As for "is mod_cgi dead," the answer is "Not in all cases." Specifically, it's still quite useful in a shared web hosting environment.

Vanilla CGI is useful in a shared environment, where many users sharing the same instance of Apache aren't allowed to restart the web server, and where the users are more concerned about ease of use than speed. (Anyone who has debugged a mod_perl script for far too long before realizing they just didn't restart apache will know what I'm talking about. "Doh! It works better when you plug it in.")

There are also security issues with running mod_perl on a shared server: users can stomp all over each others' namespaces, and wreak havoc with each others' scripts. Yes, there are solutions for this, but none is as easy to implement and maintain as not using mod_perl in the first place.

Alan