Bill Gates Puts Classic Feynman Lectures Online 338
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."
Chrome OS is Linux with a New UI (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [pcworld.com]. 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.
ALERT: Silverlight Trojan (Score:5, Interesting)
Wonders of Physics for Everyone (Score:1, Interesting)
Feynman + Gates + Silverlight (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:I know why. (Score:1, Interesting)
No, he was an honest and inquisitive man. He made many mistakes. Had several personality quirks and so on. The only difference between him and the average person was that he was brutally honest with himself and others and he had a desire to understand how things work. Don't make the mistake of elevating him to unreachable heights. There is absolutely nothing special about him other than the choices he made. That's not denigrating him at all either. It's only pointing out that there's nothing stopping you from following in his footsteps. Don't let him just be a hero. Make him a role model.
Re:Then Use Moonlight Instead (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm going to rip it apart for different reasons than RMS would.. I installed moonlight, but every time I tried to access a silverlight page it refused to even try to load, said I needed silverlight instead.
My fanboi response (Score:1, Interesting)
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!
Here's Your Answer (Score:4, Interesting)
...how did you come up with all this conclusions?
I was merely repeating the details from last week when this was announced [slashdot.org] on Google's blog [blogspot.com]. 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 [blogspot.com] 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 [slashdot.org] and mark me as a Foe. Then go here [slashdot.org] 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.
Re:My fanboi response (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Then Use Moonlight Instead (Score:2, Interesting)
I changed the Firefox user agent string to get past the "Browser Incompatible" bullshit, but it still won't recognize Moonlight as a Silverlight replacement and requires you to download silverlight.exe.
about:config
general.useragent.override = Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)
Re:I know why. (Score:4, Interesting)
However, exactly when did the 'web shift to a "presumed hostile" state?
2000 or so? Probably when always-on broadband become common.
I ask because by my count, we've been in a hostile environment for years. And throughout those years, Microsoft has either introduced some very disturbing implementations or promised secure implementations that later fall short of these grand claims
Certainly XP as released was way too trusting. But I think Microsoft's track record has been quite positive since XPSP2. I wasn't around for that period, but it definitely got people VERY focused on security as something that has to be baked into product design from the inception of the product. Vista, IE 7/8, Silverlight, Office 2003/2007 all have had much better security records than their predecessors.
Lots of complaints about Microsoft products, most notably Vista, are on areas where Microsoft prioritized security over simplicity or backwards compatibility. And that's a problem for everybody, including Mac and Linux, with years of regular security updates ahead of us.
It's been easier in Silverlight since there wasn't anything to be backwards comaptible to. But there are defintley features that have been cut, delayed, or reduced in scope due to the test cost of verifying security. Every feature gets a threat model and security test plan before it gets approved.
We're really serious about it. On the media side, for example, there's a lot of fuzz testing of malformed bitstreams to make sure there's no way to cause a crash that could then lead to an exploit.