Mr. Tanenbaum has retired from the Vrije Universiteit recently, see here: http://www.few.vu.nl/~ast/afscheid
Andrew S. Tanenbaum's FAQ
21–30 of 43 posts
Re: Andrew S. Tanenbaum's FAQ
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
I recommend buying your computer books in India. US Price for this book is $150 USD. India price is around Rs. 427 which is around $7 USD. Textbook prices, like everything related to education and healthcare are excessively high in the US. A reasonable price would be around $50, which is what this book would cost if it wasn't a textbook. The same book in Amazon India: http://www.amazon.in/Operating-Systems-Implementa…
[deleted]
After Kirtsaeng [1], I don't think so... (at least as far as US law is concerned)
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirtsaeng_v._John_Wiley_%26_Son....
Re: Andrew S. Tanenbaum's FAQ
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
You must be joking about Dutch being difficult to master. Dutch grammar is in every aspect simpler than German. The orthography is a bit awkward though. Also, it is weird that Tannenbaum makes a difference between masculine and feminine at all, since in standard Netherlandic Dutch they have since long ago merged into the common gender ("de" word). I guess he just got that knowledge from some old grammar book...
Also, it is weird that Tannenbaum makes a difference between masculine and feminine at all, since in standard Netherlandic Dutch they have since long ago merged into the common gender ("de" word). Yes, but it is still relevant for pronouns: Dit is een ezel, [hij/zij/het] staat in de wei. Whether most speakers actually know the correct gender and thus pronoun is another question ;).
Actually, in modern Dutch the actual sex of the animal determines the gender to use, not the grammatical gender. If unknown, use the male form. (This may be different in Flanders.)
The difference between "het" and "de" is actually also eroding at the moment.
Re: Andrew S. Tanenbaum's FAQ
#24I strongly recommend reading all of his books. They are very clear and non boring and the knowledge you get from understanding them is really the basics of what any programer should know I believe (well except maybe for the distributed systems book). After reading this faq, I'm very curious about the travel book.
Loved the distributed systems book. It is just sad that field has not left academia yet. We should be in a world where every programmer should know the contents of that book, instead of reinventing the wheel as we are doing now.
Re: Andrew S. Tanenbaum's FAQ
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
I love his Operating Systems book [0] which explains OS Concepts using Minix code [0] - http://www.amazon.com/dp/0131429388
BTW how different is the 3rd edition from the 1st? I had it for my OS course (along with the Silberschatz book), but it was >25 years ago. Still have the Minix disks somewhere, I think. It was awesome to get a # prompt on a 8086, but in the end, what mattered was to have GNU utils, gcc, emacs and X11 on a 386, which meant Linux.
Completely different. MINIX was 100% overhauled.
Re: Andrew S. Tanenbaum's FAQ
#26I met Prof. Tanenbaum in 2008, when I pitched AWS (Amazon Web Services) to the university staff. (I was Tech Evangelist for AWS in EMEA at the time).
I only knew about him because of his "fights" with Linus Torvalds, and because I've studied on a couple of his books (which I found excellent).
Meeting him was a big surprise: extremely funny, friendly, provocative, very smart, and in general someone you could instantly like. I loved when he would think about something and just close one eye, raise the other one to the ceiling, and make one of the funniest faces ever.
I felt so happy afterwards, for the honor of meeting him, and for the joy that derived from that attitude of his.
I wish every professor was as enjoyable (and competent) as him.
Re: Andrew S. Tanenbaum's FAQ
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, it is weird that Tannenbaum makes a difference between masculine and feminine at all, since in standard Netherlandic Dutch they have since long ago merged into the common gender ("de" word). Yes, but it is still relevant for pronouns: Dit is een ezel, [hij/zij/het] staat in de wei. Whether most speakers actually know the correct gender and thus pronoun is another question ;).
Actually, in modern Dutch the actual sex of the animal determines the gender to use, not the grammatical gender. If unknown, use the male form. (This may be different in Flanders.) The difference between "het" and "de" is actually also eroding at the moment.
Actually, in modern Dutch the actual sex of the animal determines the gender to use, not the grammatical gender. If unknown, use the male form. (This may be different in Flanders.)
...if you know the sex of the animal. Also see here (the 'Toelichting'):
http://taaladvies.net/taal/advies/vraag/1631/zijn_haar_de_mu...
Of course, these annoyances only exist because the distinction is going away, but hasn't gone completely.
Re: Andrew S. Tanenbaum's FAQ
#28> It was so strange to be in an environment with people having I.Q.'s below 150 and where it wasn't necessary to study 12, 13, 14 hours a day, seven days a week just to keep up. Is this true? Seems crazy, how do you stand doing this for ~5 years?
Slight exaggeration on the IQ, less so on the amount of work. Source: 2nd year undergrad sitting in MIT lecture now, running on 3 hours of sleep.
> Source: 2nd year undergrad sitting in MIT lecture now, running on 3 hours of sleep.
Sorry to interrupt you, but if you are reading HN while sitting on your lectures, why not just go home and get some sleep?
Re: Andrew S. Tanenbaum's FAQ
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
I recommend buying your computer books in India. US Price for this book is $150 USD. India price is around Rs. 427 which is around $7 USD. Textbook prices, like everything related to education and healthcare are excessively high in the US. A reasonable price would be around $50, which is what this book would cost if it wasn't a textbook. The same book in Amazon India: http://www.amazon.in/Operating-Systems-Implementa…
Yeah, do they ship to Europe?
I sourced it in the UK as an (IIRC) "International Edition"
Re: Andrew S. Tanenbaum's FAQ
#30I have listened to as many of his lectures as I can find, and I am very interested in the work he is doing on Minix 3. 10k lines of code in the kernel makes for an easily approachable learning environment in my opinion.