doom writes "For those of you who haven't been paying attention, when the The Perl Cookbook by Tom Christiansen & Nathan Torkington came out in 1999 it immediately became one of the primary references in the perl world. It's one of the first places you should check before making a move with perl, right up there with search.cpan.org, itself. Now we've got the second edition. What's the diff? The diff is 58 new recipes and program examples (list provided below), plus two new chapters on mod_perl and XML (which provide an additional 27)." Read on for doom's complete review.

honestpuck writes "Even Grues Get Full is the fourth and latest collection of cartoons from User Friendly. I got this collection because a friend said the third collection was brilliant 'from cover to cover.' I have to say that this collection did have some exceptionally good moments, but 'from cover to cover,' I think not." Honestpuck's review continues, below.

nead writes "If you are disciple in the church of Wall, or like me you believe that laziness is the father of invention, or if you simply have more than a couple *nix machine to administer, Kirk Bauer's new book Automating Unix and Linux Administration is definitely for you. From the creator of the popular open source projects AutoRpm and LogWatch comes a thorough - and believe it or not entertaining - look at how one can leverage the power of a few common tools to significantly reduce the time and effort system administrators spend doing their jobs." Read on below for the rest of nead's review.

Alex Moskalyuk writes with the review below of John Viega and Matt Messier's Secure Programming Cookbook for C and C++, a book which he says is useful -- but only if you have the background to use it. Read on for the details, including Alex's alternative reading suggestions.

prostoalex writes "In a story mainly about new OpenOffice release, NewsFactor Network quotes an interesting finding of Jupiter Research analyst: "Open-source productivity suites did "surprisingly well" in the mid-size business market, with the OpenOffice suite alone claiming a share of about 6%. Furthermore, [Joe Wilcox] found that some 19% of small businesses ran Linux on their desktop, and a whopping 26% ran Linux on their servers.""

segment writes "TechNewsWorld is running an article about Linux in Hollywood. The article describes speed advantages, cost advantages, movies in which Linux played a role (including Shrek, Star Wars, and Titanic). Mentions of the embrace for Linux with history on Apple, Microsoft, and other vendors, and how they've adapted to the use.`As a rule, no major studio will rely on a tool without access to the source code. The risk is too great. It's not that the studios want to putter around modifying commercial programs, rather it's insurance -- insurance that they can do so if they must to meet a production deadline.` Very informative article." Robin Rowe (the author) is the project manager for Cinepaint (formerly "FilmGimp"), but writes about 3D applications, barriers to software entry in Hollywood, and more.

honestpuck writes with the review below of O'Reilly's Practical mod_perl, which he describes as "a doorstop sized volume that provides more information on using mod_perl than you ever thought you needed." Read on for the rest of his review, and to see whether you actually do need to know what's in this book.

langles writes "Perl 5.8.1 has been released. Read the official announcement, then download it from a CPAN mirror near you. If you've been following the Perl5 Porters List, you'll know this version was very well tested before they released it. However, there may be some modules that will need to be fixed before they will work with this release." The announcement also contains full details on incompatibilities and known issues, so give it a once over before upgrading, especially if from a pre-5.8 version.

brentlaminack asks: "Almost a year ago Tim Bray of XML fame said 'when the huge universe of MS Office documents becomes available for processing by any programmer with a Perl script and a bit of intelligence, all sorts of wonderful new things can be invented that you and I can't imagine.' Now that MS has dropped the ball on the XML Office front, and StarOffice has fulfilled its XML promise, where are all those 'wonderful new things?' Is anybody out there writing Perl/Java/whatever programs to take advantage of StarOffice XML? Could this be an opportunity for Free/Open/Libre software to leapfrog MS Office in real productivity as XML proponents have promised all along?" What kinds of new and wonderful things can you come up with?

greenhide writes "As forecast in this story, a new Microsoft worm has indeed wriggled to the surface. The W32.Swen's claim to fame is its professional looking email advertisement that pretends to be a fake Microsoft patch. Earlier viruses have made the claim, but none of them looked this good. It appears to have infected over 1.5 million machines. "

Dan writes "Apache.org's Joshua Slive says that ApacheCon, the official conference of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), announced today the opening of registration for ApacheCon 2003, to be held November 16-20, 2003 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Apachecon kicks off with intensive full- and half-day tutorials that offer real world insight, techniques, and methodologies pivotal to the increasing demand for open source software. Agenda and sessions include topics such as Apache with XML and Java; All Things Apache; and Apache with Perl and PHP."

An aoynmnuos raeedr sumbtis: "An interesting tidbit from Bisso's blog site: Scrambled words are legible as long as first and last letters are in place. Word of mouth has spread to other blogs, and articles as well. From the languagehat site: 'Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe. ceehiro.' Jamie Zawinski has also written a perl script to convert normal text into text where letters excluding the first and last are scrambled."

Read on below for two readers' review of books aimed at Red Hat 9 users: acemics writes with a quick review of Red Hat Linux 9 Professional Secrets, and reader skogs contributes a longer look at Sam's Publishing's Red Hat Linux 9: Unleashed.

The Stunted Leech asks: "I am trying to develop an LDAP interface to an existing customer database and would like to implement a simple LDAP listener that could be queried from e-mail clients. Before everyone suggests importing the data to OpenLDAP or developing a back-end for it, let me just say that it isn't very feasible: I'm the only person assigned to the project, and my company doesn't have the time or hardware resources to maintain an LDAP server. So I'm looking for very simple implementations of LDAP servers, preferably in a scripting language like Perl or Python (we use Perl for CGIs and wxPython for GUI front-ends). I've come across a couple of Java-based ones, but they seemed overly complex - all I need to do is retrieve a contact's e-mail or phone number from our database. Pointers to any sort of simple LDAP servers are welcome, even if they do little more than return the same result to all queries."

Idean writes "Generating a visual representation is often the best way to understand large data sets, but standard tools such as gnuplot often fall short. This article shows how to use Perl/Tk, the standard GUI toolkit for Perl, to quickly build custom plotting and graphing tools."

joukev writes "Perl.com is running an article on pVoice. pVoice is an Open Source communication system for severely disabled children written in Perl. I started this for my daughter in 2001. She's still using it and hopefully the medical world will see that there are Open Source alternatives for these kinds of applications. More information on pVoice can be found on the pVoice website (general information) or on the pVoice Developers website."

Young Grasshoopa asks: "In my 6 years of IT life, I've been a sys admin, perl programmer, and a config. mgmt. engineer. I've recently learned programming in C, and somehow ended up learning a bit of Linux Kernel programming as well. I now have developed a strong motivation to become a Linux kernel developer, but given my background, I am not sure how to approach companies or Open Source Project groups. I ask all those who were in a similar situation - how do you become a full-time kernel developer?"

honestpuck contributes this review of Sams Publishing's Teach Yourself AppleScript in 24 Hours, writing "The market for books on AppleScript cannot be a large one, since there never seem to be many volumes in it; usually only one at a time is up to date and worth the money. Now that O'Reilly's AppleScript In A Nutshell is showing its age (and wasn't that great in the first place), and Danny Goodman's book is even older, I was pleased to hear that this volume had come along." Read on for honestpucks' mixed impressions of the book.

libertynews writes "KPLUG President Kevin Pedigo has just announced his latest project -- RPMPAN, an archive of CPAN Perl modules in RPM format, generated nightly."

jmays writes "New Line is re-releasing 'The Fellowship of the Ring' and 'The Two Towers' except this time, in their respective extended versions. When? Once each week for the two weeks prior to the opening of 'The Return of the King.'"