Thanks, ND.

okay y'all...

I just received a beta invitation to dropbox -

[link]

2 gigs of storage space free that can sync between computers (mac & windows) and you can access your files on the web.

when a person joins up, they get 10 invitations. is anyone here interested in this and if so would they use their beta invitations to invite others? I only have 5 or fewer left and we could get as many people signed up as interested if we use some of our beta to help others out.

use my profile addy if you are interested in an invitation.

Random thing I just learned: In Javascript, there is a value "NaN", which means "Not a Number". There's a isNaN() function to test for this.

How come I didn't know this?

Someday, someone should write a book on the philosophy of Null, empty strings, NaN, #error, etc....

NaN.

It's what you get when you do various kinds of illegal mathematical operations, such as 0/0.

Yeah. Apparently in Javascript you can get NaN by assigning something non-numeric to a Number object....

A few weeks back I read something in wikipedia that some think there should be more than one kind of Null....

OK, a Javascript question (instead of just ramblings): Let's say I have

oJTT.all(19)

where oJTT is an HTML table. Now let's say that in oJTT there's a row that begins

<TR class=stdweekrow id=19 style="DISPLAY: block" name="19" code="19">

then oJTT.all(19) should return that row, right?

My reference book shows syntax like

all[10]

which should return the 11th element of the HTML, but not something like

all(10)

So, is

all(19)

similar to

all.tags(19)

, but without the "tags" it defaults to looking for the 'name' or 'code' tag?

Hivemind Mac Question:

So I have a Macbook w/ a CD stuck in the drive (could be because I dropped the damn thing on pavement =( )

I've tried holding down eject when restarting. I've tried the credit card/holding down the door with a thin knife trick. Does anyone else have any suggestions. I really don't want to take it to the Apple Store.

pretty!

Well fuck.

I'm happy, because 10.5.3 means I can install ProTools on my Leopard machine and it's supported (if not 100% stable).

Unfortunately 10.5.3 broke all printing, wireless or direct, on my Brother MFC-440CN.

It sees the printer on the Bonjour list, but all printing, even over USB, gets an error.

More retro stuff: The Lisa Computer System - Apple designs a new kind of machine (Feb, 1983)

The Lisa, of course, was the first mass-produced personal computer that used a WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus and Pointing device) interface. It makes an interesting read, as they explain WIMP to those who are completely unfamiliar with it.

Although the Lisa design has several important elements, four stand out: the machine’s graphics-mouse orientation, the “desktop” and “data-as-concrete-object” metaphors, and the integrated design of the hardware and software.

Helps you appreciate how revolutionary the Lisa was at the time (for a mass-produced computer).

As this went to press, Apple announced that the Lisa will be sold in one configuration only: the computer with 1 megabyte of RAM, two floppy-disk drives, the Profile hard disk, the six application programs (Lisa Draw, Lisa Write, Lisa Project, Lisa Calc, Lisa List, and Lisa Graph), and Lisa Test diagnostic program; the price of this package is $9995...

Fortunately for us, the history of computing does not stop with the Lisa. Technology, while expensive to create, is much cheaper to distribute. Apple knows this machine is expensive and is also not unaware that most people would be incredibly interested in a similar but less expensive machine. Well see what happens.

Yep. We did see what happened....

eta: Another Byte article: A behind-the-scenes look at the development of Apple’s Lisa (Feb, 1983)