Hmmmm...
I'm running that code as I'm typing this, but nothing strange is happening over here -
Linux 2.4.20-4GB-athlon #1 Fri Mar 12 15:34:26 UTC 2004 i686 unknown unknown GNU/Linux
w/ perl, v5.8.4 built for i686-linux.
Except ofcourse that it takes up about 92 % of my CPU time.
:-)