chipmunk writes "My prayers have been answered! Larry and Guido have joined forces to produce Parrot, what will surely become the best language ever written. The power of Perl and the sanity of Python. The Py3K and Perl 6 development are merging, with Jeremy Hylton and Dan Sugalski as joint development leads. Read more in the press release on use Perl;, and see a joint interview on perl.com!"

It's about time. It's like the right brain and left brain are working together, at long last. O'Reilly has already inked a deal to publish Programming Parrot, and Yet Another Society is set to merge with the recently launched Python Software Foundation. Both Guido and Larry will be working for ActiveState.

Nasko asks: "We use a cable modem to connect our 29 PC's in the LAN to the Internet. I'm routing with Windows 2000 Professional and WinRoute. I've successfully set up a MRTG to show me the traffic for the 2 LAN interfaces in the routing machine, but couldn't find any way to get reports for the in/out traffic per local IP address. Most of the PC's are running under Windows 98 so I can't (at least i I don't think so) set up SNMP agents on them - I'll appreciate any help concerning filtering out the SNMP info from the routing machine coming from/going to a specific local interface - in fact i'm not sure if there's a way to filter that on the 'Target' line of a MRTG .CFG file. Alternatively, where I can find IP Accounting software for Windows 2000 so that I can 'feed' my MRTG, by using Perl to provide the 2 needed values?"

KellyM writes "'I've spent the last three days fixing compile-time bugs with xMach, and I'm currently testing using a copy of VMware running FreeBSD. The code compiled so cleanly that a stable release was inevitable, allowing me to finally start doing some of the new innovative work I dreamed up years ago, when my SPARC (since dead due to a battery issue) glowed with warmth onto me, and inspired me to create. Who knows -- we might make something useful out of xMach yet. It's certainly come a long way from seed to sprout; as its stalk strengthens, I hope to help it blossom into the full beauty of the great scheme hatched years ago. '"

jmallett writes: "xMach, the microkernel BSD Operating System, first made an announcement on Daily DaemonNews stating that there were some new source and binary snapshots available. Also, OsOpinion has an article I wrote about my experiences so far, entitled 'Giving Birth to xMach'. Development of xMach currently is limited to the microkernel and its servers, but a userland (based on that from the good people at OpenBSD) will be worked on shortly. Some of the primary focuses on xMach are data storage, security, and non-bloat."

deran9ed writes ""People can get quite emotional about Python, in a way they rarely get about software," says van Rossum, who is now director of Python Labs at Digital Creations. In this question and answer interview, he explains why Python deserves such loyalty, when it is better to use Python than Perl, and why increasing numbers of business applications developers will be using Python for years to come. THe full article is on SearchEnterpriseLinux"

Tonight: Reactions and reductions of previous Slashdot appearances, including but not limited to: in-dash video gaming for the less upwardly mobile; a CSS descrambler you could scratch as a crib onto the side of your #2 pencil; and more on the engineers vs. scientists brouhaha. Enjoy!

TheCorporal asks: "Our company has come to the point in our development where we feel it is time for a recode. We are rewriting code for a large multiplayer, browser/text, turn based strategy game (Like Utopia), and would like to know the best language solution in terms of speed. A Rapid development platform would be nice, but most important is the speed of execution." There's more below, but the question is simple, which language is the swift hare of the net, and which one is the toiling tortoise, and where do the others fall, in between.

High school is bizarre enough, but a private high school is an environment uniquely removed from reality. S. and G., two sophomores at such a school in one of the United States' hot technology corridors, put up a couple of private websites with their unflattering thoughts about the school experience. Last week those sites got them suspended for two days. Worse -- because he wasn't familiar with the distinction between perl's scalar and list context, S. now has a police record. Update: 03/14 10:49 PM by J : We had some database trouble in the last couple hours, but all the comments seem to be back... whew.

An Anonymous Coward, who wears a Camel on his shirt, asks: "Dr. David Touretzky has done it again, posting a 7-line 526-byte Perl VOB descrambler on his ever-growing Gallery of CSS Descramblers. 'qrpff' was written by MIT Student Information Processing Board members Keith Winstein and Marc Horowitz for a 6-hour seminar on 'Decrypting DVD' taught at MIT in January-February. Did those guys violate the DMCA by teaching the class?" Click below for the script, which is among the most obscure pieces of code I've ever seen. For something so small, this is quite an accomplishment. It's also a bit of an embarassment for Hollywood when you consider that the basis of a multi-billion dollar revenue-stream can be foiled by such a small piece of code!

Daniel Dvorkin asks: "A few months ago, the small but growing company I work for decided that our current FileMaker-based database solution wasn't working. As DBA, I recommended a MySQL server with a Perl or PHP-based front end. My boss, who despite being a Mac guy has recently developed an inexplicable mania for all things Microsoft, is insisting that I develop everything with Access as a front end. I'm deeply unhappy about this, but I'm hoping that I might be able to salvage a little bit of the situation by using MySQL on Linux rather than SQL Server on NT for the back end." Think something like this might be possible? Read on for more informaiton. Updated!

Foxxz writes "MSNBC has a story on online journals. personally, ive been writing in an online journal for almost a year using a perl script i whipped up. It can be a great outlet for a bitchfest." This is a great example of the whole "peer to peer" journalism that everyone wets their pants over about the Internet. Call it what you will, but the ease of accessibility to the materials is, IMHO, one of the most compelling reasons for web surfing.

xueexueg writes: "Dr. David Touretzky has posted a new piece of DeCSS art here, as well as his response to a threatening letter from the MPAA. Both are triumphantly good, one an epic haiku with the most intelligent and beautiful commentary I've heard in months, the other a response to the MPAA lawyers who evidently told Touretzky that his entire home page is a 'circumvention device.'" Both are good reads. I realize that posting this sort of thing on Slashdot is simply preaching to the choir, but some part of me hopes that in the end we'll still have a freedom of speech, a freedom to reverse engineer, and a freedom to watch the media we purchase. Sure seems less likely these days.

Ravagin asks: "OK, I'm trying to teach myself Perl, and I'm doing fairly well, but I'd like to be able to take it with me, as it were. I've got a Palm IIIxe and a Palm Portable Keyboard, and was wondering if there was a port of Perl to the Palm OS (as there is with C and BASIC)? It doesn't seem to me that it would be extremely difficult. And before you say it, my C skills are way too primitive to do it myself. The Ten Perl Myths Page says it's in the works, but that's from a year ago. None of the major palm software sites have anything, but is someone perhaps working on it?" Wow! Now this is something that would actually get me to dust off my (unused) Palm VII. Of course, you'd have to do quite a bit of coding to get a Perl interpreter (and base modules) to fit in 2 megs or less. Porters might have better luck with the 8MB Palm models but even that's kinda tight. Do any of you see Perl on the Palm platform anytime soon, or is it a pipe dream?

Years after the virtues of XML were first extolled (and plenty of uses both front-and-center and behind-the-scenes later), XML still isn't the do-all, be-all wonder we were led to believe. Book reviewing genius chromatic here dissects a book that sounds aimed at intermediate or advanced programmers (of other languages) who want extend their grasp with a greater understanding of the flexibility inherent to XML. How well it succeeds? Well, see what he's got to say about that.

An unnamed assailant writes: "I want to do a real nerdy project: My VCR has a plug in the back for a LAN-C/Control-L cable which connects to a serial port on a computer as well as a LAN-C connection on a camcorder. The VCR also came with some simple software to control a VCR and a camera through the cable. This was obviously before nonlinear editing was as common as it is now. Anyway, I want to see if there's any way to figure out what the codes are that the protocol uses so I can talk to the VCR using perl. Any suggestions?" Now this would be a great project, even (or especially?) without the whiz-bang eyecandy of B2K. There are a lot of middle- and high-schools with LAN-C equipped VCRs (most of which probably never get used that way), and it would be nice to be able to control them this way.

rednax asks: "We see a lot of discussion on /. regarding many 'high level' languages (PERL, Python and JAVA for example are all well covered) rather than assembly language. There are a few exceptions such as this discussion from waaaay back when, which touched on it. Assembly level languages obviously have a place in all systems at the lowest level to provide basic services, but what about other areas. Obviously there are trade offs. Speed and compact object code are the two main arguments for assembler, but how much do these matter when we can get 1GHz processors, and large amounts of RAM? How many /.ers do use assembler, and what for?"

rlauer writes "See http://www.openbedrock.org for a new open source server side scripting tool for Apache web servers. Bedrock is written in perl and available for use as a CGI or a mod_perl module. Bedrock is distributed under the GPL."

The Complete FreeBSD, The Design and Implementation of 4.4BSD, and The FreeBSD Handbook are among the most notable books available for BSD, but recently it was my pleasure to review a new book about FreeBSD, The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide by Ted Mittelstaedt.

An unnamed correspondent writes: "At least, that's the rumor on the street. Wonder what this will mean for Apple's Darwin project?" The rumor is confirmed, boys and girls, Wilfredo Sanchez has indeed left Apple. A statement is on his Advogato page; apparently he has gone to KnowNow. Sanchez says on that page too that he'll still be involved with Darwin maintaining Apache and Perl for that platform.

NiceGeek hooked us up with an amusing story about assorted legal wackiness surrounding CPU Fans. Apparently one company is suing another because they are (gasp) stealing advanced fan technology and violating patents! Horror! The sad part is that its probably true. Someone needs to write a perl script to take this story, and s/x/y/g the names and technologies, and then feed every company and technology into it. Then create an archive of every possible violation lawsuit. Then patent the idea, and sue anyone who violates it. Just cut me in for thinking of it ;)