2 ms·

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."

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."