Slashdot Mirror
Bill Gates Puts Classic Feynman Lectures Online
theodp writes "Okay Tux fans, let's see how badly you want to see Feynman's Messenger Lectures on Physics. Bill Gates has the goods over at Microsoft Research's Project Tuva site. Also, CNET's Ina Fried has an interesting interview with Gates. He goes into why he spent his own money to make a series of classic physics lectures available free on the Web, talks about the possibility of Project Natal bringing gesture recognition to Windows, gives his thoughts on Google's Chrome OS, and discusses plans to patent 'cows that don't fart.' The last is a joke. I think."
Microsoft doesn't just want to bring gesture recognition to the Xbox with Project Natal. It also wants the technology in Windows, according to a very good source--Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates.
... if I flick off my windows pc, it will automatically hit ctrl-alt-delete. That would allow me to release stress, and save me a few keyboard clicks.
Here's what I want
He goes into why he spent his own money to make a series of classic physics lectures available free on the Web
That's easy. It's a good way to lure technically minded people into installing Silverlight. No sale here Gates, I'll wait until it's available by torrent.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Cows that fart less methane would be a *huge* boon to global warming.
Ballmer and Gates also echoed the note Business Division President Stephen Elop sounded in an interview with CNET News last week--that Microsoft really doesn't know what Chrome OS will look like.
"Who knows what this thing is?" Ballmer said.
It's the Linux kernel with a new UI. Probably will have some other beefed up parts (security or graphics) along with better hardware support on select devices as they throw their weight around. Judging by the name, it will most likely have a windowing look a lot like the browser. Could be different but I'll bet they build it with real estate in mind like the Chrome browser for netbooks.
I'm also guessing that you know a hell of a lot more about Chrome OS than many of Google's own employees as you've never been entirely stupid when it comes to keeping tabs on your enemies. So either you're letting your own personal ego get in the way of your business sense while underestimating Google or you are asking a rhetorical question to spread uncertainty of what Chrome OS could be. Either way it's pretty childish. I may not know exactly what Chrome OS is but I definitely know what Windows Vista is and I do not want.
My work here is dung.
Honestly, not badly enough to want to install Silverlight on my PC.
I'm not planning on installing it until A) I need it to access critical websites (that is, critical by my definition - sites for my bank and credit cards, for example) and B) the Flashblock plugin will treat Silverlight on webpages like it does Flash.
He goes into why he spent his own money to make a series of classic physics lectures available free on the Web
That's easy. It's a good way to lure technically minded people into installing Silverlight. No sale here Gates, I'll wait until it's available by torrent.
For the technically literate, Moonlight is open source. You should try it out to view these. Word of warning, it uses some of the same protocols so if you're concerned about violating Microsoft's copyright, better to avoid it. They are listed under the community promise now but you never know. And if you're RMS, you're probably going to rip this post apart.
My work here is dung.
With Bill's patent for stopping hurricanes why is a patent for cows that don't fart a joke? http://www.techflash.com/microsoft/One_force_of_nature_vs_another_Bill_Gates_wants_to_stop_hurricanes_50385622.html
... the interview was actually somewhat interesting. I have to say that, whatever I think about MS, Gates is a pretty interesting guy... and appears to be pretty smart and "well rounded. IMO, he made a pretty insightful (mod him +1 ;) ) comment about Google... the more vague it is, the more interesting it is.
Meh. I didn't like Vista, and kinda like 7 so far. Some MS products are cool. Some are awful. But I do have to say that Gates doesn't usually appear to be a stupid little upstart that got lucky or something like that.
Well, one reason I can say for sure is that he happens to have billions of dollars in his bank account. So the cost of doing this is amounts to a rounding error in his checking account. Let's not ascribe too much a sense of moral duty to him for doing this.
When people sing the praises of the ultra-wealthy who donate a bit of money to this or that, it makes me annoyed a little bit. On the one hand, yes, it is good for them to give money to good causes. But on the other hand, they usually do not donate anything close to being something that they would actually feel. Some do, but most don't.
"Click here to download. Needs no restart".
The Goddamned site requires suilverlight. Now why would lectures need silverlight? Damn it, I just want to read the paper, not play some goofy game.
I see why Gates put these on the net, he wants more Silverlight penetration. Evil bastard will rot in hell when he dies.
Free Martian Whores!
I wrestled with the idea for a minute or two and decided I would bite the bullet and take silverlight if I get to see the Feynman (I have been trying to find these videos for a long time, the DVD's are something like $800 if I remember correctly). However when I click the install thing I get "Sorry, your browser is not compatible".
I thought silverlight was supposed to be microsoft's answer to flash but I guess it will never be more than a curiosity/minor annoyance if they can't even be bothered to support firefox. Oh well, as someone above pointed out, torrents are undoubtedly on the way so I'll just have to wait a bit more.
-Buck
I don't care that it's MS Research. The irritating part is that my "browser is not compatible" because I don't use silverlight.
Oh, and regarding Bill's comments on it being a bad idea for Google to have two OS's (Chrome and Android)... MS HAS MORE THAN ONE OS, DUMBSHIT! Is Gates so out of touch that he thinks that win mobiles run Vista?
What about some great reading in HTML instead? It tells about where the real IT World was while MS was monkeying with some clone of CP/M
http://www.longnow.org/views/essays/articles/ArtFeynman.php
BTW, dear BillG: There is something called archive.org if you want to donate something to technical community. They offer standard MPEG and OGG files and Flash, which is current de-facto standard can stream them embedded if one is in hurry. Your attempt to kill Flash has failed, fire that team and target something else.
Since it seems it's slashdotted alread, here's a mirror
This is less about distributing knowledge and more about increasing distribution of Microsoft's video/web-technology, Silverlight .
To quote Gates from the article:
Gates said that he hoped his action would serve as a model for taking great educational content and making it broadly available for free.
and "...With super-high-quality material like this up there for free, I hope people see the potential, and that they'd benefit from this one in particular, and then it starts to push forward the idea if someone is great lecturer, then their work should be out there and available."
This philosophy of course does not apply to work of inferior software companies, which can charge exorbitant amounts for their software. But great lecturers'
work should be made available for free.
Truly philanthropic...Kudos!
"Here's what I want ... if I flick off my windows pc, it will automatically hit ctrl-alt-delete. That would allow me to release stress, and save me a few keyboard clicks."
There are many reasons I would (assuming "flip"?) flick off my Windows pc - and MANY reasons why I would flick off my linux PC - for reasons that have nothing to do with an O/S failure. That wouldn't be practical.
Apparently my browser is incompatible with the "web app." One wonders what standards their web is based on.
Funny is Tuva is really close to word Truva in Turkish which is basically the city of Troy. Installing some silverlight clone to be able to watch them really reminds "trojan". :)
Youtube links for non-sliverlighters
List all lectures
Richard Feynman - The Relation of Mathematics & Physics
Richard Feynman - The Law of Gravitation
Feynman: Quantum Electrodynamics.
So Billy G wants to bring "...[the wonders of science to everyone]..." except for those of us not using Internet Explorer...ahhh...so refreshing!
omg... CONSPIRACY!!!!
The bit about cows may not be a joke, as there was a similar story on Slashdot not long ago: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/06/24/1710252
Totally off the real topic but Bill Gates actually rates well in the percentage of net
worth donated. http://www.businessweek.com/pdfs/2004/0448_philan.pdf
The above link doesn't reflect my next unsubstatiated statement but Larry Elison has
historically done very poorly at giving significant percentages of his income.
OS X is NeXT/BSD Lite/Carbon/FreeBSD with a new UI and collection of frameworks. That almost schizoid mix of things is being chosen instead of Windows by 70 year old ladies because it is easier to use!
One gotta be afraid of "new UI" things especially when they are released by some company almost same size as them. Funny thing is, Google can lose billions with no harm (just like MS silverlight) and say "oh well, it didn`t work" and continue their regular business. In fact they don`t even have to cancel it as it will be open source.
...but this guy still makes me facepalm.
"It just shows the word browser has become a truly meaningless word," Gates said. "What's a browser? What's not a browser? If you're playing a movie, is that a browser or not a browser? If you're doing annotations, is that a browser? If you're editing text, is that a browser or not a browser? In large part, it's more an abuse of terminology than a real change."
Editing text has been part of browsing ever since HTML forms were introduced. Playing movies has been part of browsers since QuickTime and RealPlayer -- so, could easily be 10 years.
And of course, he's playing dumb about the real difference here. It seems like he's trying to suggest that it shouldn't be called a "browser", but rather, we should be talking about text editors and movie players.
No, see, the difference is whether I can just watch stuff on YouTube, edit text on Google Docs, pretty much do whatever I want on the Internet, without downloading anything other than a browser update. It means I get a fat client to some very cool services -- one that auto-updates the next time I refresh, yet one that's sufficiently sandboxed as not to be able to touch anything else in my OS.
It also means that when developing such applications, not only are they automatically cross-platform, but I can develop most of the logic as part of the server, and on the server side, I can use whatever technologies and languages I want.
And this reality is something Microsoft has been fighting since day 1, with the bastardization of web technology that is IE, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that Gates doesn't get it. I guess I gave him the benefit of the doubt...
Ballmer and Gates also stressed the fact that Google now has two operating systems--Chrome OS and Android. Ballmer noted that Microsoft learned with the separate Windows 95 for consumers and Windows NT for businesses that having two operating systems isn't necessarily a positive thing.
*facepalm*
Ok, leaving aside the fact that you've got, what, five or six versions of Vista, and it looks as though there will be even more versions of Win7 -- just what does Gates think runs on Windows Mobile? It's not Vista, and it's not Win7.
Sure, Chrome OS and Android are closer to each other than Windows Mobile and Vista, but they're still directed at different markets -- Chrome OS is meant for netbooks, while Android was meant for mobile phones. Android runs on netbooks, but serves an entirely different purpose -- while NT and Win95 look exactly the same -- oh, and as he pointed out, Android has a browser, meaning anything Chrome OS can do, Android can do -- meaning it's more like comparing Vista Starter with Vista Ultimate, whereas NT and Win95 actually had mutually incompatible software.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Obviously, requires you to have Silverlight installed. I'm using Windows, so I don't have a chance to try it with Moonlight. Somewhat disappointing that Moonlight isn't aimed at Windows. Could probably pick up some more users for those of us, who aren't fans of IE or Firefox
IE 8 - works (duh)
Firefox 3 - works (surprise)
Opera 9/10 - doesn't work
Chrome 2 - doesn't work
Safari 4 - doesn't work
Chrome is OPEN SOURCE, so it will fail. Nothing that is open source has ever been able to compete effectively with the closed source counterparts. I know I will be moderated down into oblivion for stating this, but there it is.
...how did you come up with all this conclusions? Because from what I imagine to be most likely, you know close to nothing about Bill Gates's thoughts, Microsoft internals, Google internals, etc. So I can only guess you have no idea what you are talking about and in typical pundit fashion, pull things out of your ass, that support your p.o.v.
I really hope I am totally wrong with my guesses, and that you have some special insight. But if, then why did you not base your arguments on it by stating it?
So correct me if I'm wrong, and I will thank you for having learned something.
But if I am right, please just shut up. :)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
The site need Silverlight to view the lectures, so one has to wonder whether Microsoft was looking for a 'killer application' to make people want to install the plug-in.
On a more optimistic note, does anyone have these lectures in MKV or MPEG4 format, or at least something using a more open format?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Firefox is supported, you might have to manually install Silverlight first.
I thought silverlight was supposed to be microsoft's answer to flash but I guess it will never be more than a curiosity/minor annoyance if they can't even be bothered to support firefox. Oh well, as someone above pointed out, torrents are undoubtedly on the way so I'll just have to wait a bit more.
-Buck
I'm running the latest release version of Firefox with Silverlight 3 installed and it seems to be loading fine. I did, however, get that message with Chrome (I'm not too surprised, Silverlight 2 kinda worked and kinda didn't when Chrome released and it took them a while to get it going.. I'm not sure if it was ever as seamless as it was on IE or Firefox).
Make sure Silverlight and Firefox are both up-to-date. I haven't gotten into the video lectures yet but I must say, they're making improvements on their video player designs and the overall site feels responsive and sharp.
Could it have been done in Flash? I'm sure it could. Then again, it could probably have been done in HTML 5 too...
It installs and plays on XP in a virtual machine. That's very apt if you think about since Feynman did so much to help our understanding of virtual particles :-)
He's just laying the groundwork for their coming marketing campaign, centered around "trust" and "stability" messages to soothe the Windows 7 buying soul. It will probably work on the older baby boomers, but everyone else will yawn and go back to tooling around on Facebook and watching Hulu, on whatever operating system they like.
If Google creates a framework where you can locally host Google Apps that automatically sync with low horsepower terminals connected to the local network, Microsoft will be in a world of hurt. Once all you need is a browser to connect to a majority of the company resources, the support staff costs will fall by 50%. Buy a pallet of Core 2 machines, spend some decent money up front on the server, and keep some fresh spare machines to switch out for hardware failure. That setup could last for a decade.
These are very interesting: http://vega.org.uk/video/subseries/8
They're what I thought this slashdot article was about when I read the headline.
I think that it's great that Gates made Feynman's lectures available for free online. Now, I don't know a lot about physics, but I do know that his lectures were some of the best sources out there to learn it. In addition, there are several outlets available for people to expand their knowledge base, with MIT OpenCourseWare being one of the more popular ones. Heck, people could even use YouTube to gain a better understanding of any one topic. It could even be argued that a source like YouTube is better, since the educational videos I've seen were explained in very simple terms (which are always the best terms).
That all goes to show that the sources are there, and are very easy to access. You don't even need an account to access nearly the same material as MIT students do! However, Gates was absolutely right in that motivation is a really strong factor in wanting to find that stuff. I think that a source of that waning motivation comes from the desire to find a job, especially "in this economy."
So many people see school solely as a "means to an end," and many schools set themselves up to be precisely this. When one's goal is simply to graduate, there's "no time" to bother with learning the extra stuff; it's all about the grade in that paradigm.
I don't want to make this longer than it already is, but what I think would be awesome is to let students "create a major" at the college level. Some schools, like RPI and RIT, already practice this, but it should be practiced much more heavily, especially in the sciences and engineering. As a finishing Computer Engineering student, I'll be the first to say that it kind of sucks that I have to take a ton of classes that will have no practical OR educational use for me, just so that I can graduate under the guidelines of a program. However, that rant is for another time.
Here :- 1964 Messenger Lecture 1 Character of Physical Law 1 of 7
I have been loving discovering Feynman. As much as he reveals and explains interesting physics, he also maps the limits of our current understanding. Questions like, how does gravity and matter work, why does light refract, simple aspects of physics that we still don't understand.
Apache is win. Netflix confirms it!
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
A leopard can't change its spots?
Bill Gates has a monopoly on these lectures, and he leverages that monopoly for the benefit of Silverlight. Always a self-serving monopolist, I guess.
One wonders if the rest of the world has to sign a EULA to get access to his malaria treatments.
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
Things are only funny to me when they're true, and sadly that video props up way too many fallacies, leaving the savvy viewer merely feeling that the ignorance of the average user is being abused.
Fact is, unless you've got bad RAM or other hardware issues, Mac OS X "never" crashes. (I was going to say "rarely" or "hardly ever" but frankly it's much closer to never.) And don't even get me started on the endless virus labyrinth Windows represents.
As a graphic designer and a programmer of Mac, iPhone, and web applications, I want a UNIX-like platform where I can stage my websites and use a real shell with the full compliment of GNU software, a decent JVM, and a full and optimized OpenGL implementation. Only the Mac provides the complete solution for me. And when I do want to test a website on IE6/7 or build my SDL binary for Windows I can just start up VMWare with Windows XP.
Any web developer worth his salt ought to have strong experience with the UNIX shell, shell scripting, and Apache configuration. Developers with broader interests should have Photoshop, Illustrator, and Flash at their disposal. And every developer should have decent C/C++ skills. I wish Linux had all this, and perhaps soon it will have a comparable set of apps. But in 2009, Mac OS X with XCode provides an amazing set of tools that Windows and Linux simply can't match - certainly not at any comparable price.
So, enough with bashing the Mac with outmoded and fallacious arguments. Especially when the guy doing the bashing is just a dunderhead without any recent multi-platform development experience.
Rant ended, huzzah!
-- thinkyhead software and media
I thought silverlight was supposed to be microsoft's answer to flash but I guess it will never be more than a curiosity/minor annoyance if they can't even be bothered to support firefox
It's working fine for me in Firefox on my Mac.
So let me get this straight: an employee of a public institution (Cal Tech) gave some speeches that were recorded by a government-funded entity (the BBC), and in order to release those recordings to the public, a private individual (Bill Gates) had to purchase the rights? And rather than release in them in a standards-based format, we instead have to to download and install proprietary software (Silverlight) that we may not want on our computers?
Chances are this was a joke, however if it wasn't there has been many studies related to the topic. One interesting note is that "cow farts" or bovine flatulence constitutes only 1/6th of greenhouse gasses and that cow burping constitutes 5/6th. So while I can applaud Mr. Gates for patenting bovine Beano(TM), it would be wiser for him to focus on the gas causing sugars in the feed or the bacteria that create the gasses inside the stomach. Some info http://http//www.fart-sounds.net/educated_fart_analysis.htm/
There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
so. fuckin. what.
and you are less about distributing sperm and more about perpetuating successful genes
...how did you come up with all this conclusions?
I was merely repeating the details from last week when this was announced on Google's blog. I've never known them to lie about what they discuss on that blog so I take it on good faith that they plan on releasing a new GUI ontop of Linux with all of it being open source. They also put up a FAQ about it. The fact that they are planning to release it for ARM also indicates it will be aimed at netbooks. They flat out say that Android was never supposed to be for netbooks.
Because from what I imagine to be most likely, you know close to nothing about Bill Gates's thoughts, Microsoft internals, Google internals, etc. So I can only guess you have no idea what you are talking about and in typical pundit fashion, pull things out of your ass, that support your p.o.v.
No one but Bill Gates knows what Bill Gates is thinking. No one but employees of Microsoft know their internals. No one but employees of Google know their internals. So judging by your assumptions, no one could possibly fill those conditions to make a statement about Chrome OS or say what a business man must be thinking. Thanks for calling me a "typical pundit." I thought my statements were well informed and informed readers. Nice to know that I "have no idea what I am talking about" and am "pulling things out of my ass." I note that you provided no specific details of anything nor do you provide anything worth reading about the discussion at hand. If these are guesses, prove me wrong with facts.
I really hope I am totally wrong with my guesses,
You also save yourself from being a complete troll by offering me this trivial gem of "hope." How this was moderated insightful is beyond me.
and that you have some special insight. But if, then why did you not base your arguments on it by stating it? So correct me if I'm wrong, and I will thank you for having learned something.
:)
But if I am right, please just shut up.
Please, Hurricane78, do me a favor--go here and mark me as a Foe. Then go here and find the section called "People Modifier" and set Foes to be -6 so you never have to read my uninformed guesses. Really, it would be a huge favor to me not to have to read your responses to my comments.
My work here is dung.
Don't you think he would have picked a subject/person with wider appeal if that were entirely the case?
The problem with that is it would have to learn to recognize different gestures. For example in the UK we use two fingers a gesture dating back to Agincourt when the French would cut off those same two fingers of any English they captured so that they could not draw a longbow.
...because of all the possible video formats out there, he just happens to choose Silverlight? How convenient.
Summing up: I don't want yet another passing Microsoft fad installed on my machine which will add more vulnerabilities and be downloading weekly "reboot required" updates for the next ten years.
No sig today...
And if Google decided to release the lectures don't you think they would do it on youtube or google video? Is that such a stretch. Bill Gates is affiliated with Microsoft and as such will continue to prop up and support microsoft technologies.
Torrents?
Silverlight/Tuva cannot buffer like youtube (read: download in background), videos are next to useless for me. Stutters after ~3 sec... 3sec... Very annoying.
Caltech (not Cal Tech) is a private university, though it receives significant public funding like any research university. However, I don't believe the development of these lectures was publicly funded.
((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x))) http://www.endpointcomputing.com a scientific approach to custom computing.
Who really gives a shit? Seriously. So what do I care; I'll install it, then after I'm done watching the lectures I'll keep it or I won't. Someone has a great sig - nerd rage truly is the funniest of rages. And Bill Gates rage is at the top of the mountain.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
I don't care that it's MS Research. The irritating part is that my "browser is not compatible" because I don't use silverlight.
What browser do you use?
Also, if you look at the design of the video experience, it really couldn't be done without Silverlight. This isn't just a simple video player, but with integrated captions, commentary, graphical links, and delivered via Smooth Streaming.
It's really a media player app using Silverlight as the runtime; there's certainly many thousands lines of source for the managed code driving that experience.
My video compression blog
I may actually install Silverlight for this. Feynman was the shit.
Next stop, convincing Adobe to stop releasing all their documents in that damn pdf format!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
http://vega.org.uk/video/subseries/8 Requires QuickTime or RealPlayer I think, I don't remember which. But they're already online for free.
Reading about the interview of Bill Gates, made me wonder, does he truly truly want the videos to be free and available to everybody?
What are the licenses of the videos?
I suspect I couldn't copy them elsewhere, for free. According to article, "Gates said that he hoped his action would serve as a model for taking great educational content and making it broadly available for free." [emphasis mine] yes, broadly available, but locked to single distributor. This does limit the free a lot! I wonder was this the intention of then relatively naive 30-year-old Bill Gates too, I suspect not. Article gave me impression that Gates truly (once) wanted them to be free.
I'm having hard time with Tuva myself, mainly because I cannot watch them by streaming without interruptions. And I couldn't pick them with me and show them to someone not connected to Tuva.
If the purpose of this stunt is to share the knowledge, then please, make them available as download also.
You have watched it? Why haven't you uploaded a torrent somewhere? Please, I beg you...
talks about the possibility of Project Natal bringing gesture recognition to Windows
I know what my first gesture for my windows installation will be...
A little misunderstanding? Galileo and the Pope had a little misunderstanding...
And rather than release in them in a standards-based format, we instead have to to download and install proprietary software (Silverlight) that we may not want on our computers?
Silverlight (WMV) is in a standards based format, you can check it out in Mono.
Flash too is proprietary software. If I were Adobe, I would make a 20 dollar version of Photoshop for Linux. Or even team up with Ubuntu to have Adobumtu, that has heavily discounted Adobe software.
Silverlight (WMV) is in a standards based format, you can check it out in Mono.
These are actually Smooth Streaming files.
http://www.iis.net/extensions/SmoothStreaming
FWIW, Silverlight 3 supports WMV, MPEG-4 (with H.264), Smooth Streaming, and supports managed code decoders and parsers to add additional formats.
My video compression blog
Guess I'll have to watch the YouTube versions now.
Isn't it possible that Bill Gates' funds might be entangled with Microsoft and thus he could only release it in a way that also benefits Microsoft due to the various court decisions that require a company to always act in the interests of its shareholders?
Bill Gates, thank you!
I will watch them all.
17779 eligible voters in a district, 17779 'vote' as one. This is Russia.
Right, I know this isn't a tech support forum, but.......... I'm on Ubuntu, I have Moonlight installed, I have my User Agent set to IE7, how do I get the f***cking site to recognise I can play the videos. It seems other on here have got it to work. How?
I find it rather disconcerting that /. has become some form of opinion ranting site, rather than a news aggregation site. I'm no fan of any company, be they Windows, Google, Apple, etc., but this whole MS bashing thing is getting ridiculous. I find it pretty funny that on the same day Apple patches their iTunes store to lock out Palm Pre's, not a whisper about it on /., and yet just because MS decides to use their Silverlight to show some videos suddenly "MS are retard, facepalm, evil har har har" comments go up all over the place. I know /. is geared towards amateur programmers/technologists, but there comes a point when you mods have to be more strict about all the ranting that goes on. The actual news and valid opinions seem to get lost in the sea of "_EnterCompanyName_ is teh evil i haet them!" posts.
...is a really nice way to watch these. Subtitles, links to related materials, a timeline, links to places in the timeline - silverlight really shines in this presentation.
This is not a self-referential sig.
--
This space for rent.
See my previous post here.
To anyone complaining that this doesn't load/problems EBCAK.
This couldn't have come at a better time. I have read alot of his books and having this available is like icing on the cake. Also @ MrCrassic if you don't have the time to dismiss capitalism for education you are a very sad case. The only reason I took my degree is that it covered the subjects I am passionate about (Physics, Maths, Computer Science, Astronomy) I will make a descision about what job I would like when the time comes, as for now at the speed in which I learn new things and the vastness of occupations and professions unfold rapidly, it is impossible for me to say I want to be x when in 2 months time x may seem an unchallenging and tedious occupation. I study for overkill in all my papers to gain an understanding of the subject rather than a piece of paper needed to bullshit my way into pleasing other people.
I just installed Silverlight and watched the first lecture. Very interesting and I had a couple of laughs. The quality of the movies is pretty good too. And best of all, it's free. I'll enjoy the rest of the lectures and let all the linux fanboys dish Silverlight in this thread.
I have software on my computer already that will play WMV, H.264, and a host of other standard formats. So many people confuse a standard file delivery format with software. I do NOT want Silverlight on my computer.
The first three have been on youtube for a couple months. The others will be up soon I expect. Search for "1964 Messenger lecture".
I got my phD 20 years ago, and find these interesting. I'm a big fan of feynman.
but if you're learning the subject today and watching these, stop now and get a textbook and a good teacher. they really aren't very good lectures. in fact, they are a terrible waste of your time.
Bill! Nice try, man. Like we didn't see that coming. In order to see the great man's lectures I have to install--WTF? Silverlight? What's that? Some .NET crap that's going to clog up my machine with a bunch of vampire processes? Not on your life. Bill--take it from moi--if you want to do a good deed, drop those vids of Feynman on Google Video.
So a video that requires a new plugin. Err..no thanks.
And cheers for the glimpse of the future with Natal, but i already saw Peter Molyneux showing off his, ahem, "demo" of Milo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPIbGnBQcJY
"True technology... [that] works today." In almost every respect it's a blatant sham. I've seen far more credible performances from the likes of Uri Geller. Say sorry Peter, like you mean it!
In one way its nice to see that Peter is settling in nicely to the Microsoft marketing team.
Yeah, using silverlight, so watching them in GNU/Linux is both difficult... and impossible. They can shove the lectures up their asses and i goddamn well hope it explodes and they're left with their balls hanging from the bell towers.
You can get the lectures here:
http://vega.org.uk/video/subseries/8
And avoid the silverlight embrace, extend, extinguish, scam.
I find Bill Gate's donation of videos, that require a Microsoft product to see, a very disingenuous "gift" - it should really be touted as advertising which is what they are probably writing it off as anyway.
I also find Bill's comments rather illiterate. Did he actually comment in that manner?
Dishonest and illiterate, is that the brains behind Microsoft?
Regarding all of the Silverlight criticism -- yes, the videos could have just been posted in ogg vorbis or something to make everyone happy, but the Silverlight app adds many additional features in support of learning. Think of it as the bonus content on the DVD release. It's actually pretty cool. Silverlight isn't evil, and as someone who's very familiar with both Flash and Silverlight, I can tell you that badly-behaved Flash apps are more likely to make your system unstable than Silverlight apps will.
But it does support Firefox. It works fine on 3.0.10.
Remember RealAudio? In the late 90's they owned internet audio? But then when you installed their player it took total control of your machine and basically was just a bad application? Well, they're gone now, basically. Microsoft is a similar case. They screwed with people so much that a bunch of competitors appeared. I used to code on MS platforms but I stopped and switched to Java a long time ago. The reason people beat up on Microsoft is because Microsoft--the company--is a bastard. So, in this age, don't ever be evil or you will be remembered forever for it. That's what's happening here. You're blaming the messengers.