Cameron Laird is conducting an online interview with Nathan Torkington, the project manager for Perl 6, at ITWorld.com.

As people paying the slightest bit of attention have known all along, there was nothing at all to the Wen Ho Lee case. This unfortunate man was forced to rot in prison for nearly a year while the government tried to find any substance behind their trumped up charges, and now has to plead guilty to a felony just to escape further harassment. Perhaps he did screw up in his job, but it’s painfully obvious that the man isn’t a spy. It’s awful that this country is still so prone to falling into the grip of cowardice, xenophobia, and outright racism.

I didn’t think Maureen Dowd deserved the Pulitzer she won for 1998, but her latest column is an instant classic.

I didn’t renew my subscription to Wired, and now I’m punished by not getting this bizarre gadget in the mail. Now someone else got the opportunity to ridicule it instead of me! Oh, well, that’s what happens when you fall off the cutting edge.

You know that any story that quotes both Janet Reno and a spokesman for a software industry trade group can’t contain good news. Indeed, a Wired News article yesterday quoted Reno comparing software piracy to drug trafficking and money laundering in severity. The comments were made at a luncheon sponsored by the trade group that represents video game manufacturers. Spare me the hyperbole, please.

All this Java programming is bringing me down. This morning I hacked out a Perl script that imports a big text data file into MySQL, and then I hacked out another script that provides a Web interface to that database. I don’t know how long it would have taken me to do in Java, but it would have been longer than some small segment of my morning schedule.

Interested in keeping up with the progress being made on Perl 6? Perl.com has a rundown of all of the mailing lists associated with the project. They’ve also created an RFC system for capturing ideas for changes to Perl for version 6.

Larry Ellison is foregoing his salary at Oracle in exchange for more stock options. Who gives a crap? The man is worth 60 billion dollars.

All I could think about when I was reading this article about nasty headhunting tactics was, “Why aren’t these guys calling me?” I’m not looking for a job by any stretch of the imagination, but it hurts my feelings that people aren’t trying to pry me away from my current position …

Dan Gillmor’s latest column is a laundry list of important technology issues facing America going forward, it’s too bad neither Bush nor Gore are addressing them. It’s also too bad that they’re off the radar screen of mainstream America.