Can perl change the world? I thought it did alreaddy :-)

But for your notes:
1: I'm no expert in embedding perl on handhelds, phones etc, i only use it embedded in Apache. It's verry succesfull there.
2: Yes there are, however not fully matured. I also wonder if there should be.
3: I think so.
4: Yes, we use it for our program called evaluation, but i doubt if anyone does completely rely on perl (or any language
5: Agreed: he! did i mention perl can even fly a plane and is totally ai capable? ;-)
Perl
Perl is a stable, cross platform programming language and it is used for mission critical projects in the public and private sectors. Perl is Open Source software that is supported by, Unix systems, Macintosh (OS 7-9 and X) and Windows.

Perl Features:

Perls database integration interface supports third-party databases including Oracle, Sybase, Postgres, MySQL and others.

Perl works with HTML, XML, and other mark-up languages.

Perl supports Unicode.

Perl supports both procedural and object-oriented programming.

Perl interfaces with external C/C++ libraries through XS or SWIG.

Perl is extensible. There are over 500 third party modules available from the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network

The Perl interpreter can be embedded into other systems.

Perl and the Web:

Perl is the most popular web programming language due to its text manipulation capabilities and rapid development cycle.

Perl can handle encrypted Web data, including e-research transactions.

Perl can be embedded into web servers to speed up processing by as much as 2000%.