An anonymous reader writes "LinuxDevices.com's new 'Linux-powered Robots Quick Reference Guide' offers an interesting glimpse into of some Linux-powered robots currently available or near production, and provides an extensive reading list with further information on Linux in robotics. According to a fascinating article at TechNewsWorld, Linux is poised to play a centrol role in an emerging industry that many expect to overtake the PC industry in size: robotics. Japan is currently driving robot innovation, according to the article, impelled by a looming labor shortage. Consumer robots like the Sony Aibo and Honda Asimo make headlines, but ubiquitous, cheap, and practical utility robots are what most Japanese robot makers are focused on, and 'carmaker Honda believes that robots will become its most important business,' according to the TechNewsWorld article. Watch out -- the Linux-powered robots are on the march!"

Anyone who is a frequent reader of these pages knows of my obsession with MP3 players. From portables to stereo components. From machines that stream, to flash devices with just a tiny bit of space. I love these things. And now, one of my favorites is back. Slimdevices has released the Squeezebox- the 802.11b update to its already excellent Slimp3. Read on for my full review.

theodp writes "To help nourish lean budgets, public libraries are increasingly eyeing the e-commerce used-book market as an alternative to the long-standing community tradition of the local book sale. Abebooks reports a tenfold surge in public library clients over the last three years. The payoff can be handsome. One library group boasts of getting $250 for a few boxes of 'miserable, horrible stuff' and another $110 from a World War II vet for a book about his Army regiment. A public library in Texas auctioned 300 items on eBay to help plug a budget hole. And a Seattle suburb moved its annual library sale of some 80,000 books to Amazon, citing expediency and extra cash as motivators."

Andy Lester writes "CPAN is a treasure trove of submitted code from across the Perl community, and is one of the reasons for Perl's great popularity. There are hundreds of active contributors, and over 2500 modules in the module list. With so many modules, it can be daunting for a Perl beginner to know what's worth noting. Plus, since so many modules are built on other modules, it's important for module authors to know which modules are best-of-breed. One source for direction is Mark Fowler's Perl Advent Calendar. Each day in the month of December, Mark reveals a new module in his calendar, including an overview and mini-tutorial in its use."

Ridgelift writes "Eric S. Raymond is proposing a new logo for Hackerdom. 'The Linux folks have their penguin and the BSDers their demon. Perl's got a camel, FSF fans have their gnu and OSI's got an open-source logo. What we haven't had, historically, is an emblem that represents the entire hacker community of which all these groups are parts. This is a proposal that we adopt one - the glider pattern from the Game of Life.'"

For a sysadmin, putting "MIT Network Operations" on a resume must feel pretty satisfying. James Kretchmar got the job, and now has written the book. ALecs writes with his review of Kretchmar'sOpen Source Network Administration, below.

Black Perl writes "The Seattle Times is running an article entitled "California brothers win $4.3 million award against X10." Apparently, pop-unders are "proprietary" technology and a "business model" that X10 stole. I have mixed feelings about this. I love to see X10 get its due for the pop-unders, but proprietary technology it is not." Haha. Patents are funny.

pair-a-noyd submitted this one choice piece of flamebait, I'll just quote it ".. I have a hard time seeing the Zealots as any different from terrorists because of the nature of their threats. I expect one of them -- or perhaps a group of them -- will go too far at some point and do significant damage to the open-source movement, the ongoing litigation with SCO or their employers. I strongly believe that if September 11 showed us anything, it was that zealots of any movement represent a huge risk to that movement because zealots do not consider the repercussions of their actions" Like the zealots he speaks of, he goes to far, but he does make legitimate points that the Open Source community has wrestled with in the past.

Roland Piquepaille writes "If your answer is Windows, you're plain wrong. It's ITRON, a Japanese real-time OS kernel that can be customized for any small-scale embedded systems. According to LinuxInsider.com, it is used by more than 3 billion microprocessors found in mobile phones, digital cameras, CD players and many other electronic devices including even satellites. The article looks at the competition in this market, notably RTLinux, the real-time version of Linux, and T-Linux, an environment for running middleware. This last effort could lead to the eTRON chip, an encryption device that offers secure data transfer across wireless networks and the Internet. One thing is sure for this market: the future is definitively open-source. This overview contains more details and external references."

theodp writes "With IE, IM and Linux all threatened by patent infringement lawsuits, it's worth noting that Saturday marks what would have been the third anniversary of BountyQuest. With $1+ million of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' money and an Amazon VP on its Board, BountyQuest vowed to reform the patent system through its prior art contests. While BountyQuest raised eyebrows when it found winning prior art right off the bat for a patent Amazon was sued for infringing on, it surprisingly drew little heat when it announced no winning prior art could be found for Bezos' own 1-Click patent. 'There was no Bounty winner, mainly because the 1-Click patent is specific to the Web,' explained BountyQuest. 'This was a tough one to win because the Amazon 1-Click patent is so specific to the Web,' added BountyQuest investor Tim O'Reilly. Amazon's claim that the contest outcome vindicated Bezos' 1-Click patent went unchallenged by the New York Times, who instead took contestants to task for submitting prior art that 'failed to mention the Internet.' But legal documents have surfaced revealing that a month before these arguments were made, Amazon was told by a Federal Court that 'This distinction is irrelevant, since none of the [Bezos 1-Click patent] claims mention either the Internet or the World Wide Web.' If it was 'in everyone's interest to get all relevant prior art out into the open,' as Bezos said, then what happened?"

bwhaley asks: "The University I work for has asked me to research software solutions for server monitoring. More specifically, a piece of software that will monitor server variables such as load, swap usage, POP/IMAP processes, total processes, and all the other interesting data about a server's health. Watching these variables can give administrators advance warning about potential problems with the server. We are currently using an in-house solution written in Perl but its age is showing. I have found plenty of proprietary solutions such as HP OpenView and Sun Management Center, but these cost thousands of dollars. What solutions do Slashdot readers use? Are there any powerful open source solutions that I'm missing? Is anyone else running homegrown software that they are happy with? We are running an entirely Solaris environment but I am interested in any UNIX solution."

Josuah writes "ClearSpeed Technology announced today a new multithreaded array processor named the CS301. Their press release states the chip can achieve 25Gflops for only 3W of power. New Scientist and TechNewsWorld have articles on this chip, each with more information about the chip. I wondering if this is too good to be true." The key phrase is in the Wired story: "Soon to be in prototype, the chip...". "Soon to be in prototype" is synonymous with "does not exist".

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.