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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.
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...
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[-
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!
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.
It's kind of always been my impression that was exactly how physicists did math.
Not trolling, but I've been told by physics majors that the stuff they do with math would make a mathematician apoplectic.
I gather Feyman was just a lot more gleeful about it. :-P
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Feynman wasn't just another Nobel Prize wining physicist. When he was an undergraduate at MIT he competed in the Putnam Competition and "won" (the top few scores are lumped together and he was one of the competitors with a top score). Meaning that he wasn't a bull in a china shop when it came to mathematical sophistication. On the other hand I did hear first hand when he compared physics to math as analogous to comparing sex to masturbating.
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?
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BMO