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Gates and Feynman
By Hamish Johnston
In case you haven’t heard, Bill Gates has bought the rights to seven lectures by the late Richard Feynman, which were filmed by the BBC in 1964 — a year before Feynman shared the Nobel Prize in Physics.
You can watch them for free here — all you need to do is download and install a bit of software from Microsoft (which took me a minute or two).
The first lecture (it gets better).
Feynman had a reputation as an entertaining speaker, who could convey complex physical concepts to the general public.
The Messenger Series of lectures is also available as a book entitled The Character of Physical Law
Would be really nice to see this in platform independent format.
If Mr. Gates had a REAL interest to share these lectures FREELY, thus… why he ask to install a “bit of software from Microsoft” (even if this piece of software is provided for free)? I can’t imagine YouTube asking for installing some kind of software developed by them only to see the huge collection of videos available there. You can see a lot of lectures freely available on the net (legally, of course), and none of them asking for a special piece of software that’s not already installed on almost any computer around the world. Please Mr. Gates, for one time on your life, don’t bother us with your disguised “generosity”.
Fortunately, in my case, I already own the book entitled “The Character of Physical Law”, thus, I doesn’t need to install any additional “bit of software from Microsoft” to read its contents. Sorry Mr. Gates!
Where can these lectures be purchased on a DVD for anytime /anywhere viewing?
A. T. Silver: Mr. Gates is just offering you something, if you don’t want it, don’t take it. Would you have prefer that he don’t put these video on Internet? Come on!
I’m after all bored with seeing or hearing regarding the wonders of Bill Gates. That Mr. Gates has decided to pay billions in ways that are beneficial to the destitute and ill, all to the great, however I for one would much prefer that he did it without the constant attention and adoration that he apparently feels has to travel with his actions.