I'm sure the script alias is working; it tries to execute and does give the 500 error (can't spawn child process) when I muddle the shebang so that it _doesn't_ find perl, it only tries to download when it actually finds perl. Besides which, <a href=http://www.perlmonks.com/index.pl?lastnode_id=147237&node_id=147474">I discovered today that it works fine from a remote machine, just not locally:

(and before anyone asks, yes I know WinMe is not secure enough to host a site, I just left it open long enough to test it)

I had already checked the logs, no errors are recorded when it tries to download (with or without -w); the access log shows the GET...200 and looks otherwise like it was successful. And, yes, I was reloading apache when I made changes (no worries about being condecending, I remember well from a former tech support job having to ask if the machine was plugged in...)

sigh...believe me I wish I was running this under unix/linux...unfortunately I'm doing this so I can work at home on a project for work, where they give me no choice of o/s...at least it will be NT there, hopefully that will be somewhat less problematic.