Objective Caml and the full Apache API. mod_caml 0.6 has bindings for the Apache API and a full Perl-like CGI and templating library. There's only two things you need to know about Objective Caml: it's a modern, fully-featured and highly-optimised language, and it has a good tutorial so Perl/Java/C/C++ programmers can join in the fun."

securitas submits this painfully well-linked piece: "eWEEK reviews the RIM BlackBerry 7230 color handheld, Research In Motion's latest combination wireless e-mail/phone/PDA, and the first BlackBerry to feature a full-color display. The tri-band GSM/GPRS J2ME device features a 240-by-160-pixel, 65,000-color display, 16 MB flash +2 MB SRAM, an Intel 386 32-bit chip, SMS, an HTML browser (missing from the preceding BlackBerry 5810), a claimed 4 hours talk/10 days standby removable/rechargeable lithium-ion battery, POP3/IMAP/Exchange/Notes wireless e-mail for up to 10 accounts with file attachment management, security via Triple DES encryption, USB sync/recharging and the usual organizer functions. RIM squeezes it all into a 4.8 oz/136g, 4.4x2.9x0.8 inch/11.3x7.4x2.0 cm package (tech specs at RIM). The BlackBerry 7230 is exclusive to T-Mobile USA until 2004 and costs about $400. With this release, RIM is moving the BlackBerry into the prosumer/consumer market to expand its customer base beyond enterprise users. The release comes amid speculation of BlackBerry doom following RIM's recent patent ruling loss and ahead of the highly anticipated Handspring Treo 600, its direct competition (which includes the MS Pocket PC Phone Edition Smartphone and the Palm Tungsten W). More at Wired News, E-Commerce Times, InfoWorld and Forbes/Reuters."

Eric Stats writes "Working as a Network Engineer for web-hosting company that prides itself on uptime and network availability, and moonlighting as a part-time Linux administrator, my managers and clients are starting to expect a level of information security knowledge from me. I decided that if I wanted to take my career to the next level, I needed to develop some security-specific skills. I heard a lot about the open source Intrusion Detection System (IDS), Snort from friends and co-workers (mostly that it was a pain to get running, and an even bigger pain to understand what it was doing)." To get past those frustrations, Eric looked at two more books on Snort (and compares them to the already-reviewed Intrusion Detection with Snort ); read on below for his take on what each offers.

uninet writes "The SCO Group, Inc. today released a statement concerning the lawsuit filed against it yesterday by Red Hat, Inc. The release quotes Darl McBride, SCO's President and CEO, as being 'disappointed' with Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik for not being 'forthcoming' about Red Hat's intentions in a previous discussion." Reader psykocrime adds "According to this SuSE press release, SuSE has publically announced their support for RedHat's actions against SCO. Quoting from the press release: 'SCO has already been halted in Germany and we applaud Red Hat's actions to help end their activities in the US -- and beyond. We applaud their efforts to restrict the rhetoric of the SCO group -- and the FUD they are trying to instill -- and will determine quickly what actions SuSE can take to support Red Hat in their efforts.'" Read on for a few more links.

honestpuck writes "In the world of Perl there was once only the 'camel book,' held in perhaps as much reverence as 'K & R' among C programmers. It certainly appealed to roughly the same audience, those who wanted a short, sharp introduction to a programming language. It was with a problem that needed solving and a copy of the camel book that I started as a Perl programmer." Read on for honestpuck's review of another book he regards at least as highly.

James A. A. Joyce writes "The title says it all. There's a tiny blurb over at dev.perl.org. Download Perl 1.0 here, for all of those nostalgics in the Slashdot audience! It's only 263KB, so why not give this piece of 1980s computing history a try?"

objectboy writes with a review of Chris Fehily's SQL: Visual QuickStart Guide, writing "This book teaches ANSI SQL-92 programming to database beginners and intermediates. The publisher, Peachpit Press, publishes mostly end-user and novice titles that usually go unnoticed by professional programmers. Its Perl and PHP books, for example, are of little practical or tutorial use to an experienced developer. In fact, I noticed this SQL book only because a junior developer was using it for a course. The book's table of contents, index, and a sample chapter are posted on Amazon.com. The book's official web site contains errata and other information." Objectboy's review continues below.