Well, since Jon is apparently stuck in an airport trying to get to the Geek Pride thing in Boston (this is true, by the way), we here at slashdot thought we'd run some of his old columns again. So, we present Katz's reviews of The Beach and Scream 3, in true Katz style.

Academic head of the MIT Media Lab Alex Pentland and Eric S. Raymond (ESR), software evangelist and straight-shooting author of some of the Free software world's most influential essays, will be there. If you can cough up zero dollars (or the equivalent in lire, pesos, krugerands, galactic credits, etc.) and get to Boston on Friday (31st March) or Saturday (1st April), you'll be well met at the 3rd annual Geek Pride Festival.

In our latest episode, we discuss Nate's whereabouts, the new release of Perl, Microsoft's X-Box, Netpliance's i-opener and more.

Last week we got a bunch of questions for Deb Richardson, leader of the Open Source Writers Group. These are her answers. Please don't forget as you read: OSWG needs volunteers, and this is a great way to participate in Open Source development if you're handier at writing and editing words than code.

vluther asks: "I was curious if anyone here had used any wireless networking solutions for their house/SOHO. I'm a perl hacker, not a networking guru, I can do basic stuff, but I am nowhere near a network admin. I have tried to describe my setup below, hopefully it will help. I've been looking at the WebGear Aviator 2.4, and the Symphony from Proxim, but both of them come with an option of buying an "access point", which claims to allow for "seamless integration" with your existing wired network. Yet the average home networking kit these guys sell doesn't come with the "Access Point", the thing even costs $399 for Proxim's, and $599 for WebGears. My question is, will I need to purchase one of these if I have my existing setup or can I just buy the Networking kit from Compusa, and get my Internet access/filesharing going?"

Has anyone else noticed the proliferation of little Linux appliances? The latest couple that have been submitted are the PIA (which runs on a Celeron and looks to be available for $300). The other is from Indrema which is still vapor, but with things like a wireless keyboard and an SVHS port, it looks like a cool game box. Rumored release for it is November with a sub $500 price tag. These guys are getting close to what the NetWinders wanted to be a year ago ... What else does the Linux appliance future hold?

Monday you asked Samba-meister Jeremy Allison a bunch of questions. He has answered the 10 highest-moderated ones in the finest lounge-lizard style imaginable (below).

dlc writes,"Apache/Perl programmers will be happy to note that Doug MacEachern has released mod_perl 1.22. It's been sucessfully built with Perl 5.6.0 and Apache 1.3.12, without any problems. Doug's announcement is here." The main mod_perl page can be found at perl.apache.org.

brockgr was the first to note that Perl 5.6.0 has been released and has begun propagating through CPAN. Anyone have a changelog or something I can link to?

eisen writes "We are pleased to announce the Perl Creative Daemon Content sponsored by Mother of Perl, O'Reilly, Stonehenge Consulting, and Whirlwind Interactive. The First, Second, and Third place entries will win a copy of the book "Mastering Algorithms with Perl". In addition the First place entry will win $300. The Second place entry will win $200. The deadline for submitting entries is April 15th. Randal Schwartz has graciously volunteered to judge the entries. More information including contest rules are available at the contest homepage."

Jason Kau writes " is a working paper on the economics of open source software from the Nation Bureau of Economic Research entitled "The Simple Economics of Open Source". Focuses primarily on Apache, Perl, and Sendmail but mentions Linux, Debian, VA Linux, etc. It's a 40 page PDF document. Some background in Economics would probably be helpful."

thing12 wrote to us to say that the fine folks of Perl have a 5.6.0 release candidate announced.

A not-so-Anonymous Coward asks: "I hope to start a dot.org (dot.com is so '90s, yuck) when I finish University (UK), and it will involve stuff to do with graphics. The question is: What's going on with Digital Watermarks, and how could I start using them in free software? Are they patented? Do they involve scary math? My ideal answer would be a C library or Perl module that can work with the standard graphics libs/mods that could do long batches of them, or even a script-fu for The Gimp."

So I'm at Linux Expo Australia, enjoying the conference. You can hit the link below to read assorted random relevant (and irrelevant) notes from the show floor. No, I haven't seen a kangaroo.

The Beacon School is a selective secondary public school on West 61st Street in New York City. It is a place where students are encouraged to work with computers and technology, not just to run educational software, but to write code, administer networks and troubleshoot hardware. Long on knowledge but short on cash, Beacon is a textbook example of how Linux and Open Source make the impossible possible in education.

absolute writes, "Who would have thought Ebay the online auction site would ever had a chance to buy the venerable 250-year old auction house Sotheby's? Apparently, Ebay is trying to capitalize on the price fixing scandal at Sotheby's to buy it. The story is here." Hmm. I hope they get Sotheby's sniped from them at the last minute by some guy with a perl script. Update: 02/29 12:04 by R : eBay denies any interest in Sotheby's.

aarestad writes, "Just saw this on perl.com: the new beta leading to perl 5.6. Read the announcement." It's mostly bugfixes. Pumpking Sarathy says we're on track for a 5.6 final release candidate by Feb.28.

davemabe writes "Every programmer has a favorite scripting language. Here is a well written article by Jon Udell from byte.com detailing the differences between Perl and Python, their cultures, OOP, database access, philosophies, and which one will gain the most converts in the future. Very interesting reading on an almost religious debate. "

Justin Harvey has written a review of The Pragmatic Programmer, a work famous for helping programmers develop their skills. Click below to learn more.

A woman walks quietly onto a bare stage with mysterious lighting and pulls open a massive double door. Behind it is revealed a mysterious machine in motion, gears and pulleys, flaps and treads, and projected onto it a distorted image from the century's brand-new medium: film. At the League of Women Voters meeting in Holland's library on Monday night, I felt like I'd walked into a ridiculous play, perhaps one like George Bernard Shaw's HeartbreakHouse. Click for more...