Wee writes "While searching for some serial port programming information, I came across a result labeled How to Build a Computerized Android Robot Head for $600. That title demanded a read. This guy built a Java and Perl/Tk controlled android head out of R/C motors, bicycle parts, a mannequin head, two QuickCams and my favorite item: a brass plant holder. Turns out the entire site is chock full of android/hardware/PC-control know-how (including scenarios in which one might find a need for an android head)."

Nat Friedman often seems to live in the shadow of his famous coworker, Miguel de Icaza, but today it's his turn to shine. You asked Nat questions last week. This week he answers, in detail, with lots of links, touching on subjects ranging from Gnome's future directions to how Microsoft is dealing with Linux as a competitor to Windows.

Reader the_rev_matt writes with this review of Hungry Minds' Zope Bible. He finds both merit and shortcomings in this book, and suggests that "Bible" may be too grand a word for this decent-but-spotty work. Read on for his reasoning.

blankmange writes "NewsFactor reports that Quark's QuarkXPress is not quite up-to-snuff under Mac OS X." Sources in the article claim Mac OS X still isn't quite there in regard to printing, or predictability. That is, I suppose, you don't mind crashes as long as you know when they are going to happen and what is going to cause them.

cascadefx writes "It appears that this programmer has created an Open Sourced Unix Desktop, PerlBox, written in Perl and Tk. I found this posted in response to an article on Perl Monks asking if Perl was obsessed with CGI?. Apparently not. Check it out, it looks pretty interesting." I wonder how fast it runs?

blankmange writes: "This headline caught my eye: 'The End of Computer Rebooting.' Seems that there has been some new developments in memory technology: The new thin-film technology that could give rebooting the boot is based on resistor logic rather than the traditional transistor logic used in most PCs and other memory-enabled devices. It also is considerably faster than current memory systems and holds the promise of reducing the time required to transfer and download multimedia content and other massive files. This is great news, but what am I going to do with the extra hour or so a day?"

1Eye writes "Wired is running this article on the iPod, about a hack to display XML news headlines." That's pretty nifty. I wrote a 40-line Perl script to download arbitrary RSS feeds and create MP3s with the headline as the title and the site name as the artist, but it doesn't do long titles (limited to 30 chars by ID3v1, D'oh!) and doesn't manage the MP3s with the iPod.

Slashback with more on handheld everything-boxes, a softer review of the new Sharp Zaurus, raising money for open technologies, Gateway's singing cow, and getting around with alternative root servers -- all below. Enjoy. Update: 04/12 06:41 GMT by T : There's an update below in the part on alternate root servers, too.

Reader cpfeifer contributes the review below of O'Reilly's Programming Jabber: if your job (or hobby) includes instant messaging in all its glory, Jabber is a free-beer, free-speech framework for setting up instant messaging systems not bound to a single server in the middle. As cpfeifer points out, instant messaging can mean a lot more than popping an on-screen note to your friend in Des Moines -- machines and programs can use a general purpose communication system like this, with no human middleman required.

The Apache Software Foundation's Apache HTTP Server, version 2.0.35, has now been released for General Availability. You can find the official announcement, and download the server, from their website. Be sure to try a mirror first. Congratulations to the HTTP Server Project for getting the final release out. If you are wondering about it being usable in a production environment, you should poke around Slashdot's servers and see if you are surprised (now if only mod_perl was finished we could move more of our servers over to using the new release).

BorrisYeltsin writes "perl.com has Exegesis 4 from the Damian, in repsonse to Larry's latest Apocalypse. This installment covers news of the new flow and block control changes, fully integrated exceptions and some other cool stuff!"

bLanark asks: "I've used a variety of programming languanges over the years, but recently started using Java commercially (as opposed to just playing at home). As soon as I was on that Java project, I became a rampant stallion, never left my wife alone, sexually. She even started sleeping in the spare room just to get some rest on some nights! Soon, I was back on C++ (due to a budget cut and re-org). I am no longer a stallion (I won't go into more details!). My theory is that java's so easy, so after conquering an API a day (JDOM, Swing,...) I just came home and carried on conquering. Now, I have to work for a living again, and it doesn't leave much energy. Do other slashdotters have similar experience? Is lisp tantric? Do assembler programmers favour wham-bam-that's-the-end-of-that-non-maskable-inter rupt-where's-the-remote-control-honey-can-you-get- me-a-beer? What's the best programming language for attracting sexual partners? What about Operating Systems? Does MS == S&M?" Does C/C++ dampen your love life? Does Perl please your partner? Can you jive with Java? Inquiring minds want to know.

bsartist writes "I've released the first version of a Cocoa/Perl bridge that I call CamelBones. It's alpha-quality but functional enough for the example application, a POD reader similar to MacPerl's Shuck, to be written entirely in Perl." There are other projects like this that have been started, though this is the first one I've seen (since the Rhapsody days, anyway) that has code available.

reflexreaction writes "This article on NewsFactor does a decent job of covering some of the issues facing Open Source Software (OSS). It points to Linux's growth area, non-mission critical projects in mid-sized companies, and its main weakness, the desktop. It also briefly discusses Linux's potential growth into mission critical applications if scalability issues are addressed. Quick easy read. My favorite quote from the article "Linux on the desktop is toast.""

techmaven writes "When Channel Islands National Park officials needed an estimated about 300 rats exterminated on the east side of environmentally sensitive Anacapa Island, Aspen Ag Helicopters got the call. The kill was necessary because the rodents, descendants of rats that reached the island by way of a shipwreck a century or more ago, were decimating the populations of two rare seabirds. And GPS helped the helicopter company do the job."

mpark6288 writes "Recently, the news has been rocked by a discovery: Self-Repairing plastics. As News Factor: Sci Tech reports: "Chemical engineers are pushing plastics to new heights with two new developments: A material called Automend can restore itself to 60 percent of its previous strength and an organic plastic with magnetic properties can be controlled by light." Of course, this has frightening ramifications, as Jay Leno puts it: Cher could live forever."

mpark6288 writes: "Alright, so we all remember elementary school, and the endless paper cuts that we got from trying to learn some origami. Some how my crane was always a boat. But, as News Factor: Sci Tech states: 'The theorem is, you can make any shape, and there is an algorithm for folding the piece of paper,' stated MIT Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering Erik Demaine said. Referencing applications of origami in robotic arm manipulation, bioinformatics, protein folding and molecular biology, Demaine said there is a multitude of possibilities from origami principles as simple as folding a square piece of paper in half and making one calculated cut. So who knows, those annoying little shuriken (throwing stars) that you made to throw at girls (eww cooties) could have been a major scientific breakthrough!"

elfdump writes "Tilly, one of the Perl Monks, has been threatened with lawsuits from his employer for performing open-source development. His company claims ownership on all of the GPL'd work he has performed since he was hired, including rights to portions of the Carp and Exporter modules. In addition to his code being pulled, Tilly's revolutionary ideas on regular expression engines (1, 2) may now never be fulfilled. In this statement, Tilly warns open-source developers of the dangers of the "work for hire" provision in contracts, which entitles a company to all of its employee's intellectual products, regardless of their applicability to the company or whether or not the ideas were developed on work time. Definitely something to consider if you perform OSS development." One thing to clarify: your employer does not own everything you do by law - only by the contract you may have signed. Brief rant below.

President Chimp Toe writes "The landmark 1.0 release of bioperl has just been announced. Bioperl is an open-source collection of perl modules designed for the life-sciences community, offering a comprehensive range of modules for DNA and protein sequence manipulation and analysis. More broadly speaking, bioperl is a beautiful example of the virtues of open-source programming and code re-use. Assembled over the last few years by a diverse group of individuals from academia and the private sector, bioperl has made life easier for countless bioinformatics and computational biologists. It allows us to cut out the crappy part of programming (dealing with biological data formats, for instance), and concentrate on the fun part - answering biological questions. Thanks all those involved - keep up the good work!"

JayBonci writes "Twin Galaxies is running a story on how after fifteen years, the search for the reigning Asteroids high score champion has ended. The late Scott Safran's family was presented with the award (he died several years ago from a falling injury). It's a pretty interesting article on how Scott's family never knew of his achievement until they were contacted. As it turns out, Twin Galaxies is compiling a book of high score champions of major and classic video games over the years."