An anonymous submitter copies from the website: "MisterHouse is an open source home automation program. It's fun, it's free, and it's entirely geeky. Written in Perl, it fires events based on time, web, socket, voice, and serial data. It currently runs on Windows 95/98/NT/2k/XP and on most Unix based platforms, including Linux and Mac OSX. It can talk, it can check your messages, control the lights, program your VCR, and what is best - it understands spoken commands. It can even track your car by interfacing to a TNC. And there are 600 users and 209 authors contributing to this project. Cool, eh?"

mbogosian asks: "Recently, my broadened responsibilities have me doing some database design and modeling, and I'm happy for the new knowledge and experience, but I'm a bit frustrated about the tool selection. I know most of us have had plenty of experience with at least a handful of all the wonderful Open Source development tools out there (like GCC, GNU Make, Subversion , and Perl to name a few). My question is this: where are OpenSource design tools? I've tried what I could find on SourceForge, but (as usual?) most of the projects that sounded promising were either still in the planning stages or seemed abandoned. Of course something which allowed be to create nifty class charts and output them to UML and/or SQL would be really cool, but I've yet to find something that works (especially in Linux). What are your favorite Open Source design tools and what do you like about them?"

Scott Auge asks: "Should one be able to sue a filtering company for libel? After seeing an article top) about filtering software for sites, I decided to take a look at how mine is listed. Upon punching my site in at this N2H2 form, I see it listed as pornography. One look at my site, and you will know it is far from pornography. doesn't seem quite right to me. Opinions?"

parasew asks: "I am searching for Web-based Project Management Software, which should be (mod-)perl based, so I can enhance it or put it into an existing environment using MovableType, which is in a sort of alpha-state. I found a site about Call Center, Bug Tracking and Project Management Tools for Linux and also this short listing, but sadly they are just a bunch of projects which only come close to the kind of tool I am searching for. Gantt and Chronos, seem to be a very nice Web-Calendar packages written in Perl. I was just wondering why no one is using iCalendar (does anyone know of Perl-based Software using iCalendar), as most of the Agenda Software uses iCalendar, and even Mozilla Calendar is capable of subscribing to remote-Calendars. This looks very interesting to me. In general, I wanted to ask you Monks for the best way to do this. Should I create a new app from scratch or reusing existing stuff?"

Alex Moskalyuk writes "Ben Hammersley's Content Syndication with RSS is a step-by-step guide to implementing RSS. This standard is gaining popularity among the Web community, and some of your favorite sites might syndicate their content as RSS feeds. The new O'Reilly publication focuses on many aspects of this standard, and is of primary interest to developers, Web site designers, data architects and anyone interested in distributing their data around the Web." So if you have a steady stream of information for your customers, family, or fans, read on for the rest of Alex's review.

Web Sawy asks: "I work for a large-ish company (4000+). We have a number of disparate divisions and, believe it or not, varying knowledge on How Technology Works. It was brought to my attention that one part of the corporate website has been using 'a third party tool' to 'compare the performance of individual ads'. In other words, some external party is tracking user surfing habits. How does one go about educating co-workers on the evils of these third party services, which are currently 'helping' the Marketing department? What technologies are people using to do this type of reporting to help the Marketing department generate their numbers? In the world that I live, I can't even see those third-party ads (or hidden images!). I certainly can build my own user tracking system using existing technologies but before I fight that major uphill battle, I wonder if Slashdot readers would share their insights."

dvdweyer writes "This book deals with administration of UNIX (one wonders why the book doesn't bear the title "Essential UNIX Administration"), all major UNIX platforms are covered, most of them in their almost latest version when the book went to press (Linux: Red Hat 7.3 and SuSE 8.0, Solaris 8 and 9, FreeBSD 4.6, AIX 5, HP-UX 11/11i, Tru64 5.1), SCO and IRIX were dropped for this edition, FreeBSD was added. Other UNIXes (e.g. Debian Linux) are not mentioned, but this makes the book only a little bit less useful on those, with some imagination the information can be used, except for special topics (e.g. package management). This book is on system administration and not targeted on desktop users, as such it doesn't cover KDE, Gnome or any desktop application." Dvddwyer's section-by-section review continues below.

GreyPoopon writes "Computerworld has an article referring to SCO's announcement of Enterprise Linux for the Itanium 2. Base installation starts at $999 for up to four CPUs. My favorite quote: "With its new system, SCO is a little late to the Linux on Itanium 2 market." I would think being late would be the least of their worries right now. I personally consider this to be my daily dose of comedy. Newsfactor has a better article."

With TiVo's release of the much anticipated Home Media Option (anticipated by me, anyway), I renewed my quest to find a way to integrate my computer's media files with my TV. TiVo's solution is not an option for me, because I don't have a Series2, and even if I did, the TiVo solution doesn't work with DirecTV units (for now, anyway). So I looked into something I saw a few months ago on ThinkGeek: QCast Tuner for PlayStation 2.

Anonymous Coward writes "I'm pleased to annouce the tentative schedule for YAPC::NA::2003 (Yet Another Perl Conference, North America). Please visit the website to view it. It should only change if conflicts arise, or speakers can't make it. If this happens, slots will be filled with other great talks. Don't forget to register so you don't miss out! Visit the website for other new information on a regular basis!"

Alan Eibner submitted this review of Addison-Wesley's Open Source Web Development With LAMP. He writes "The number of books about Web development technologies is astounding. Some claim you can learn everything you need to know in 24 hours. Others require several complementary volumes in order to learn the subject. Why another web development book? And what sets this one apart from the rest?" Read on for the rest of Alan's chapter-by-chapter review. Update: 04/11 18:22 GMT by T : I'd called this an O'Reilly book rather than Addison-Wesley; sorry, now fixed.

Saint Aardvark writes "According to this article, a honeypot was recently set up on two wireless LANs. 25% of the connections observed were deliberate, and 71% of those were to send spam. Even more reason to take care of your ether." These statistics should be taken with a salt lick...

Gabor Szabo writes "For anyone interested in Perl, Yet Another Perl Conference is coming to Haifa, Israel on May 11th. Registration is now open. Though the schedule is not final yet the list of presentations is already finished. There are going to be a quite some excellent presentations including Perl and .NET. This is a great way to get involved in the Perl community."

ggoebel writes "Extending and Embedding Perl is, as it boldly states on the cover, 'The definitive guide to XS, embedding, and the Perl internals.' This book is well organized and information dense. One could spend days sifting through the available perlapi, perlcall, perlembed, perlguts perlxs, perlxstut, and h2xs documentation. After which you'll probably understand very well references to nethack's 'You are in a maze of twisty little passages all alike.' Or you could get yourself a copy of this book and find your way out of the maze." Read on for the rest of ggoebel's review.

ggoebel writes "Programming Web Services with Perl is principally a book on implementing solutions using XML-RPC and SOAP in Perl. It also covers complementary and alternative standards such as WSDL, UDDI, and REST in some detail. And on the periphery, it finishes with a whirlwind tour of developing message routing, alternative data encoding within XML, security, transactions, workflow, internationalization, service discovery, extension, and management techniques and specifications." Read on for ggoebel's full review.

signlink writes "A new online workshop starts today, March 30th, and the first topic is posted. We are running a free perl workshop which will take place over the next ten weeks at http://linux.biondosmith.com . Although free, registration is required - you need to use a valid email address. This will be an interactive online workshop - we will learn to install, read and modify freeware cgi-scripts, and using the skills this teaches us we will write our own. Emphasis will be on the reusability of code, and the course will complete a class project - we will write a form-mail program that executes some user-validation features."

Roland Piquepaille writes "A University of Toronto researcher has developed a flat lens that doesn't respect the "normal" laws of nature and could significantly enhance the resolution of imaged objects. "The creation of an unusual flat lens may finally resolve a long-running controversy about the existence of materials that have metaphysical qualities -- so-called "metamaterials" -- that transcend the laws of nature. The lens could lead to amplified antennas, smaller cell phones and increased data storage on CD-ROMs. As says George Eleftheriades, the Toronto professor, "This is new physics." Check this column for more details and other references to metamaterials."

These are LinuxWorld columnist Nick Petreley's answers to your questions about the (somewhat controversial) Evans Data Survey he helped analyze that shows Linux is taking more market share from Windows than from Unix.

Wee writes "Linux Server Hacks is not a book which will teach you system administration. In fact, if you aren't already familiar with how to set up and run Linux, this book will likely confuse you. It is also not a book which will teach you how to break into Linux servers. The word 'hack' in this case is not a pejorative. What LSH will do is show you how to fully tweak that Linux box you already run. It will show you new (and possibly better) ways to do the things you already do. The book will probably not make you a better admin, but it will almost certainly save you some time or give you at least one 'Why didn't I ever think of that?' head-scratcher." Read on for the rest of Wee's review.

honestpuck writes "It has been quite a while since I have come across a book I'd label 'essential.' The last for non-programming computer users was Robin Williams' The Mac Is Not A Typewriter which I bought for a number of new Macintosh users." Now, though, honestpuck has found another book which he says is required reading for modern computer users -- read on for his review of O'Reilly's Google Hacks.