41–50 of 104 posts
It's kind of sad systems research pretty much stopped at this point. I really was hoping that by 2024 I'd be running a distributed operating system where processes could be be freely migrated between my phone, desktop, laptop and NAS without too much of a hitch.
It's kind of sad systems research pretty much stopped at this point. I really was hoping that by 2024 I'd be running a distributed operating system where processes could be be freely migrated between my phone, desktop, laptop and NAS without too much of a hitch.
A lot of systems researchers were absolutely obsessed with clustering, network transparency, distributed systems, and viewed them as the pinnacle of the operating system. I never understood why. I completely understand the coolness factor mind you, I just never could see why it was so important that your server-laptop-phone-network system behaved as a single system.
I think a lot of effort was wasted chasing that dragon. Wasted is probably the wrong word because research into cool things is good and probably created useful things along the way. I don't feel there was ever enough justification put into it and it could possibly have been better spent though.
The alternative of having multi-system tools and programming models that allow you to manage multiple systems without having them appear as a single image at the lowest level didn't get much love from academia after TCP/IP, and was largely developed by industry.
Another awesome fact about Tanenbaum is that he was the person behind electoral-vote.com. Prior to everyone having their own model and Nate Silver (err, should I say Poblano?) running the table in 2008, this was the place to go understand the 2004 US Presidential Election between Bush and Kerry. Hugely helpful for many people to understand polling and statistics.
electoral-vote.com is still going strong: https://www.electoral-vote.com/
I'm sure you know this, but I want to emphasize it for anyone who is not aware.
Prof Tanenbaum has a co-writer now (Prof Bates, history at UCLA/Cal Poly), and the site is published every day (used to be weekdays only and only during election cycles).
I was failing badly in my computer architecture courses. Received a 5% score in one of the mid-terms. Switched from the recommended book to Andrew's book and did nothing apart from read it everyday for 2 hours. Received 100% in the final. Such an amazingly approachable book. :-)
Err, perhaps I'm missing something, but if the ACM Software System Award is presented to an institution or individual(s) recognized for developing a software system that has had a lasting influence, how come Linus hasn't got his yet?
It's kind of sad systems research pretty much stopped at this point. I really was hoping that by 2024 I'd be running a distributed operating system where processes could be be freely migrated between my phone, desktop, laptop and NAS without too much of a hitch.
I think a lot of folks have thought about the idea of a truly distributed operating system. I'm pretty sure existing operating systems will eventually evolve in that direction. You already see bits and pieces of it popping up.
I was failing badly in my computer architecture courses. Received a 5% score in one of the mid-terms. Switched from the recommended book to Andrew's book and did nothing apart from read it everyday for 2 hours. Received 100% in the final. Such an amazingly approachable book. :-)