5 ms·

Bill Gates offers the world a physics lesson

22 points by TriinT 17y ago

Dilpil 17y ago
And a brilliant lesson in marketing a platform to first adopters as well.
- coffeeaddicted 17y ago
  Not so sure about that. It was rather obvious that the discussions about "Silverlight only" would overshadow the release of the video at least in all the technical circles. Offering the videos in more than one format - so people with Silverlight could have gotten advanced features while others still could have watched it would have been a lot better marketing.
- J_McQuade 17y ago
  Marred only by the fact that half the people I know can't even get it to work.
zmonkeyz 17y ago
Damn I thought he was going to dive into a vault full of gold coins without getting hurt. :/
andreyf 17y ago
Um, but you need to install Silverlight to see them? Does this man do anything without at least some kind tiny piece of ulterior motive? Unrelated, this is a great biography of Richard Feinman: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3164300309410618119 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3164300309410618119
- endtime 17y ago
  >Does this man do anything without at least some kind tiny piece of ulterior motive? Nope. The billions of dollars of donations to protection against malaria is simply to keep more people alive to buy Office, I'm sure.
  - freetard 17y ago
    He has stocks in the companies he's donating to to find a cure for malaria.
    - mellampudi 17y ago
      Can you name some companies in which he has stocks ? He is doing something good. Appreciate it if you can. And hopefully you know that he has promised to give away most of his wealth to charity. Even if it requires silver light, ain't it better than not having the videos available to you at all ? Also, it is a part of windows research team work. If google can force you to not use ie, why can't windows research team force you to use their technology ? And this is my general observation. People liking linux or similar *nix systems, take it too personally, and start cribbing at anything and everything microsoft does. It Doesn't matter to them if it is actually good stuff. Well, I would anyways want you to substantiate your claim that bill gates has shares in those drug companies and that he is actually making more money from investing in those companies than the charity he is giving away on those drugs.
- smhinsey 17y ago
  If it hadn't been Silverlight, someone would be saying "see, even Bill Gates doesn't think it's good!" Damned if you do, damned if you don't. I find this a really frustrating critique.
  - coffeeaddicted 17y ago
    Not "Silverlight" is the problem, but "Silverlight exclusive". How hard would it have been to put up an alternative webpage with other formats for people which don't want or can't install Silverlight? The answer is certainly - not hard at all. Not doing so makes them just looks bad when they could have looked good so easily. edit: Hm, do you think that would be hard? We offer our videos in several formats and I know lots of other people doing that and I don't see the problem with that. Run it through a converter and add another link...
    - DarkShikari 17y ago
      You don't even need that. Silverlight 3 and Flash both support H.264+AAC in MP4.
      - ZeroGravitas 17y ago
        As does Safari (inc iPhone) via HTML5 video tags.
phugoid 17y ago
Can someone explain whether we might in theory watch the video using moonlight? From Ubuntu I tried installing moonlight-plugin-mozilla (I assume this installs Microsoft Media Pack), and spoofing my Agent as IE 8; that got me a different version of the page where I can only click to "Install [Silverlight] and go to Project Tuva".
ryne 17y ago
If Microsoft doesn't use Silverlight, do you expect Adobe to? Or rather they'd use something as tentative is HTML5's video tags? Sure it's annoying but it's to be expected.

22 points by TriinT 17y ago

Dilpil 17y ago

And a brilliant lesson in marketing a platform to first adopters as well.

coffeeaddicted 17y ago
Not so sure about that. It was rather obvious that the discussions about "Silverlight only" would overshadow the release of the video at least in all the technical circles. Offering the videos in more than one format - so people with Silverlight could have gotten advanced features while others still could have watched it would have been a lot better marketing.
J_McQuade 17y ago
Marred only by the fact that half the people I know can't even get it to work.

zmonkeyz 17y ago

Damn I thought he was going to dive into a vault full of gold coins without getting hurt. :/

andreyf 17y ago

Um, but you need to install Silverlight to see them? Does this man do anything without at least some kind tiny piece of ulterior motive? Unrelated, this is a great biography of Richard Feinman: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3164300309410618119 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3164300309410618119

endtime 17y ago
>Does this man do anything without at least some kind tiny piece of ulterior motive? Nope. The billions of dollars of donations to protection against malaria is simply to keep more people alive to buy Office, I'm sure.
- freetard 17y ago
  He has stocks in the companies he's donating to to find a cure for malaria.
  - mellampudi 17y ago
    Can you name some companies in which he has stocks ? He is doing something good. Appreciate it if you can. And hopefully you know that he has promised to give away most of his wealth to charity. Even if it requires silver light, ain't it better than not having the videos available to you at all ? Also, it is a part of windows research team work. If google can force you to not use ie, why can't windows research team force you to use their technology ? And this is my general observation. People liking linux or similar *nix systems, take it too personally, and start cribbing at anything and everything microsoft does. It Doesn't matter to them if it is actually good stuff. Well, I would anyways want you to substantiate your claim that bill gates has shares in those drug companies and that he is actually making more money from investing in those companies than the charity he is giving away on those drugs.
smhinsey 17y ago
If it hadn't been Silverlight, someone would be saying "see, even Bill Gates doesn't think it's good!" Damned if you do, damned if you don't. I find this a really frustrating critique.
- coffeeaddicted 17y ago
  Not "Silverlight" is the problem, but "Silverlight exclusive". How hard would it have been to put up an alternative webpage with other formats for people which don't want or can't install Silverlight? The answer is certainly - not hard at all. Not doing so makes them just looks bad when they could have looked good so easily. edit: Hm, do you think that would be hard? We offer our videos in several formats and I know lots of other people doing that and I don't see the problem with that. Run it through a converter and add another link...
  - DarkShikari 17y ago
    You don't even need that. Silverlight 3 and Flash both support H.264+AAC in MP4.
    - ZeroGravitas 17y ago
      As does Safari (inc iPhone) via HTML5 video tags.

phugoid 17y ago

Can someone explain whether we might in theory watch the video using moonlight? From Ubuntu I tried installing moonlight-plugin-mozilla (I assume this installs Microsoft Media Pack), and spoofing my Agent as IE 8; that got me a different version of the page where I can only click to "Install [Silverlight] and go to Project Tuva".

ryne 17y ago

If Microsoft doesn't use Silverlight, do you expect Adobe to? Or rather they'd use something as tentative is HTML5's video tags? Sure it's annoying but it's to be expected.