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...

Well, last Thursday evening we announced the Beanie award winners at the Slashdot/Andover/VA shindig at The China Club. For those of you not able to attend, I've written a synopsis below, otherwise you can watch the whole deal at TheSync. You can grab the awards in both streaming and downloadable format. And, if you'd like to see some pictures from the show, check out Brian Hawkins' online-pix as well as Kurt Gray's pix from the Andover booth.

Weeden writes "Leafing through the latest issue of The Perl Journal I came accross the Perl Poetry Contest. The deadline is the 20th of February and all the details can be found here. "

Bringing a little competition to O'Reilly, this Manning Publications book Elements of Programming with Perl seems to be have struck a nerve with reviewer chromatic. Click below to find out how - and possibly add a new book to your library.

mouthbeef asks: "What's the future of storage media? With CDs and tapes prone to relatively speedy decay, and hard-drives an entropic nightmare of moving parts, how will we keep our data safe over the long haul? I just got some e-mail from a writer pal who isn't really technologically sophisticated, alarmed because someone told him that his backup CDs would decay and rot in 20 years. He's an sf writer, and he was thinking "big picture:" a coming infopocalypse in which sysadmins devote their every waking moment to re-archiving their old backup data." Is such a scenario likely? Why or why not? (More)