Andrew S. Tanenbaum's FAQ • Hacker News Board

Re: Andrew S. Tanenbaum's FAQ

#41

Post by have_humility » Tue, Mar 17, 2015, 5:49 PM UTC

j-b wrote: post #14

petilon wrote: post #5

Earlier 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…

I was eager to take your advice. Problem is it can't be shipped to the US.

See LeonRobrotsky's suggestion with AbeBooks.

Another suggestion is Barnes & Noble. (Yes, really.)

I myself had borrowed a copy through interlibrary loan back in November after checking Amazon for A couple of weeks ago, I had to kill some time, so I meandered into a Barnes & Noble for the first time in years and on a whim tried to look up Operating Systems: Design and Implementation on bn.com. Turns out, bn.com operates not just to sell B&N wares, but also apparently as a sort of hub for third-party sellers, (just?) like Amazon. I was surprised to see the market rate for used copies was $34.50, so I snagged one.

Meanwhile, the AbeBooks link above has a shrink-wrapped copy for $16.52.

Takeaway: don't assume that Amazon is the end-all-be-all, even for books.

Re: Andrew S. Tanenbaum's FAQ

#42

Post by mehedi_ku06 » Wed, Mar 18, 2015, 6:05 AM UTC

micheljansen wrote: post #3

> Will somebody please explain to me why 'ezel' (donkey) is masculine, 'paard' (horse) is neuter and 'antilope' (antelope) is feminine? Don't worry, Dutch people don't know this either. Unfortunately that means for each word you'll have to learn whether it's a "de" or a "het" word. Something that slowly happens over time as your vocabulary expands. This is one of the main reasons why Dutch has a reputation of being d…

Hello! Thank you for your question. I’d like to try to compare it to my previous experience of practicing English through Skype. I did around 10 conversations over Skype with a native speaker from http://preply.com/en/english-by-skype. And I was pretty satisfied with their Quality. I think they have a strong teaching quality, following their course curriculum now I can speak English like a native they also provide local tutors, but I Want to try another option.

Re: Andrew S. Tanenbaum's FAQ

#43

Post by micheljansen » Wed, Mar 18, 2015, 8:40 PM UTC

xiaq wrote: post #11

micheljansen wrote: post #3

> Will somebody please explain to me why 'ezel' (donkey) is masculine, 'paard' (horse) is neuter and 'antilope' (antelope) is feminine? Don't worry, Dutch people don't know this either. Unfortunately that means for each word you'll have to learn whether it's a "de" or a "het" word. Something that slowly happens over time as your vocabulary expands. This is one of the main reasons why Dutch has a reputation of being d…

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...

I didn't say it's difficult to master (I can't know, I grew up speaking it natively), but it certainly has that reputation. Looking at it as objectively as I can, it does not look any more complex or inconsistent than English, but obviously it's much easier to get exposure to that language through movies, music and the Internet than it is to Dutch.