chromatic, lord of many reviews, has come up with a review of MySQL, from the folks at New Riders. Author Paul DuBois has gone beyond the technically comprehensive MySQL documentation to produce an informative and entertaining compendium of MySQL knowledge. Requiring little prior experience ("What is a database and why should I care?"), he explains general SQL and RDBMSs, as well as the peculiarities of MySQL.

Losing my love of PERL asks: "OK, here's the skinny: I've been trying to figure this out for quite a while now, and nothing is working. I need to send a proper e-mail attachment (i.e. something that will show up as a paper clip in Outlook) from an NT command line to be called by a PERL script (or better yet, just sent by the script). I've tried several modules and programs, including Blat, Mail::Sender, Mail::Sendmail, but every time the attachment is just shoved into the body of the e-mail. Does anyone have a solution to my problems?"

Couple of Perl Bits fell into the bin worth noting today: dlc writes, "The results of the Perl Poetry Content are in, and are available." If you're into this sort of thing, you'll dig it. A lot of clever stuff there. Course the sonnet generator is probably my favorite... hack it to generate rock lyrics, and I can start a band and record a debut album. ;) If that's not weird enough for you, check out the PerlOS Project. A PerlWM, a PerlSH, and more. It will strike fear into even the most hardened of Perl Monks.

I was just made aware of the somewhat old, but interesting article from Information Week entitled Open Source Moves To The Mainstream. In addition to Apache, the article also refers to Perl, PHP, MySQL and Linux as Open Source products that are "luring" developers away from commercial solutions.

Python is an object-oriented scripting language, similiar in ideas (if not in style) to Perl. It's getting more and more popular, as people discover the benefits brought by its simple style. It's a natural under Windows, thanks to good object-orientation. Like many free software projects, though, the Windows port of Python has suffered from poor documentation. Until now, that is. [Updated 15:00GMT by timothy -- fixed link to tutorial.](Read more.)

brink asks: "Recently it's seemed as if, due to larger and faster computers, lean and mean code isn't such an issue. However, it occurs to me that there's an overlooked area where there's little or no mention of the importance of efficient code: Web sites. This isn't so much in terms of HTML (I know that webmonkey had an article about efficient tag layout), it's more in terms of Perl, PHP, or whatever. It seems to me that the fact that your code has the potential to be executed in thousands of instances concurrently doesn't impress on anyone the necessity for uberefficient programming. Dynamically generated pages and DB querries are good examples, or just plain memory usage of your code. So my question is as follows: are there any good works to read which focus on programming for the Web, as in avenues the programming medium affords? Have I just been oblivious and missed them?"

Simon Cozens writes "I've written a summary of what's new in the 5.6.0 release of Perl for this www.perl.com article. " The article does a good job of evaluating what's come out - worth reading if you're a Perl Monk

ptb asks: "Since I am sure that someone in the Slashdot community at large has developed a solution to this question I figured I would ask. I am trying to get the company I work for to abandon a fax solution vendor for an in-house developed solution. I've managed to implement hylafax and faxing PDFs from a Web page works flawlessly. (I am embarrassed I didn't have to do more, but hey... ;) My question is: has anyone ever developed a Phone Tree under Unix? What I'm hoping to do is have customers call a number, have my Linux box answer and the customer presses '1' to order a document or '2' to order an index... You get the idea. If they order document '23532' then my perl script will fax them the doc. I've found ACS and Quicknet but I suspect that someone has traveled this road before me. Any suggestions?"

Frustrated Programmer asks: "I'm a programmer with seven years of experience on various platforms/languages. The past few years, I've primarily freelanced, building my expertise in C/Unixes/Oracle, dabbled in Perl a bit. Since my last contract, I haven't been able to find any work at all. I've learned Java2 to update my skills, I know C++ from university, however, I can't seem to get a break from any companies. I get the same response, no Java experience, or no OOP experience. I'm wondering if this is a problem systematic of Canadian companies (specifically here in Montreal), or do any of my American cousins have run into the same problem? Anybody care to share their experiences?"

ESR ^[?] sent a feature about the Microsoft Web Server Backdoor - interesting stuff, and makes some good points about Open Source.

Tom asks: "I've heard a lot of talk recently about how Sun is going the wrong way with Java and we need an open source replacement for 'write once, run anywhere'. What I want to know is: how many people really support this notion?" Although I think such a concept would be nice, Java has strayed from this and has become Yet Another Language. Don't get me wrong, like any language, Java has its strengths and weaknesses, but I'm wondering if the Write-Once-Run-Anywhere concept is better found in your average scripting language (ala Perl, PHP, Python and others) rather than large scale languages like Java, and C. Click below for more details on this subject.

Anonymous Coward writes: "/. gets an honourable mention in the current issue of Apacheweek. Admitting that ApachePDA was an April Fool's joke, Apacheweek says the gag snowballed beyond expectation when the story was posted on /. and the alleged PDA took 80000 hits in two hours. The good news is that Apacheweek claims a PalmOS web server port is already in the works and Perl has already been ported. The article is at link " Also noted in ApacheWeek is the article in PC Week where it's stated that "neither PC Week Labs nor Sun recommends its (Apache's) use in high-transaction environments". Then again, PC Week themselves run Apache. Hmmmmm.

In his responses to the Slashdot interview, Miguel shares the deadly truth about GNOME, the shocking story of the future of Bonobo and CORBA, and the titillating tale of adventure and intrigue that lies deep within the bowels of popular Free Software development projects. Okay, so it's not all that shocking, but Miguel has brought us some really great news and answers from his neck of the open source woods.

Well, since Jon is apparently stuck in an airport trying to get to the Geek Pride thing in Boston (this is true, by the way), we here at slashdot thought we'd run some of his old columns again. So, we present Katz's reviews of The Beach and Scream 3, in true Katz style.

Academic head of the MIT Media Lab Alex Pentland and Eric S. Raymond (ESR), software evangelist and straight-shooting author of some of the Free software world's most influential essays, will be there. If you can cough up zero dollars (or the equivalent in lire, pesos, krugerands, galactic credits, etc.) and get to Boston on Friday (31st March) or Saturday (1st April), you'll be well met at the 3rd annual Geek Pride Festival.

In our latest episode, we discuss Nate's whereabouts, the new release of Perl, Microsoft's X-Box, Netpliance's i-opener and more.

Last week we got a bunch of questions for Deb Richardson, leader of the Open Source Writers Group. These are her answers. Please don't forget as you read: OSWG needs volunteers, and this is a great way to participate in Open Source development if you're handier at writing and editing words than code.

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).