The Molinari Society will be holding its sixth annual Symposium in conjunction with the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association in New York City, December 27-30, 2009. Here’s the latest schedule info:
GVIII-5. Tuesday, 29 December 2009, 11:15 a.m.–1:15 p.m.
Molinari Society Symposium: “Intellectual Property: Is it Legitimate?”
New York Marriott Marquis, 1535 Broadway, Room TBA
chair: TBA
presenters:
Bob Schaefer (independent scholar): “Response to Kinsella: A Praxeological Look at Intellectual Property Rights”
G. Nazan Bedirhanoğlu (SUNY Binghamton): “History of the Reification of the Intellect”commentators:
Charles Johnson (Molinari Institute)
Roderick T. Long (Auburn University)
Jennifer McKitrick (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)
As part of the APA’s continuing policy to prevent free riders, they’re not telling us the name of the room until we get to the registration desk. As part of our policy of combating evil we will of course broadcast the name of the room far and wide as soon as we learn it.
Happily, we have once again avoided any schedule conflict with the Ayn Rand Society (Dec. 28th, 11:15-1:45), and we expect to avoid conflict with the American Association for the Philosophic Study of Society also.
My my! It’s already time again for another one. I’ll look into being there.
I wanted to point something out about this site. I designed this site to work in Firefox 3.5 and Safari 4. Now, you can use whatever browser you want, and I won’t complain. But I want to make it clear that Firefox 3.5 is the finest browser ever created, and there is not a close second. And I’ve discovered that while Firefox prompts for upgrades, it does not prompt to upgrade major revisions. Only point releases. It will prompt to upgrade 3.0.12 to 3.0.13, but it will not prompt 2.0 to 3.0, nor 3.0.12 to 3.5
Therefore there might be a bunch of you that do not realize that Firefox 3.5 was recently released. To check your Firefox version, click Help>About Mozilla Firefox.
Here’s the download link for Firefox 3.5:
http://mozilla.com/firefox/
PS. Safari 4 can also display this site as designed, but does not have adblocking and doesn’t support the new HTML5 audio and video tags like Firefox does (built-in codecs and player).
To check your Firefox version, click Help>About Mozilla Firefox
It says I’ve got version 3.5.2. How recent iz dat?
That’s the most recent version, as I’m writing this.
http://code.google.com/p/safariblock/
&
http://webkit.org/blog/140/html5-media-support/
Of course WebKit is just a preview of what’s coming, but there has been underlying support for things for a while, also Safariblock isn’t the only AdBlocking thing out there.
Firefox is still fine for use though, just not my first choice on my machine.
That pales in comparison with the Adblock Plus extension for Firefox, at least from the user’s standpoint. Firefox extensions are easy to find and install, not hosted on Google code.
The problem I have with Safari’s HTML5 implementation is that it’s as bad as Flash. With Flash, the browser dynamically links to libflashplayer.so and loads it if called on a webpage. The plugin can interact badly with the browser and crash it, or stop a page from working. Apple chose to implement audio/video tag support by dynamically linking to Quicktime, which is then loaded if called by a site using the audio or video tags. Also the implementation doesn’t work on Windows.
Firefox has its own built-in player, just to play audio/video from the HTML5 tags. It will work on any platform, and it also has Ogg Vorbis/Theora support built-in. By default, Quicktime does not support Ogg files at all, and that’s what everybody’s using these tags for.
I have problems with other browser too.
Opera 10: Passes Acid2 and Acid3, passes CSS3 selectors test, supports text-shadow and hsl colours, but doesn’t support box-shadow, border-radius properties or audio/video tags.
IE8: Passes Acid2, fails all other tests, doesn’t support text-shadow, box-shadow, border-radius, hsl colours, audio/video tags, or any CSS3.
Chrome: Needs to implement latest Webkit to advance to Safari’s level, doesn’t currently support audio/video tags.
http://techblog.procurios.nl/k/618/news/view/33224/14863/Testing-Internet-Explorer-8-CSS3-for-Web-Design.html
Where it’s hosted makes no difference to me, as a user. The point wasn’t that Safariblock was as good as AdBlock, but just something to counter the claim that Safari had no adblocking ability. Of course Safariblock isn’t as good as Adblock, I know from comparison. Also, Safariblock isn’t the only thing out there for this.
And regarding HTML5, Ogg, etc. I recommend this (admittedly Apple-biased) piece as a supplement to other stories on the topic (like this one from Ars Technica):
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/07/06/ogg_theora_h_264_and_the_html_5_browser_squabble.html
I don’t have much of a concern in the browser battles either way. I use what works best for me, while at the same time experimenting with competition to make sure it works best.
Interesting–is that the same Robert Schaeffer, skeptic, UFO-debunker, Randian (?), and author of Resentment Against Achievement? Curious to hear what ensues. Wish I could be a fly on the wall!
is that the same Robert Schaeffer, skeptic, UFO-debunker, Randian (?), and author of Resentment Against Achievement?
Nope, this guy is Schaefer while the Resentment Against Achievement is Sheaffer.
Wish I could be a fly on the wall!
Are you a self-hating human?
[...] As reported by Roderick Long: [...]
[...] Against Monopoly As reported by Roderick Long: [...]
How much does this symposium cost?
Well, you’re supposed to pay the APA’s registration fee (something like $60). They have people roaming the halls doing random checks (Ihre Papiere, bitte) to see whether people attending sessions are registered, though I’ve never seen such a check and I know their workforce is fairly small, so I reckon the likelihood of being able to get past this obnoxious policy is pretty good (especially since they’re probably relying more heavily on their even newer policy of not releasing session location info except to registrants, an annoyance I get around by posting the info on my blog). So, to answer your question, it costs either nothing or $60.
I will prepare to pay either.