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Microsoft Celebrates Feynman 50-year Anniversary
Julie188 writes "A couple of years ago Microsoft acquired the rights to the famed filmed lecture series by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman and posted them online for all to see via its Project Tuva site. As part of the 50-year anniversary of the lectures, the Project Tuva site now includes commentary from MIT physics professor Robert Jaffe. Project Tuva still requires Silverlight (alas, not HTML5), but does offer some nifty features for the aspiring physics student, such as search and the ability to take notes."
It's a shame no one will get to see it...
It's only in the Microsoft net. Due to the requirement to use Silverlight.
Actually I'm saying thanks to the submitter because I completely missed this part of the copyright problem.
If the only "authorized copy" of some Grade AA Must-Have item is buried it that cabinet with the Beware of Leopard sign, that could instantly flash us to IE6 2.0 problems for hundreds of proprietary blobs!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Anyone have a torrent link?
maybe not as dead as you think. I remember the last olympics was available all online...in full HD....in silverlight. First time I downloaded it, and I have to admit that it was easily the best representation of what I THINK the future of TV should be. All available online, all back events available, at a click of a mouse, including streaming of live events, all in HD. I wonder how many more ppl still have silverlight installed cause of the olympics...
Of course, torrents would be appreciated. :)
Charge a few bucks to cover costs.
While Silverlight loaded the above Tuva link in IE, I watched "Richard Feynman - The Relation of Mathematics & Physics. Part 1" on YouTube in Firefox. And uh yeah, it's still loading. Thanks Microsoft.
If you are seriously bothered about those things and Moonlight, you should also concern yourself with javascript, it's under the same license.
-]Phreak Out[-
Flamebait much?
But when I clicked the link to Project Tuva, I was redirected in this order:
- Sorry, Silverlight for your browser is not supported, to see the list of supported browser click <link>. I clicked.
- Get Microsoft Silverlight - Click to install. I clicked.
- Moonlight for Linux, a free plug-in.
I realized that Miguel is an idiot a long time, but I didn't know Moonlight is officially supported by MS. And I still don't know why.
PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
And it's different from Flash how? All I know is that technically Silverlight runs on a much more capable platform. I also trust .net runtime much more than any Flash VM. And I'm no microsoft fanboy.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
We used Feynman's intro physics book back when I was in college, and though I got an A in every physics course I ever took, I found that book completely baffling. Instead of being logical and straightforward, it was full of mathematical sleight-of-hand, bringing new variables from nowhere, because "we can call this anything we want!", and magically proceeding the final equation. Entertaining, maybe, but as far as understanding the material it was completely useless. He's just one more celeb I can do without.
What does FOSS have for a web framework that is a viable alternative to Silverlight or Flash?
What about HTML5 isn't viable?
More than that, how about not making it streaming-only? While I'd prefer a free codec, I can play pretty much anything in mplayer or VLC, if you give me a download URL (or a torrent). And these are things I'd want to keep around.
...that only works for Flash, and you all hate Flash too.
Well, it's tricky. In theory, I like Silverlight better than Flash, because Moonlight seems to be much more stable and complete than Gnash. But in practice, there actually is a native Flash player for Linux, and the nspluginwrapper crap isn't really worse than Flash in a 32-bit browser, which is all you get on Windows anyway -- whereas both Moonlight and Gnash only work on a ridiculously small subset of the Silverlight and Flash content out there.
Add to this the fact that the DRM in Silverlight does not work on Moonlight, so while this particular site might work, Netflix, for example, will not. So even if Moonlight was flawless, you'd still have content that requires the official Silverlight.
And if that wasn't enough, with the few videos I've watched, Moonlight didn't do anti-aliasing. I think Silverlight did, but I'm not sure. Flash does, and you better believe mplayer does.
having competing (albeit commercial) frameworks to choose from is a Good Thing[TM] IMHO.
Nope. Having multiple competing implementations is a Good Thing. Having multiple competing standards is a problem, especially when several of them are proprietary. I have no problem that IE exists, so long as we can develop to web standards and, with minimal hackery, have our websites work on all major browsers, including IE. I did have a problem when IE was the defacto standard.
Where's the FOSS alternative, and which major site's require me to use it for the best experience?
Erm, since when did we judge standards based on which ones we're forced to use? WTF makes you think that's a good criterion?
By that logic, the fact that so many apps force you to use Windows means Windows should be the standard, and people should stop bashing it, and nobody should complain if these Feynman lectures -- or, for that matter, our tax forms -- are Windows-only. (Right now, they're Flash-only, which is an improvement, but still retarded.)
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Sod off. There is no need for Silverlight in this case. The content should be on youtube for all to view.
Sure.. its not like the millions of people that watch the insanely popular netflix streaming service, using up more than 20% of north american bandwidth (even surpassing youtube), are using silverlight...
5.25" floppies, eh?
Durp durp? Oh... Nevermind.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Just downloaded the latest and tried it on the Project Tuva site.
No dice. The site won't serve the content. Claims my system is still unsupported and gives me the same click-through bum's rush that got me to do the latest Moonlight download.
It's not. If you install moonlight from that link, then go back to the Project Tuva website, you get the same brush-off.
Microsoft isn't "supporting" Moonlight. They don't even use the word in their webpages. They just automatically redirect you if you try to install Silverlight on an unsupported platform.
Jesus Christ on stick, you people disgust me. Not a single comment about the content of these lectures, the life and theories of the man, it's all about how Microsoft pooped in your pool by putting this up in the same format Netflix uses. Seriously.
Poor means hoping the toothache goes away.
Netflix can be viewed on all major video game consoles, and there are other devices like the Roku. I'm fairly sure these don't run Silverlight, the Wii and PS3 particularly. I don't have any statistics on which device people use to watch Netflix. But I think there is a larger audience of people who want to watch the movies on their TV rather than their computer screen and don't know how to set up an HTPC.
More to the point Flash has been around for.... EVER. If not for Flash being adopted would HTML5 have even been started (then abandoned)? Fuck no. Seriously the F/OSSies are getting out of control. "WE ARE THE BEST AT INNOVATION! HURBLEGARGALA!" they chant with shit running out of their mouths as they have complained about Flash forever and still have nothing to offer. Tell me, none of you could sack up and fill the niche? Doesn't that really throw all of the open source "I can just do it myself" attitude right out the window? Its the most hated of all things on the internet and NOBODY came up with something. It seems by demonstration you can't do it yourself quite like commercial software can. The only thing that makes sense is the goal of F/OSS is to completely destroy proprietary software, make it so it can't be proprietary. This is clearly shown in the GPL license they love so much. In which case we never would have had any of the progress of the last 10 years on the internet.
F/OSS should just accept that their job is to go in after things are created and make the free version that everybody standardizes on 5 to 10 years down the road. And that has value, absolutely. But this warfare is ridiculous and they're losing while making themselves look like complete asswipes. I can't believe I'm not posting this anonymously.
If I can just reach out with my words and touch a butthole, just one, it will all be worth it.
And I call it a piece of art because the man was a damn artist when it came to explaining physics.
The universe in a glass of wine.
Searching for it returns nothing.
I know you can look it up by the section of the class, but come on natural language search is the new pink.
I'll stick to the bad recordings passed around by CIT students for the past quarter century.
But when I clicked the link to Project Tuva, I was redirected in this order:
- Sorry, Silverlight for your browser is not supported, to see the list of supported browser click <link>. I clicked.
- Get Microsoft Silverlight - Click to install. I clicked.
- Moonlight for Linux, a free plug-in.
I realized that Miguel is an idiot a long time, but I didn't know Moonlight is officially supported by MS. And I still don't know why.
And were you then able to view the Feynman videos at Microsoft's Tuva site? No? Well, nobody is surprised. I tried and still got the "blah blah browser not supported" message (result with both Firefox and Chromium on 64bit Ubuntu).
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
"50-year anniversary" is as redundant as ATM machine, PIN number, etc.
And while I'm off-topic, they're not celebrating 50 years (or "50 year-years", if you're the headline writer) of Feynman; they're celebrating 50 years of his Lectures.
[Off to mow the lawn with my lawn-lawnmower.]
'Surely your'e joking Mr Feneyman'
A darn good read.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
I remember that I got a copy from a friend in high school on a collection of ripped CD's that I might just as easily have not gotten my hands on. It is the single-most inspiring series of lectures many people will ever hear in physics for the target audience of entry level university physics progressing towards graduate physics (save maybe the early lecture on how to take a derivative of displacement, which showed the time of the series). About damn time that it is freely available to the general public.
Every single time I've decided to test something in moonlight, whether it be streaming hockey, streaming the Olympics, SIPSorcery, or this Tuva thing, never have I even gotten basic access to the service in question. In this case I had to grab Moonlight, then change my user agent to IE on Windows to even get a Silverlight app to load. Then it just hangs during startup.
The sole reason Moonlight exists is so that people who use Windows and Mac OS X can be scammed into thinking that Silverlight is cross-platform. At least Flash, as bad as it is, has a working Linux client.
...browser.
So, since when has Microsoft ever had a problem with Silverlight running in Chrome? I've been to many Silverlight sites with no issues whatsoever. Why is this one in particular discriminating? The link it even tries to send me to points out that Silverlight is installed and working fine.
The thing is that Microsoft has been shouting that Linux infringes on 235 patents for years now (and still won't produce them, because they are probably piss-weak). Why add to the pile by using mono/moonlight/whatever Miguel comes up with to deliberately plant Microsoft IP into the Linux Standard Base?
--
BMO
Using HTML5 would limit it to a smaller subset of viewers than Silverlight.
Bull. Practically every platform in existence has a browser for it that can play the <video> tag. Silverlight works on 2 platforms only and it is proprietary to boot.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Use this extension to change Chrome's UA string to something this Tuva site will accept. I changed it to IE8 and installed the latest version of Silverlight for good measure.
Nick
RTFA, they say. Here' the FA is wrong -- the lectures are not owned by Microsoft, but are the personal property of Bill Gates who has made them available to Microsoft.
You have to laugh at the way genius wannabees, like the ones who run Microsoft, are so desperate to associate themselves with a real one. Some things you simply cannot buy. One cannot help but think Feynman would scorn Microsoft's uninspired products.
an ill wind that blows no good
It's about an extra $250 per seat on MS Windows to get a version of X-Windows running on it that is as good as what you get on linux. That adds up quickly enough and graphing on Excel sucks badly enough that linux or similar becomes the obvious solution in that situation to all but the hardest core fanboy that pirates his software anyway.
Hrm. The Netflix web client uses Silverlight, that's sorta the point -- more people use the Silverlight route (or HTPC route) than a Roku. Stated as a happy Roku owner, but I know I'm in a minority, just as all principled Silverlight abstainers should know they are in a minority.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
I see some people have also discovered that there are many disjoint internets being produced by the venders trying to take over the world. You know who is doing this to people.
But take note that Google payed for the bandwidth that I used to view the set of you-tube meda using my open source software. I leave it to you to figure out Where the better Internet is. and why you might have to think hard about not voting with your dollars for the people that would fracture the Internet.
Thank-You!!
Ask them, it is not X windows. it is not X.
/.
They did not a nice domain x.org.
And you missed the point I am not talking about the X Windowing System. I am talking about Apple Computers. Where the Apple, does not want Flash to run.
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Perhaps when you feel a wosh of wind over your head you should not post to
I know I have done just that.