Microsoft Celebrates Feynman 50-year Anniversary 169
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."
Re:Silverwhat? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Cry much? (Score:5, Informative)
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.)
Re:Because it's Silverlight... (Score:4, Informative)
Incidentally, there'll be a new multimedia version of the actual 'Feynman Lectures on Physics' out this year. They've integrated the (corrected) text with Feynman's original audio, blackboard photos, and related problems:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqRp9tyDLvw [youtube.com]
http://www.basicfeynman.com/enhanced.html [basicfeynman.com]
Goddness knows what locked-down format this will be in, though.
Re:Because it's Silverlight... (Score:4, Informative)
MS then insists that you install their propriety video player to play it. Not an HTML5 tag, not *any* of the multitude of Flash based video players, NOT EVEN A SIMPLE LINK TO A VIDEO FILE!
If you want to make something available to everybody for free you don't use a rarely used system that does nothing except replicate existing functionality whilst locking everybody else out. You don't insist they download (yet another) resource grabbing plugin. If you want everyone to see it you do what we did ten years ago, we called it "putting it on the internet" and it involved placing a video file on a server and then putting a link to the file on a web page. It's not that complicated, and I'm sure MS can cope with it. Unless, of course, you don't want "everybody" to see it. If you want only confirmed Silverlight users to see it then it makes perfect sense. I'm sure Feynman would have appreciated the gesture.