7 ms·

>Years later I bought the rights to those lectures and worked with Microsoft to get them posted online for free. This just floored me. I hope that some day I w

>Years later I bought the rights to those lectures and worked with Microsoft to get them posted online for free. This just floored me. I hope that some day I will acquire the generosity and perspective to use a small part of my assets for something like this.

yarou 11y ago
Make sure you're a ruthless monopolist first.
- ljk 11y ago
  compared to other "great" businessman like Jobs, Gates is least evil of the bunch imo
sanoli 11y ago
Not to take anything away from what Gates did (and I admire his post-Microsoft goals), it's probably mush easier to do this with your assets when they are as large as his.
- hkmurakami 11y ago
  Absolutely. But imo most of us (including myself) find it difficult to spend a token amount of our earning or net worth for a public good.
  - gohrt 11y ago
    It wasn't a public good, it was a Microsoft marketing campaign to push people onto the Silverlight platform. MS never made the Feynman Lectures free for all to read.
    - adventured 11y ago
      It was a public good and it required silverlight. Try going to a public library and checking out books without a library card (which almost always cost money). Therefore under your premise public libraries are not for the common good because they have numerous use stipulations that go with them and they inherently restrict usage via fees.
  - jkaunisv1 11y ago
    Really? I thought giving to charity was a fairly common and widespread practice around the world. If you're looking for ideas on where your money could make a difference, think about open source projects you use regularly, local food banks, EFF, Amnesty International, or check out the Awesome Foundation! And if you need help rationalizing it to yourself, consider that you could make a concrete, tear-inducing (positive) difference in somebody's life for the cost of a dinner at a decent restaurant or an Xbox game.
- noonespecial 11y ago
  The opposite, I think. People with that much money mostly fold in on themselves and spend all of their time managing the money for their own benefit (or even as a compulsion for its own sake). The money was irrelevant, just as you think, but Bill spent his precious attention to give us Feynman instead of the nearly limitless other opportunities that money gave him. That rocks. I didn't like his business practices. I very much like his philanthropy. One doesn't "cancel out" the other or any of that nonsense. They plot on different axis.
  - edanm 11y ago
    "People with that much money mostly fold in on themselves and spend all of their time managing the money for their own benefit (or even as a compulsion for its own sake)." Do you have any source for that? That doesn't fit a lot of very famous billionaires, at least.
    - sdoering 11y ago
      Well isn`t this some sort of selection bias going on here? To draw your conclusion, I would think you are talking about the louder, more visible types of billionaires. Not necessarily a randomly selected subset of billionaires.
      - edanm 11y ago
        That's a good point. And yet, I'd still like to see some kind of reason to think that that's how the other billionaires behave.
- tempestn 11y ago
  I don't necessarily agree with you, but I don't feel like this comment is unproductive or otherwise violates HN rules. The downvotes seem unwarranted.
rpgmaker 11y ago
Well, I rather pay than having to install Silverlight in order to watch it.
- acqq 11y ago
  For those who need an explanation for the above comment. The site in question: http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva/#data=2%7C%7C%7C0 http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva/#data=2%7C%7C%... Silverlight is needed to see the "free" videos of Feyman's lectures. That's how Gates did it. Did Silverlight ever work on iOS or Android? Doesn't look so. The site was monopolistic even as it was made if it's only 5 (edit: 6) years old. http://www.microsoft.com/getsilverlight/get-started/install/default.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/getsilverlight/get-started/install/...
  - rpgmaker 11y ago
    I thought they killed it 3 to 4 years ago. I never know with Microsoft.
    - jdminhbg 11y ago
      They did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Silverlight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Silverlight
  - voltagex_ 11y ago
    Helping fix https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/issues/8118 https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/issues/8118 may get you access to these.
    - acqq 11y ago
      Or, even more probably, won't help, if the DRM is also used. Then you need to reverse engineer the DRM too. DRM was the main reason for the Silverlight use. Which can even better explain why nobody is interested in making the downloader or muxer, especially after Microsoft stopped developing Silverlight in 2013(!)
Outdoorsman 11y ago
Agreed...a worthwhile goal... Gates was heavily influenced by Feynman, and for good reason... One of my favorite Feynman quotes: "The highest forms of understanding we can achieve are laughter and human compassion." As we practice acquiring true compassion, the more difficult of the two to master, we can easily try for everyday laughter....life ought to be fun...
- agumonkey 11y ago
  It often feels that to learn anything you have to let go of you in subtle way to be able to align with the world and take a deep accepting look at it. Only then you're enlightened. And yeah it feels a lot like compassion or love.
- darkr 11y ago
  > The highest forms of understanding we can achieve are laughter You can see this influence in Windows ME
  - popmystack 11y ago
    I laughed.
pmtarantino 11y ago
He did the same with the Da Vinci notes if I recall correctly.
joe563323 11y ago
TLDR: View the videos on youtube and not on microsoft website For a moment i too thought the same, but it got spoiled soon. To view the videos you need to have sliver light and it takes a long time for just the page to download. Why cant it be just a downloadble file.
- static_noise 11y ago
  The gifts Bill Gates gives always come with a little string attached. In recent years his propaganda became strong enough that most people don't see that anymore.
  - sleepychu 11y ago
    To be fair, until recently Netflix/Amazon etc used Silverlight, Microsoft could hardly elect to use some other video technology while they were pushing SL.
    - acqq 11y ago
      No, it's not fair. The purpose of Netflix is to earn money from the viewers. Silverlight was used only for DRM. The claimed purpose of Gates' project was "to make the material freely available" for all learners as a gift (1). He didn't have to use DRM for that if he really bought the rights. As it was executed (Silverlight was never popular, only Netflix users had to install it) it appeared as just an advertising campaign for Silverlight. Note that research.microsoft.com otherwise never had to follow the commercial limitations of the rest of Microsoft, regularly publishing PDFs (duh, research) or using other non-Microsoft technologies at the time they were "verboten" on other Microsoft sites. Apparently, they "enhanced" the lectures with comments. These comments are also to be forever lost, remaining locked in in the limiting technology instead of being published in any common format like HTML or PDF. 1) Microsoft's news release from 2009: https://news.microsoft.com/2009/07/14/microsoft-research-and-bill-gates-bring-historic-physics-lectures-to-web/ https://news.microsoft.com/2009/07/14/microsoft-research-and... "Microsoft Research, in collaboration with Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates, today launched a Web site that makes an acclaimed lecture series by the iconic physicist Richard Feynman freely available to the general public for the first time. The lectures, which Feynman originally delivered at Cornell University in 1964, have been hugely influential for many people, including Gates. Gates privately purchased the rights to the seven lectures in the series, called “The Character of Physical Law,” to make them widely available to the public for free with the hope that they will help get kids excited about physics and science."

yarou 11y ago

Make sure you're a ruthless monopolist first.

ljk 11y ago
compared to other "great" businessman like Jobs, Gates is least evil of the bunch imo

sanoli 11y ago

Not to take anything away from what Gates did (and I admire his post-Microsoft goals), it's probably mush easier to do this with your assets when they are as large as his.

hkmurakami 11y ago
Absolutely. But imo most of us (including myself) find it difficult to spend a token amount of our earning or net worth for a public good.
- gohrt 11y ago
  It wasn't a public good, it was a Microsoft marketing campaign to push people onto the Silverlight platform. MS never made the Feynman Lectures free for all to read.
  - adventured 11y ago
    It was a public good and it required silverlight. Try going to a public library and checking out books without a library card (which almost always cost money). Therefore under your premise public libraries are not for the common good because they have numerous use stipulations that go with them and they inherently restrict usage via fees.
- jkaunisv1 11y ago
  Really? I thought giving to charity was a fairly common and widespread practice around the world. If you're looking for ideas on where your money could make a difference, think about open source projects you use regularly, local food banks, EFF, Amnesty International, or check out the Awesome Foundation! And if you need help rationalizing it to yourself, consider that you could make a concrete, tear-inducing (positive) difference in somebody's life for the cost of a dinner at a decent restaurant or an Xbox game.
noonespecial 11y ago
The opposite, I think. People with that much money mostly fold in on themselves and spend all of their time managing the money for their own benefit (or even as a compulsion for its own sake). The money was irrelevant, just as you think, but Bill spent his precious attention to give us Feynman instead of the nearly limitless other opportunities that money gave him. That rocks. I didn't like his business practices. I very much like his philanthropy. One doesn't "cancel out" the other or any of that nonsense. They plot on different axis.
- edanm 11y ago
  "People with that much money mostly fold in on themselves and spend all of their time managing the money for their own benefit (or even as a compulsion for its own sake)." Do you have any source for that? That doesn't fit a lot of very famous billionaires, at least.
  - sdoering 11y ago
    Well isn`t this some sort of selection bias going on here? To draw your conclusion, I would think you are talking about the louder, more visible types of billionaires. Not necessarily a randomly selected subset of billionaires.
    - edanm 11y ago
      That's a good point. And yet, I'd still like to see some kind of reason to think that that's how the other billionaires behave.
tempestn 11y ago
I don't necessarily agree with you, but I don't feel like this comment is unproductive or otherwise violates HN rules. The downvotes seem unwarranted.

rpgmaker 11y ago

Well, I rather pay than having to install Silverlight in order to watch it.

acqq 11y ago
For those who need an explanation for the above comment. The site in question: http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva/#data=2%7C%7C%7C0 http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva/#data=2%7C%7C%... Silverlight is needed to see the "free" videos of Feyman's lectures. That's how Gates did it. Did Silverlight ever work on iOS or Android? Doesn't look so. The site was monopolistic even as it was made if it's only 5 (edit: 6) years old. http://www.microsoft.com/getsilverlight/get-started/install/default.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/getsilverlight/get-started/install/...
- rpgmaker 11y ago
  I thought they killed it 3 to 4 years ago. I never know with Microsoft.
  - jdminhbg 11y ago
    They did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Silverlight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Silverlight
- voltagex_ 11y ago
  Helping fix https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/issues/8118 https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/issues/8118 may get you access to these.
  - acqq 11y ago
    Or, even more probably, won't help, if the DRM is also used. Then you need to reverse engineer the DRM too. DRM was the main reason for the Silverlight use. Which can even better explain why nobody is interested in making the downloader or muxer, especially after Microsoft stopped developing Silverlight in 2013(!)

Outdoorsman 11y ago

Agreed...a worthwhile goal... Gates was heavily influenced by Feynman, and for good reason... One of my favorite Feynman quotes: "The highest forms of understanding we can achieve are laughter and human compassion." As we practice acquiring true compassion, the more difficult of the two to master, we can easily try for everyday laughter....life ought to be fun...

agumonkey 11y ago
It often feels that to learn anything you have to let go of you in subtle way to be able to align with the world and take a deep accepting look at it. Only then you're enlightened. And yeah it feels a lot like compassion or love.
darkr 11y ago
> The highest forms of understanding we can achieve are laughter You can see this influence in Windows ME
- popmystack 11y ago
  I laughed.

pmtarantino 11y ago

He did the same with the Da Vinci notes if I recall correctly.

joe563323 11y ago

TLDR: View the videos on youtube and not on microsoft website For a moment i too thought the same, but it got spoiled soon. To view the videos you need to have sliver light and it takes a long time for just the page to download. Why cant it be just a downloadble file.

static_noise 11y ago
The gifts Bill Gates gives always come with a little string attached. In recent years his propaganda became strong enough that most people don't see that anymore.
- sleepychu 11y ago
  To be fair, until recently Netflix/Amazon etc used Silverlight, Microsoft could hardly elect to use some other video technology while they were pushing SL.
  - acqq 11y ago
    No, it's not fair. The purpose of Netflix is to earn money from the viewers. Silverlight was used only for DRM. The claimed purpose of Gates' project was "to make the material freely available" for all learners as a gift (1). He didn't have to use DRM for that if he really bought the rights. As it was executed (Silverlight was never popular, only Netflix users had to install it) it appeared as just an advertising campaign for Silverlight. Note that research.microsoft.com otherwise never had to follow the commercial limitations of the rest of Microsoft, regularly publishing PDFs (duh, research) or using other non-Microsoft technologies at the time they were "verboten" on other Microsoft sites. Apparently, they "enhanced" the lectures with comments. These comments are also to be forever lost, remaining locked in in the limiting technology instead of being published in any common format like HTML or PDF. 1) Microsoft's news release from 2009: https://news.microsoft.com/2009/07/14/microsoft-research-and-bill-gates-bring-historic-physics-lectures-to-web/ https://news.microsoft.com/2009/07/14/microsoft-research-and... "Microsoft Research, in collaboration with Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates, today launched a Web site that makes an acclaimed lecture series by the iconic physicist Richard Feynman freely available to the general public for the first time. The lectures, which Feynman originally delivered at Cornell University in 1964, have been hugely influential for many people, including Gates. Gates privately purchased the rights to the seven lectures in the series, called “The Character of Physical Law,” to make them widely available to the public for free with the hope that they will help get kids excited about physics and science."