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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!
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.
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.
"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.
This is less about distributing knowledge and more about increasing distribution of Microsoft's video/web-technology, Silverlight .
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.
...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!
however much we dislike Gates and M$, we must recognize that he is a serious philantropist and has a record on donations to charity, particularly towards serious world problems like malaria, measles, etc. That is something good I can say about him. Silverlight, on the other hand, is not :(
metageek
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.
If your bank requires Silverlight while 98% of Planet has Flash installed, they are desperate for MS money or donation of servers which is not a good thing for banks. It also means there is some MS technology involved in process as opposed to AIX/UNIX/zOS which are "rolls royce" of servers and chosen by banks who prefers reliability to price.
Same goes for anyone "subscribing" to media outlets for a long time which requires Silverlight . It probably means they are easily bought out.
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.
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.
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.
> It installs and plays on XP in a virtual machine.
Only if one has a copy of XP.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
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 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.
Well I think Bill Gates, when you add up a lot of the things he's done, has donated more than what would be a rounding error. Still, you can look at all these things in the sense that it's no more generous for Gates to give away a few billion dollars than it is courageous for Superman to jump in front of a bullet. The hurt isn't large. It's not as though Gates is going to cease to live an extremely comfortable lifestyle. What's more, you could argue that something like this is just robbing Peter to pay Paul. Gates is screwing society out of billions of dollars through underhanded business tactics, only to give back a portion of the money through charitable donations.
You can argue those things, but on the other hand, it's not always worth looking a gift horse in the mouth. He's donating more than he's required to, and doing it of his own free will. May as well be pleased about that.
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.
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.
He had to have some brains somewhere.
In a jar marked Abby something...
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?
...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.
So Billy G wants to bring "...[the wonders of science to everyone]..." except for those of us not using Internet Explorer...ahhh...so refreshing!
The site works fine in both Firefox and Safari, on my Mac.
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.
Meh. I disagree. I've experienced all of that crap first hand. OSX has gotten better since then (you'll notice that the video used a crt imac, and a plastic g4 (g5)? tower.
And yeah, I've experienced the whole app window just closes and is gone with no error message crash.
I've experienced the stupid finder locking up when you put in a CD on SEVERAL macs (including new ones). Windows does it too on bad disks sometimes, but OSX does it more, and worse -- because on a PC you can generally eject the bad disk and the OS comes right back to life... on a mac, you pretty much need to mount the CD to be able to eject it... so if its locked up mounting the thing, you can't easily eject it, short of grabbing a paperclip...or rebooting with the space bar, neither of which is convenient.
And the undeleting thing? Yep, I've been there too, as have a lot of savvy 'switchers' (remember this was made during the switcher campaign), and it underscores the issue that a lot of windows users who switched face ... they found that they had to pay for a lot of utility type apps that they were used to getting for free on Windows.
The crack about the apple menu actually is in my opinion one of the biggest flaws in the OSX window manager. When you've got 2 24"+ screens, having to mouse over to the top of one screen to access a menu is demented.
The crack about Software Update hopping up and down like a terrier hits the mark too in my opinion. You can't just ignore it they way you can ignore "windows updates are ready" or the way the various linux distros notify you.
And my father's mac laptop wouldn't empty the trash recently for no apparent reason... everytime you tried finder restarted. I went through the forums, I went through Apple support, I'm a cross platform admin - comfortable with Windows, Linux, and OSX. I tried all the simple stuff, then the simple command line stuff, then the arcane command line stuff, then reinstalling OSX over top of the existing install, and finally I just threw in the towel and reinstalled OSX from scratch -- I've had lots of mac frustrations.
Oddly, he never touched on the rainbow pinwheel of death, which I've seen FAR TOO MUCH of, accessing network shares, external media and peripherals.
So, while I actually use and like OSX, and agree with your post. Macs have got plenty of its own little quirks that can drive you mad, and I really don't think much of that video was 'fallacious myths'. I have personally seen it all, and more.
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?
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.
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.
And he should be able to dance, cook, be good in bed, know how to sail a boat, be good with kids and impress my parents.
WTF?? I could climb Mt. Everest but not your ego.
2+2=5 for very large values of 2.
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.
Bill Gates, thank you!
I will watch them all.
17779 eligible voters in a district, 17779 'vote' as one. This is Russia.
You can get the lectures here:
http://vega.org.uk/video/subseries/8
And avoid the silverlight embrace, extend, extinguish, scam.