Apple gave more details on Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) on Monday. A few thoughts:

As a software developer, I actually appreciate the idea of an incremental release. They didn't try to reinvent everything; they simple made a bunch of enhancements to what they had. The new window manager (Marble) can wait until 10.7; I'm okay with that.

...so long as they price it as an incremental release. Oh look...they did. I'm more than willing to shell out $29 to upgrade my operating system. Besides, it gives me a way to laugh at the Windows folks. Yes, Ubuntu junkies, I know your OS is free, and I use it for other things (like the server powering this site), but OS X has a bit more refinement to it and is worth the piddly sum. :) On the other hand, I think most folks can do without a ~$300 sticker shock for a Windows upgrade.

I was musing recently, while shaking my head at the auto bailouts, as to what I would do if I had the relatively unenviable position of being the President of the United States. I won't presume to know all the answers to that question; Obama's about-face on foreign policy from his original statements as a candidate are a humbling proof that one can't really grasp the breadth and importance of decisions on that scale until you're landed there. But, I can think of a few things that seem reasonably simple:

1. I would abolish the position of White House Press Secretary, and instead set up a weekly open-ended press conference with the actual president. I would answer questions thoughtfully and as openly as was feasible. This would, hopefully, move toward thoughtful discussion on issues rather than reporters' trying to get a zinger in on the man that the president has thrown at them as a meat shield.

2. I would, at the beginning of my State of the Union addresses, ask the audience to restrict applause to once at the beginning and once at the end. The current culture of applauding statements one finds agreeable is one of the most divisive displays in American politics today.

3. I would iterate over federal programs that are either outside the federal government's Constitutional jurisdiction or simply programs to which the centralization gives no advantage, and pass laws abolishing them in three years' time, sending their assets proportionately to the states to either continue, alter, or discard based on the will of those states' people. I would eliminate the portion of federal taxes designed to fund said programs (which could then be instituted at the state level if necessary).

4. I would impose congressional term limits, probably of four terms in the House and a single term in the Senate.

5. I would change the minimum wage to automatically adjust for inflation, with Treasury being responsible each year for announcing the new rate for the next year.

6. I would re-institute a monetary standard (eliminated by the second President Roosevelt) in order to curb inflation and prevent the clouding of actual inflation by Treasury (as is occurring now by Treasury's selling non-trivial amounts of gold).

7. I would simplify the tax code by reducing rates but removing all exemptions. This would move our business tax rate to something that is actually internationally competitive on its face, and eliminate the need for ordinary Americans to hire a professional in order to do their taxes.

8. I would only tax businesses on income earned within the United States, ending the deferral system in place now, putting our system in line with the rest of the world's, and removing the incentive for companies to move their headquarters overseas.

9. I would reduce the percentage of Americans that are kept completely off the tax rolls. Exemption from taxation eliminates the desire by the untaxed to consider the fiscal soundness of proposed policy initiatives when voting. When that bloc becomes half the electorate (as it is now), our capacity as a country to make wise decisions is severely diminished.

10. I would leave the question regarding school vouchers to the states, rather than banning it at the federal level. The fact that charter schools produce better test results, and usually do it with less than half the money spent per student, should be an indicator that they by and large work. States could also, if they chose, privatize the schools and then set up a system whereby a student can enroll in any school for which he or she qualifies and the tuition would be paid by the state. This would force schools to compete in the eyes of parents, which can only be a good thing.

11. I would eliminate the capital gains' tax. That is income which has already been taxed once, and such a tax does nothing except discourage investment.

12. I would eliminate regulations on business for which no clear case can be made for their necessity or value (or continued value; some may have been well-founded but no longer necessary).

13. I would pas a law forbidding binding arbitration clauses in non-negotiable contracts (such as software license agreements).

14. I would pass a law allowing greater penalties, up to and including disbarment, on lawyers who bring frivolous lawsuits. The judiciary must remain a venue for Americans to air grievances, but there must be retribution for those that choose to abuse the system.

15. I would pass a resolution whereby the District of Columbia would be ceded back to Maryland. The Constitution provides for said district but does not require its existence, and giving the land back to Maryland would solve the representation problems that the district brings to the table (as Maryland would gain a representative by the population increase). Langley has already been ceded back to Virginia so there's precedent for this.

16. I would say what I mean, and mean what I say.

There's a good deal of mostly under-the-radar discussion about the murder of a Kansas doctor, Dr. Tiller, who performs abortions. This has been the first I've heard about violence against abortion practitioners since the bombing of a couple of abortion clinics in the early nineties.

Anyone who knows much about me knows that I'm very pro-life. I sometimes break with conservatives on social issues (Prop 8 comes to mind), but abortion is a practice that I believe is wrong and I believe should be illegal (it is absolutely the responsibility of government to safeguard the life of the civically innocent, which includes those conceived but not yet born).

As someone who is deeply pro-life, therefore, I can only be disheartened and saddened by Dr. Tiller's murder. It was wrong, and out of keeping with both the laws of the United States and the principles of God. I, along with half the nation, do condemn Dr. Tiller's practice, and believe God will judge it righteously. But, we must remember that from said condemnation one may not derive the right to exact vengeance. More pointedly, the term "pro-life" means more than being against abortion; it means a fundamental and deep respect for the lives of other humans, and that respect was broken in a very real way by Dr. Tiller's murderer, who cannot claim to be any more pro-life than Dr. Tiller himself.

I pray that Dr. Tiller's murderer is brought to justice. I also pray for the reversal of the allowance of Dr. Tiller's practice. In the meantime, however, we must recognize that abortion practitioners are also civically innocent, and their lives are also to be valued as anyone else's.

So, those living in the PHP world may know that Zend Server was recently released. Zend Server is a web server (basically, a competitor to established software such as Apache or Lighttpd); a daemon that sits on a server and serves web pages, as well as a set of administration tools and such. As I'm a Zend Certified Engineer, I get all sorts of spam e-mail from Zend, and got a nice e-mail about this. While I have no interest in using a web server from Zend, I clicked the link anyway to see what was up.

I found something rather amusing. Zend touted the server as the greatest thing since sliced bread (of course), including language such as "Web Application Server for Business-Critical PHP Applications" (the header on the site at this time), and "Zend Server is a complete, enterprise-ready Web Application Server for running and managing PHP applications that require a high level of reliability, performance and security" (the first paragraph on the site at this time). There's just one problem...it's in beta. Despite Google's loose use of the term (spawning others to do the same), beta means the exact opposite...it means that its reliability has not yet been vetted, and the software should be used with a certain level of caution.

What makes this even funnier is that I tossed up a tweet yesterday on this topic:
Epic fail: http://www.zend.com/en/products/server/ -- note: it's both "production ready" and "beta"

What I did not expect was to get a (rather amusing) tweet back from someone named wllm, who is apparently the project manager for Zend Framework:
@lukesneeringer Where do you see 'production ready'? I see 'enterprise-ready' in the banner. That's making a different point, I believe.

There's so much wrong with this, I don't know where to start...

The series premiere of Dollhouse, the new television show created by Joss Whedon (Buffy, Angel, Firefly), was this Friday. The show didn't make its way to iTunes until Sunday (let's hope they're faster than that going forward), but I downloaded it and watched it today. I was quite impressed.

The story revolves around a girl named Echo who has her memories and personality wiped, and is given memories and a personality catered to a specific job that needs to be done. Once the job is done, she returns to the dollhouse (the home base, so to speak) where her personality is re-wiped and she is made available for her next assignment. It's a really neat concept, especially given my interest in the subjects of memory and personality to begin with.

The pilot involves Echo's taking on two distinct personalities, the first to entertain a client and the second to negotiate a ransom exchange for a kidnapped child; the majority of the episode revolves around the second task. I don't want to say any more than that for fear of giving something away for those who may not have seen it and desire to do so.

From an acting standpoint, Eliza Dushku (Faith from Buffy) does really well in this role. I never appreciated her in the only role I've previously seen her, mostly because I found Faith's character to be so ridiculously irritating; however, she does really well here. This has got to be a very challenging role to act since she's basically playing a new character for at least a significant portion of every episode. I'm interested to see where the show goes and how the role is portrayed.

Overall, Dollhouse had a very strong pilot, and I'm really looking forward to the next episode.

There's an interesting article on Slashdot today about a false fact that appeared on Wikipedia and appropriately flagged. However, the false statement had, by this time, been copied from Wikipedia, so when the flag was made asking for proof, it was easy to find because a large number of other information outlets had copied the fact from Wikipedia.

First of all, I hope this doesn't become an argument against Wikipedia. This can happen anywhere, using any source that is generally viewed as being reliable. The fact that it happened on Wikipedia doesn't mean Wikipedia is doing something wrong; this is a problem that could occur to any reliable information depot.

It's interesting, though, that this comes up, because it's the definition of circular reasoning. A party asserts p; a second party similarly asserts p based on the authority of the first party, and then the first party "proves" p based on the authority of the second party. See the problem? This is a really good example of why I am not an internalist (as the term relates to epistemology).

This gaffe is interesting to me because it brings up all the fun questions I remember from my epistemology class in college: when are we justified in believing a proposition. Clearly, source citation isn't right all the time, although my intuition tells me that it's still a means to attain justification, at least for a posteriori knowledge. Alvin Goldman said that the sources are reliable (although how we establish that, I'm not sure) and therefore that one is justified in deriving a belief from said sources.

This is a case where two sources are deriving epistemic authority from each other. Clearly, that's a problem, but how does one realize when it's occurring?

Damn, I love epistemology.

I want to talk for awhile about the stimulus plan, mostly because while I found controversy over the war to be frightfully boring, economics is a subject that greatly interests me, and I have a lot to say that's actually on topic.

At this point, we all know that the United States is in a state of economic recession (as is the entire world). We'll talk about the reasons why that happened a little later. President Obama has stated that he wants to combat this crisis with a large stimulus plan, which has now settled at about the $820 billion mark, which will essentially be government spending that is geared toward job creation. The exact numbers of jobs that this plan would create vary from week to week (as the bill itself changes), but the number tends to be between in the vicinity of three million. As of now, the bill has been passed by the House (more on that in a minute) and is up for a vote in the Senate sometime in the near future.

There's probably more to say about this than I could possibly fit in a blog post and make it interesting, but I'm going to try and keep it at a single boring post, rather than multiple more interesting posts, because I am not a politician at heart and don't want a series of back to back posts on the stimulus (although I may get carried away and do that anyway; let's hope not).

Let me start with a simple statement of my position: I believe that the stimulus plan is an unwise idea that will not actually bring about economic recovery. I know I'm in the extreme minority amongst the American laity, but give me a chance to explain why.