Get your early look now!

Damn, that's fast! We're still fiddling with last minute changes (yes, we managed to slide WPA in there), but O'Reilly's already got up a mini-site for our upcoming book, Mac OS X Unwired: A Guide for Home, Office, and the Road. It even includes Chapter 4: Wi-Fi on the Road (PDF), the Table of Contents, and the index. So far, zero errata (whew!).

Semicolons are optional, dammit

Just because this is one of my hot buttons, and because it keeps coming up, I'm just going to say this one more time: Semicolons are optional in JavaScript. They're there to give C++ programmers a warm and happy feeling, and that's all. If they're followed by a hard return in the code, they do absolutely nothing. Leave 'em off, dammit.

To answer the question from that link, why is Google serving all those uneccessary bytes? I have no idea, but my guess is that it makes hard-core programmers less miserable about being forced to work with wimpy scripting languages. After all, if it doesn't have semicolons, it isn't a real programming language, right? Sheesh.

Technology of politics, and politics of technology

Via the DNC, here's a great calendar of the Democratic Presidential Primary Election Schedule.

I have to say, though, that looking at that list kinda kills me. See, I pitched a session for the 2004 O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference on Politics and Technology, and it got turned down. I was hoping that it was declined because they got someone more qualified than me to do it (say, Cameron Barrett or David Weinberger or both), but no joy there, either.

It's my opinion that politics has finally figured out how to leverage technology... but that's not yet a given, and there are still plenty of questions (is it transferable? is it scalable?). ETCon starts on Feb. 9, at which point 12 primaries will have taken place, and we'll have just enough data points to begin to figure things out. It would be a great point in time to take a snapshot of what's working, what isn't, and make some predictions about the 20+ primaries in the four weeks following (not to mention about the role of tech in politics in general).

This is rich

This is rich: Schwarzenegger says that he'll hire his own private investigation firm to investigate the groping that he did. Yeah, I bet that he'll hire the same crack team that's no doubt still searching for the real killer of OJ Simpson's wife.

Scott Knaster has a blog

Scott Knaster has a blog, from which I'm borrowing one of the funniest links I've seen in ages: Jewsmas. Scott may be right when he says that, "This is really funny, but probably only if you grew up Jewish in America." Me? I laughed my butt off.

Multiple versions of IE/Win

Here's something useful for web designers and developers: how to run multiple versions of IE/Win on a single PC.

Who picked Dean first?

Just got back from tonight's Dean meetup where a thought came to mind. There's lots of talk in the blogosphere (and gawd, how I hate that word) about Dean, but who was first? Was it us? I doubt it, so I'm curious. Let me know your picks, and the current date to beat is 16 December 2002 02 June 2002 (see comments).

TenCon Wrap-Up

Things I meant to mention while I was at the O'Reilly OS X Con, but was too busy to blog then:

• It sounds like I missed a good poker game, darn it.
• Based on his reaction, if I suddenly "go missing," suspect Andy Ihnatko. He had serious geek lust for my office, to the point where he said that he'd commute if he could have it. The fact that he lives 3000 miles away? Inconsequential.
• Per the folks from BareBones who were there, BBEdit will never, ever have SubEthaEdit-like collaboration. Well, there goes another feature that would make me upgrade.
• The T-shirt exchange was a hoot. I brought about a dozen or so shirts, and was worried that I'd be the only one there. By the time I went home, only a few of mine were left, and I'd snagged a couple contributed by other people. Great idea!
• If you're ever going to a similar conference and want to know how to start conversations with complete strangers, it's easy: wear a Jabra FreeSpeak Bluetooth Headset. I guarantee that you'll never be at a loss for people to talk to. Most common question I got: No, sorry, it works with phones, not with Macs.
• I was interviewing people to figure out what cellphone I should get next, and I'd just about decided that I should get the T610 when Rael Dornfest told me that I should get a Nokia instead. He said that he'd do a write-up on his blog as to why—I'm waiting...

Overall, I had a great time (despite being hit with some surprise deadlines while I was there that made me less social than I wanted to be) and I'm looking forward to next year.

Shinza.com

At last week's OS X Con, a guy had a pair of these Dimple Gel Notebook Wrist Pads. Someone asked him about them, and it turned out that he works for Shinza.com, a company that imports cool stuff from Japan to resell here. He was immediately mobbed and forced to sell all the wrist pads he had both on him and in his car. Looking around their site, they've got some pretty cool other stuff, too.

AirPort's WPA

Glenn Fleishman's written about the new addition of WPA to AirPort: part 1 is at TidBITS and part 2 is at Wi-Fi Networking News.

Happy Birthday to us!

Four years ago today, we wrote our first blog posts. It's been a long, strange trip, and we owe y'all a lot of thanks for coming along for the ride.

Draft in the works?

Salon's new article, Oiling up the draft machine?, is just one of a number of left-leaning scare stories trying to freak people out about the return of the draft. I'm calling bullshit.

Think about it, folks. How can you have a draft when all a person has to do is show up in front of the draft board and say, "I don't want to be drafted," annd then they can't take him? Okay, it's a little more complex than that, but not by much. Instead of "I don't want to be drafted," the actual words he has to say are, "I'm gay." Voila, he's immediately untouchable.

My guess is that if the draft comes back, the rate of homosexuality in teenage boys will jump sharply, up to about 30-50%. And the Army won't be able to do a damn thing about it, so long as they have their stupid Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. Sure, there may be a draft, but the only boys being drafted will be (a) those who want to serve, and (b) those who don't want to serve, but would rather die than say they're gay. I'm not losing any sleep over either of those two groups being called up.

As the mother of a teenage boy, I know what kind of encouragement he'll be getting from us. And so long as this short-sighted policy is in force, there's no point in the draft coming back.

PhoneAgent

PhoneAgent 1.1 for OS X and Sony Ericsson T610/T616 mobile phones does a number of useful things. No, I don't have a T610 phone... yet.

Mac Eye

Crap. Now I've got that theme song running through my head again. Mac Eye for the Windows Guy.

Hey, Al

Note to our favorite critical care nurse: Our guy seems to get it. Governor Dean Promises Fast Action To Avert Nursing Shortage. Your thoughts?