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."
Cows that fart less methane would be a *huge* boon to global warming.
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.
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
Apparently my browser is incompatible with the "web app." One wonders what standards their web is based on.
Youtube links for non-sliverlighters
List all lectures
Richard Feynman - The Relation of Mathematics & Physics
Richard Feynman - The Law of Gravitation
Feynman: Quantum Electrodynamics.
Because requiring Silverlight (and therefore Windows) severely dilutes the notion that Gate's action is altruistic. The content is only kinda free.
Wrong. Choose to use it or not as you wish but dont spread incorrect information.
Silverlight for Mac-> download
And of course you can choose the Mono implementation if you want FOSS versions instead
Mono-> download
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 saw 4 feynman lectures put online here, he became my hero instantly. He was a great man.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
It isn't a joke, there is really a bunch of scientist trying to genetically engineer cows that don't fart. It is actually one of the hotter topics regarding to Global Warming. Livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, a bigger share than that of transportation.Yes, everyone has been blaming the SUVs, but really the cows are the bigger blame.
Just because you are wrong and I called you out on it doesn't mean I am a Troll.
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.
I don't think many people believe that Gates is stupid and merely got lucky. The criticism more likely to be leveled at him is that he got where he is more through business acumen than through producing high-quality products.
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.
I don't think many people believe that Gates is stupid and merely got lucky. The criticism more likely to be leveled at him is that he got where he is more through business acumen than through producing high-quality products.
Business acumen, and through inherited money and influence: he had enough money to risk dropping out to start a business, and a few years later his business got a huge boost when they got the contract to supply DOS to IBM, the decision to award that contract being taken by a man who knew BIll Gates; mother.
He is undoubtedly smart (lots of people start by inheriting millions, very few of them turn it into billions), but he he would never have made the same amount of money if he came from an average family however smart he was.
Tuva is really named after a small place in Asia that Feynman had tried to go to for most of his life. Naming the project Tuva is a tribute to Feynman.
dom
I'll believe it, cause its the same for a lot of VM's, because hitting Ctrl+Alt+Del in the VM, is often sent to the host PC instead. SO you can either change the keystroke to Shift+Alt+Del or something, or... use the button.
People are saying it offers nothing that youtube or other types of services offer, and yet I just watched the first lecture at the silverlight site, and thought it was pretty cool how there was 2 text commentaries from physicists you could have as an optional caption, and links to deeper information about certain people and topics he was discussing, that would appear as he was talking about them.
It's the first video I've watched with silverlight, and I didn't mind it at all. The extras it offered allowed me to get a better grasp on certain topics he was covering.
The video was made in 2001 and referring to OS9.
It was referring to OSX, which was released in spring 2001.
He mentions the 'mighty blue apple' in the top menu (OS9 still had the 'rainbow apple').
He also specifically mentions the dock and bouncing icons, which was OSX as well.
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.
Let me fix this for you.
Fact is, unless you've got bad RAM or other hardware issues, Windows "never" crashes.
Fact is, unless you've got bad RAM or other hardware issues, Linux "never" crashes.
Fact is, unless you've got bad RAM or other hardware issues, Unix "never" crashes.
Fact is, unless you've got bad RAM or other hardware issues, Solaris "never" crashes.
There...much better.
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
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.
My mistake. Cressal did say that the file renaming issue happened OS9, and he repeatedly stated how much he hated OS9, so I assumed the whole rant was based on experienced with OS9.
OS X must have been a steaming pile of shit back in 2001.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
If it's so great, why isn't there a Linux silverlight player? Why is it that people who've installed mono on Linux cannot play the lectures (even after adjusting the user agent string)?
Is the purpose of silverlight to improve the way in which information is presented, or to add yet another lock-in for windows-only applications? BTW, I canceled my Netflix subscription as a result of them REQUIRING you to have silverlight on your computer in order to stream content. Their old player worked just fine and it is no longer an option. It MAY have something to do with the CEO of Netflix being named to the Microsoft board of directors....
Yep, right there in my email address.
My blog: http://on10.net/blogs/benwagg
For about 3.5 years now, I'd hit the karma cap here will before then :).
My video compression blog
You can get the lectures here:
http://vega.org.uk/video/subseries/8
And avoid the silverlight embrace, extend, extinguish, scam.