Apple’s WWDC is today, where all sorts of goodness should be introduced, including a preview of Mac OS X 10.4, “Tiger”. Let’s hope Jobs doesn’t skimp on the goodies.

Current indications are that Apple is not providing any outside coverage of the keynote, either via satellite or webcast, which is strange. And irksome. Several Mac news sites will be liveblogging the event, tho. Better than nothing, I suppose. Hopefully Apple will post a QT stream of it after the fact.

So, I made the jump from my trusty DSL to Cable today. I was getting frustrated at the 384kbps throughput of DSL (I’m literally 17,200 feet from the CO, putting me at the far extreme of DSL accessibility). I called Comcast and it really couldn’t have been much easier. I activated the account on a 5 minute phone call, at the end of which the nice guy on the phone gave me his direct extension, telling me to call him back once I had bought a cablemodem. I picked up the cablemodem from Circuit City, called him back, he connected me with the engineering group who gave me the proxy server address to register the circuit and voila! On line.

I’m not sure what others are experiencing, but all I can say is I just downloaded a 10.5MB file in under 20 seconds. That would’ve taken me easily 4 minutes on DSL. Now I can’t wait for the next 60+MB OS update to release!

And it’s about 1/3 the price (even after the promotional period) what I was paying for DSL.

I so don’t like this.

If you know me, you’ll know why, too.

Ugh.

Apple’s released another little bit of coolness, Airport Express, with Airtunes.

For just $129, you get a little box about the size of a deck of cards that plugs into the wall, has 802.11g built in (wireless ethernet), an ethernet port for creating a bridge, USB port for connecting a printer, and a 1/8″ mini-jack for connecting your stereo. Couple this little device with a copy of iTunes 4.6 running on your mac and all your tunes can be served up to a stereo or pair of powered speakers. Tuck the thing in your suitcase and you’ve got wireless in your hotel room.

It also serves as a wireless extender, extending the range of your wireless network. Slick, small, elegant. While I may have been contemplating a SliMP3 or a Roku, this is less expensive, better integrated, and more functional. I like the competition’s LED display and ability to control it from a remote control, but, truth be told, that’s not a huge deal, and I’m sure people will be making little control units (like a modification to Synergy) to control your streaming iTunes mac remotely from another mac.

Here’s the scenario: my Dual G5 in my office has my music library, so it’ll be the streamer for this little gem. But the stereo is in the living room, next to the big screen. So why can’t either of the powerbooks control the song selection and still stream it from the G5? Should be built into iTunes (and probably will be, someday), but I know some enterprising garage-based engineer will tinker together an applescript or two that’ll do the same. I might do it, given a little time.

Anyway, cool little device. Ships in mid-July, according to the Apple Store.

Seeing as new job creation is the lagging indicator, so much for that “jobless recovery” the dems were hoping for. Since they didn’t get the utter depression they really wanted, that was the next best thing, and they thought it would materialize if they said it enough…

WASHINGTON — U.S. employers added an unexpectedly large 248,000 jobs in May, according to a government report Friday that confirmed a strengthening economy likely to soon bring higher interest rates.

The May tally exceeded Wall Street expectations for 216,000 new jobs and followed an upwardly revised total of 346,000 jobs in April and 353,000 in March. The 947,000 jobs created in the March-May period made it the strongest for any three months in four years.

To make matters even more ridiculous, they can’t decide what kind of jobs are being created… first all you hear is that it’s minimum wage jobs and no one can live on that; then I saw a story on the news last night that teens can’t find summer work because all the new jobs out there are for high-skilled or degreed professionals. Give me a break, almost one million jobs in the past three months are, at the end of the day, still almost one million jobs. Let the marketplace work it out and stop trying to discourage everyone. It’s amazing what a little optimism will do.

Not that Kerry brings any of that. No, that just wouldn’t do.

Check this out. Very cool.

Well, isn’t this a surprise!

If you’d like to check out an endangered species, don’t bother with a trip to the zoo. Just drop by the newsroom of your favorite newspaper or TV station and ask to see the conservatives.

According to a new survey, only 12 percent of local reporters, editors, and media executives are self-described conservatives, while twice as many call themselves liberal. At national news organizations, the gap is even wider – 7 percent conservative vs. 34 percent liberal.

That gap, which has grown wider in the past decade, does not necessarily prove that America’s mainstream journalism is biased, as conservatives have long complained. But the survey does confirm that US newsrooms do not mirror the political leanings of the nation at large.

…

“We should acknowledge that maybe the biggest problem is that most of us think too much alike and come from the same backgrounds,” says David Yarnold, editor of the opinion pages at The (San Jose) Mercury News. “Find the pro-lifers in a newsroom. That’s harder than finding Waldo.”

“Does not necessarily prove”… well, I supposed it doesn’t necessarily prove it, but if you don’t think the two are linked, you’re living in a fantasy world. Every time I see Peter J. or someone else deliver the news with a sneer, I’m thinking to myself “yup, he’s definitely not biased in the least.”

Still, many Americans say a liberal bias does exist. In a Gallup poll last fall, 45 percent of Americans said the news media are too liberal, while 14 percent said too conservative. (Some 20 percent of Americans now call themselves liberal, versus 33 percent who say they’re conservative.)

I just don’t get those 14% on the left that scream that the media is conservative. I don’t think they know the meaning of the word. Or what’s probably more likely, they’re so far left that the media is on the right to them, even if the media is considerably left of center.