An anonymous reader asks: "So here I am with yet another computer book (Network Programming with Perl) and a pending case of neck, back and eye strain as I try and juggle the book and the keyboard and try to keep an eye on what's on the monitor. I've tried all sorts of ways to try and wade through a book and type in the various examples but everything is a bit of a kludge. I'm hoping to learn what creative methods for integrating books and computers that folks have come up with. There has to be ways to keep the juggling acts and the assorted cramps and aches to a minimum."

BritMit writes "One of the more intriguing types of algorithm is the genetic algorithm. Genetic algorithms mimic Darwinian natural selection, where "fitness" selects individuals for survival, breeding, and, hence, adaptive mutation. A previous article: Genetic algorithms applied with Perl covered the background on this, and provided two Perl implementations, one that bred bytes and another that bred words. This follow-up article expands this idea of Perl evolution with more advanced material on genetic algorithms."

zenomorph writes: "I first heard of this book on amazon.com on a Monday morning, and read the reviews of people who had purchased this book. I noticed that there were no reviews from any person in the web security community had commented on it, either on Amazon or anywhere else (with the exception of two brief comments on the back of the book, of which one was written by the person who wrote the book's foreword). So I decided to pick it up on Friday after I left work and see what it had to offer. After picking up the book I noticed it was co-authored by three people who all work for Foundstone, a very large security company that deals with everything (including web security). This review will cover some of the topics covered in this book, along with things that could or should have been covered in greater detail." Read on for the rest of zenomorph's review.

owkeuflk writes "When TPJ became part of SysAdmin magazine, I was disappointed, but I stuck with them, and that is probably how they had my e-mail address to contact me that TPJ is being brought back as an e-zine, that is, if they can get 3000 pre-paid subscriptions. I might try it out, even though they are expanding coverage to include Windows -- unthrilled. I liked TPJ best when is was printed on plain, unglossy paper...."

SpinDoctor writes "Looking across the XML bookshelf today, it's easy to see many books discussing XML in a generic manner, or more commonly how to utilize XML within Java, .NET and Perl. Moreover, despite the broad based support that PHP has for XML, there has been no book that tackled the complexities and best practices, and at the same time offered a comprehensive resource to the XML-based APIs -- at least not until now. Read on for more about the best selling Professional PHP4 XML." Read on for the complete review.

chromatic writes with the review below of Writing Perl Modules for CPAN, which explains at a level "between novice and intermediate user" (and in a minimum of space) how to contribute to Perl's own Library of Alexandria.

davorg writes "Over the last few years mod_perl has become a serious force in web development. If you're building a web site to run on an Apache server and you want to write the code in Perl, then you're going to want to install mod_perl on your server too as it's the best way to avoid many of the performance issues with traditional CGI. It's taken a while for publishers to wake up to the fact, however, and there haven't been many books in the shops. It looks like this will be the year that this changes. A number of mod_perl books are about to be published and this is the first." Read on below for Daveorg's thoughts on this one.

corz writes "Has PHP got you down? Are you tired of writing those Perl CGI scripts? Why not check out The Moto Programming Language. Released under the GPL, Moto allows for two modes of execution: interpreted and compiled. Moto is different from the rest of the field in that you can develop a site using interpreted mode for quick testing, then when the site is ready for production you can compile the it into an Apache DSO and serve it straight from memory. If you are looking to learn a new language, or would like to help with development, consider giving Moto a chance. Go download it now."

bobm writes "One of the issues with not using the 'standard' MS tools (VC, VB, etc) is that you face the possiblity of having to load a lot of DLL's to support an application. I'm in this boat with a Perl app I would like to migrate to a couple of Windows 2000 servers. It's a simple app that runs well on our Unix boxes and if it wasn't for the overhead of having to install perl and all of the required modules, it would be a no brainer. However I just stumbled upon Perl2Exe at Indigostar. A small app worked great and I'm wondering if anyone else has used it and how large of an app have they released? Any other pointers and info on pertinent issues would be helpful too."

gz writes "The Whitney has put online an exhibit where viewers are encouraged to examine the source code of the program that generates the art, despite the fact that the majority of viewers have no idea what the code means. Projects use Java, C, Perl, Lingo, and VB."

bp33 writes "Wireless Newsfactor is running a story about how the wireless vendors are climbing over themselves to get Voice-Over-IP cell phones. You might ask "why bother? We already have wireless voice now." But with an open platform for wireless (Symbian, JavaPhone etc), your "voice" (er .. audio) just becomes bits that your programs can manipulate before sending."

prostoalex writes "Ultra WideBand radio is a technology that allows transmitting huge amounts of data over a short distance at very low power. At Intel Developer Forum this week Ben Manny, director of wireless technology development at Intel Research and Development, promised market deployment of UWB-based solutions by 2005-2006. Possible applications of UWB can be discovered in this article that also refers to UWB as 'Bluetooth on steroids'."

A user writes "Calendar publishing with iCal requires a .Mac membership or a WebDAV server. Most ISPs and hosting companies don't offer WebDAV -- or at least mine don't -- but you can run WebDAV under Apache on your Mac, and publish calendars and share them among a local network or among multiple users of a single computer. Already two different tutorials explaining how to do this have appeared on the Web: this one at Mac OS X Hints and this one courtesy of Shawn Wall. I'm sure Slashdot readers could offer even more suggestions." I set up mod_dav for the first time within an hour of downloading iCal the other day, with help from this article. Now, if only iCal weren't really slow and buggy ...

thelenm writes "Fans of The Perl Journal will remember that it was bought by SysAdmin Magazine and recently ceased to exist altogether. Well, it's coming back as a monthly e-zine, which you can subscribe to for $1/month. With their new business model, they need at least 3,000 subscribers to go ahead with publication. The first issue is due out November 1, so subscribe now!"

dooling writes "Continuing the tradition of well written O'Reilly 'Programming' books by those who know the language best, Programming PHP, co-written by the creator of PHP, Rasmus Lerdorf, provides a detailed overview of the popular PHP web-page scripting language. This book provides good programmers who have never used PHP enough information to do serious web development using PHP and serves as an excellent reference for web-page designers who dabble in PHP." Read on for the rest of his review.

Jodrell writes: "(via PerlMonks) Bernd Dulfer has posted a Quick Reference Guide to Perl 6, based on Larry's Apocalypses and Damian's Exegesises, as well as Parrot. The Guide is available in POD and RTF formats."

An anonymous reader writes "Vnunet reports on the low adoption of Apache 2 has caused its producers to advocate freezing development of the open-source Web server until makers of add-in software catch up. Almost six months after the launch of Apache 2, less than one percent of sites use it, due to a lack of suitable third-party modules." I'm not sure where they are getting the freezing Apache development part, more talk about forking for 2.1 right now on the httpd mailing list. The article does have it right though that until there is a reason to upgrade and the modules are in place that adoption is not going to happen. While the cores of both Perl and PHP are thread-safe, the third-party modules are not. This renders one the larger reasons to use Apache 2.0, the threaded http support, useless for applications using either of these application layers. It comes down to the question of whether the third-party module writers are better off supporting what is used or what is new.

Not only did Larry Wall answer your questions, but he said they were excellent questions. You've got to love Larry Wall, not just because he's a nice guy and created Perl, but also because he is the first Slashdot interview guest ever to send his answers preformatted in squeaky-clean HTML. We appreciate this like you wouldn't believe. They're great answers, too -- straightforward, heartfelt, and entertaining. Enjoy!

Alexander Moskalyuk writes "Most of the people I know have a love-hate relationship with Kip Irvine's Assembly Language for Intel-based Computers. Ask any student who used this textbook and you will either get a cheerful 'I've used it, it's great, I learned Assembly, and it has lots of useful examples' or resentful 'The book is horrible, hard to follow and full of code that is irrelevant to the contents of a specific chapter.'" Alexander's review of the book (below) concentrates on its role as an instructional aid, and on the differences between the third and fourth editions.

Updates from the field on Google access in the People's Republic of China, Lance Bass's space-shot (shot down), the gaming ban in Greece, recording artists and Internet music downloads, and more. Read on for the details.