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More From Tanenbaum

Posted by michael on from the oh-christmas-tree dept.

BigFire writes "Professor Tanenbaum responds to the slashdot effect and a small critique of Ken Brown's forthcoming book in his followup. A small gem is where he disclosed that Ken Brown can't multiply simple positive integers."

496 comments

  1. Article text by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Ken Brown's Motivation, Release 1.2

    Background

    On 20 May 2004, I posted a statement refuting the claim of Ken Brown, President of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, that Linus Torvalds didn't write Linux. My statement was mentioned on Slashdot, Groklaw, and many other Internet news sites. This attention resulted in over 150,000 requests to our server in less than a day, which is still standing despite yesterday being a national holiday with no one there to stand next to it saying "You can do it. You can do it." Kudos to Sun Microsystems and the folks who built Apache. My statement was mirrored all over the Internet, so the number of true hits to it is probably a substantial multiple of that. There were also quite a few comments at Slashdot, Groklaw, and other sites, many of them about me. I had never engaged in remote multishrink psychoanalysis on this scale before, so it was a fascinating experience.

    The Brown Book

    I got an advance copy of Ken Brown's book. I think it is still under embargo, so I won't comment on it. Although I am not an investigative reporter, even I know it is unethical to discuss publications still under embargo. Some of us take ethics more seriously than others. So I won't even reveal the title. Let's call it The Brown Book. There is some precedent for nicknaming books after colors: The International Standard for the CD-ROM (IS 10149) is usually called The Red Book.

    Suffice it to say, there is a great deal to criticize in the book. I am sure that will happen when it is published. I may even help out.

    Brown's Motivation

    What prompted me to write this note today is an email I got yesterday. Actually, I got quite a few :-) , most of them thanking me for the historical material. One of yesterday's emails was from Linus, in response to an email from me apologizing for not letting him see my statement in advance. As a matter of courtesy, I did try but I was using his old transmeta.com address and didn't know his new one until I got a very kind email from Linus' father, a Finnish journalist.

    In his email, Linus said that Brown never contacted him. No email, no phone call, no personal interview. Nothing. Considering the fact that Brown was writing an explosive book in which he accused Linus of not being the author of Linux, you would think a serious author would at least confront the subject with the accusation and give him a chance to respond. What kind of a reporter talks to people on the periphery of the subject but fails to talk to the main player?

    Why did Brown fly all the way to Europe to interview me and (and according to an email I got from his seat-mate on the plane) one other person in Scandinavia, at considerable expense, and not at least call Linus? Even if he made a really bad choice of phone company, how much could that cost? Maybe a dollar? I call the U.S. all the time from Amsterdam. It is less than 5 cents a minute. How much could it cost to call California from D.C.?

    From reading all the comments posted yesterday, I am now beginning to get the picture. Apparently a lot of people (still) think that I 'hate' Linus for stealing all my glory (see below for more on this). I didn't realize this view was so widespread. I now suspect that Brown believed this, too, and thought that I would be happy to dump all over Linus to get 'revenge.' By flying to Amsterdam he thought he could dig up dirt on Linus and get me to speak evil of him. He thought I would back up his crazy claim that Linus stole Linux from me. Brown was wrong on two counts. First, I bear no 'grudge' against Linus at all. He wrote Linux himself and deserves the credit. Second, I am really not a mean person. Even if I were still angry with him aft

    1. Re:Article text by gujo-odori · · Score: 1, Offtopic

      Ummmm, hellooooo, McMod! Reposting the article to help the rest of us read it (because the site is already /.ed and there were only three posts, including the FP, when I started writing this) cannot, by any reasonable person, be considered redundant.

      Someone please mod the parents informative, and throw an Unfair to the moderator if you get this in M2.

    2. Re:Article text by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A full-text is redundant when it's been posted twice before.

    3. Re:Article text by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      agreed, especially since it was posted anonymous, and therefore not an attempt at karma whoring.

      /posting anonymous so the same stupid mod doesn't bitchslap me.

    4. Re:Article text by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This one however, was posted by me one minute after the story appeared on the front page and was the second post (the first post one was the first) in this thread. It's also the only one with links and nice <strong>-tags :)

    5. Re:Article text by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And you are an idiot because the first post in this thread was the first complete mirror of the text from the site. Ergo, it is not redundant. It is impossible to be redundant when you are the first. I have been watching this thread since I moderated the FP offtopic.

    6. Re:Article text by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Interesting, because it was posted three minutes before the other one. Stupid stupid mods.

    7. Re:Article text by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      agreed, especially since it was posted anonymous, and therefore not an attempt at karma whoring.

      My karma is already excellent, but I nevertheless posted anonymously.

    8. Re:Article text by t1m0r4n · · Score: 1

      Dang, I should have known someone would have copied the article here. I kid you not, I saved the page and modifed the

      table width="880"
      so I could read the darn thing without having to scroll back and forth.
    9. Re:Article text by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      hey, I get it - that means that probably the third post was the third, and the fourth post was the fourth!!!

      Fiendishly clever.

    10. Re:Article text by sprins · · Score: 2, Interesting

      What I don't understand is that Tannenbaum is proud of Sun and Apache for processing 150K hits a day. I run a system where a single Linux PC processes 6 to 10 Mio hits a day. This being calls to a servlet that interacts with a RDBMS for each hit.

      Not wanting to be offtopic, this illustrates for me the academic view on the world vs. the real view on the world. AFAIK a moderately powerful SUN server with Apache should be able te handle 150K hits a minute when requesting a static page.

    11. Re:Article text by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      had the same reaction. 150K hits/day is only 2-10 hits/second (depeding on how peaky his traffic is).

      I'm reasonably impressed with your servlet based 10M hits/day -- about 115-500 hits/second. OTOH I was doing 50/secondback when 300MHz machines were state-of-the-art (with mod_perl and oracle); so I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. Isn't moore's law wonderful.

    12. Re:Article text by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Parent wrote: "...cannot, by any reasonable person, be considered redundant.

      Someone please mod the parents informative, and throw an Unfair to the moderator if you get this in M2."

      You'll be happy to know I got this guy who said redundant in M2 and slapped him with an "unfair".

      And the parent post's advice goes for everyone else who misuses redundant as well - the first guy to post something can almost never be redundant if it relates to the subject.

  2. already by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    slashdotted?

  3. His comment on Slashdot: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    "I had never engaged in remote multishrink psychoanalysis on this scale before, so it was a fascinating experience."

    I think I like this guy. Has anyone here ever had him as a professor? Is he this amusing when he's teaching class? :)

    1. Re:His comment on Slashdot: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      I think I like this guy. Has anyone here ever had him as a professor? Is he this amusing when he's teaching class? :)

      I'm posting this as AC since I'll most likely be modded down for touching a "hero" of the Linux revolution:

      It's quite well known that Proff Tanenbaum is somewhat of a prick, very very pleased with himself for having written Minix and fostered the development of Linux. The trouble is that Minix, which was meant to be an academic OS to study, was never good performance-wise (which is normal) and wasn't really good for learning the architecture of an OS either. Minix knew success because it was "this other, free Unix for i386" (and some other architectures like the Atari ST), and people could goof around with it for free.

      That's the extent of Tanenbaum's achievenemts. Not that it's negligible, far from it, but somehow Tanenbaum feels entitled to think of himself as a pillar of computer science and computer history, and act accordingly.

      Now I shall watch myself be modded down as a troll by Slashdotter who have never met, read about, or listened to him...

    2. Re:His comment on Slashdot: by jakoz · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I agree 100%. Im constantly blown away by how much he is in love with his own mind.

      Actually, I have one of the 15 books he reminded us about the other day, and I remember it for how much it was universally despised.

    3. Re:His comment on Slashdot: by pankajsethi · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I'm not trying to make a hero out of AST, but he has been one of the most influential person in computer science. Not only has he contributed in terms of his creative input, but his bigger contribution is in teaching. His book on Computer Networks inspired me to write one myself.

      Have you ever met Tanenbaum? Can you say that somebody is a "prick" just because he is willing to engage in a discussion solely on the basis of technical merits and because he loves one thing and hates another. I'll at least meet the person before debunking him as an egotist.

      And Tanenbaum's achievements go beyond Minix. You can find out more if you care to look for his contributions on the web. He doesn't even count Minix as his achievement. The world does not know him for Minix. It was just a nice "add-on" to his operating book.

      Have a good day.

    4. Re:His comment on Slashdot: by ziphnab · · Score: 1

      I've had (and am currently learning for an exam) classes that were taught by him, and although I like the guy, his classes aren't that great. There mostly just his books with a lot of funny anecdotes, not a lot of extra information. Then again, most people there seem to be hesitant about asking stupid questions, wich is the best way to learn

      --
      --- Sometimes even music cannot substitute for tears. --Paul Simon, Cool Cool River
    5. Re:His comment on Slashdot: by ziphnab · · Score: 3, Funny

      Oh and btw, you bastards slashdotted my uni again and we have finals next week!!! Quit it :)

      --
      --- Sometimes even music cannot substitute for tears. --Paul Simon, Cool Cool River
    6. Re:His comment on Slashdot: by Luzumsuz+Lazim · · Score: 5, Interesting
      Minix... wasn't really good for learning the architecture of an OS. ... and people could goof around with it for free

      I think, if a professor of mine would write an operating system for me to have me the freedom of goofing around, I would call it a very good source.

      And, even if the OS itself was not so good, it doesn't matter, because people often learn the subject from the mistakes, shortcomings. After all, Linus wrote the Linux to improve Minix on Minix.

    7. Re:His comment on Slashdot: by kfg · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm posting this as AC since I'll most likely be modded down for touching a "hero" of the Linux revolution:

      I've always rather gotten the impression that he was something of the anti-christ of the Linux revolution, and that that's why he has to waste so much time explaining that he and Linus are not enemies.

      . . .very very pleased with himself for having written Minix and fostered the development of Linux.

      And says so in the very paper in question.

      The trouble is that Minix, which was meant to be an academic OS to study. . .

      And says so in the very paper in question.

      . . .was never good performance-wise. . .

      And says so in the very paper in question.

      . . .and wasn't really good for learning the architecture of an OS either.

      Here I'm sure he'd disagree with you, however, since you leave out why it "wasn't really good" you protect yourself from criticism.

      Minix knew success because it was "this other, free Unix for i386" (and some other architectures like the Atari ST), and people could goof around with it for free.

      And says so in both papers in question.

      That's the extent of Tanenbaum's achievenemts.

      And explains that such is not the case in the paper in question.

      . . .but somehow Tanenbaum feels entitled to think of himself as a pillar of computer science and computer history, and act accordingly.

      And not only says so in the paper in question, but points to references should one chose to follow them up. Not to mention the fact that if he were not popularly regarded as such among the computer science community said paper whould have no had raison d'etre in the first place.

      Now I shall watch myself be modded down as a troll by Slashdotter who have never met, read about, or listened to him...

      As a general rule I find it more responsive to posts such as yours to, well, respond, rather than mod down something just because I might find it unpalatable. An unpalatable point of view is not the same thing as a troll.

      I have never met the man, nor listened to him, but I have both read him and read about him. He is a public figure in the computer science community, just as is Linus.

      He impresses me, as he appears to impress the orginal poster, as just the sort of intelligently sarcastic "prick," in the Swift/Dickens/Twain/Leacock mode, that I rather enjoy dealing with.

      Of course you have to consider the source of that last statement (as one might well consider the source of any), as I myself have been accused, on occasion, of being such a man, and may be merely feeling an affinity of kind.

      KFG

    8. Re:His comment on Slashdot: by Geoffreyerffoeg · · Score: 1

      That's the extent of Tanenbaum's achievenemts.

      I guess the canonical books that my mom uses to teach (and, when I was in preschool, learn) operating systems design and other CS topics are not to his credit?

    9. Re:His comment on Slashdot: by Coz · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I never had him, but my favorite undergrad CS professor LOVED using his books - he would say "Here's where Tannenbaum got it right" and riff for five minutes, then say "And here's where he blew it, and this is why" and be off for fifteen... I enjoyed Tobin's classes, and I'm not sure he'd've been nearly as much fun without AST's textbooks to use as a basis. I've been through Compilers, Computer Networks, and two Operating Systems classes using Tannenbaum's books, (and many since using books by others), and I can say they were all bona-fide Learning Experiences.

      Back then (way back in the late '80s), standard assignments were to go "tweak" parts of Minix - make the network interface big- or little-endian, switchable on the fly; change the file system block size and see what happens; screw up the priority system and see if user keypresses even get answered before your applications finish running... as a learning OS, demonstrating ways OSs can be put together, I learned a lot from it.

      Then we got into compilers... *sigh*

      --
      I love vegetarians - some of my favorite foods are vegetarians.
    10. Re:His comment on Slashdot: by Xenographic · · Score: 3, Informative

      That's the extent of Tanenbaum's achievenemts.
      ----

      Eh? He did a bit more than just write MINIX!

      He's an IEEE & ACM fellow, has written a number of well-known and widely-used books... But don't take my word for it, Google away.

      As for sour grapes, I don't sense any, and I exchanged a few emails with him after the last story.

    11. Re:His comment on Slashdot: by mst76 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      > I'll most likely be modded down for touching a "hero" of the Linux revolution:

      Tanenbaum is hardly seen as a "hero" in the Linux community, of those who know him at all, most only remember the infamous "Linux is obsolete" flameware on Usenet.

      > It's quite well known that Proff Tanenbaum is somewhat of a prick, very very pleased with himself for having written Minix and fostered the development of Linux.

      How is this well known? I've never read anything about him boasting about having fostered the development of Linux. He does point out areas where the early Linux was inspired by Minix, but I don't think anyone would dispute that.

      > Minix knew success because it was "this other, free Unix for i386"

      It was the "free Unix for XT". One of the reasons for Linus to develop Linux was that Minix didn't take advantage of any of the advanced features of the 80386. AST refused almost all suggested improvements, his motivation being that he wanted to teach it in a one semester course.

      > That's the extent of Tanenbaum's achievenemts.

      Tanenbaum is a university professor. His achievements are his publications in peer reviewed journals, and citations to these publications. Since he has lots of both, he's been pretty successful.

    12. Re:His comment on Slashdot: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I seem to remember way back when I was in school there was a big stink about some book that plaugiarized somebody and was pulled and re-edited and reprinted.

      I thought it was a compiler or network text book, and I thought Tanenbaum was on one end or the other of the issue.

      Anyone remember this?

      It stood out because there were no textbooks available for that class that semester...

    13. Re:His comment on Slashdot: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Now I shall watch myself be modded down as a troll by Slashdotter who have never met, read about, or listened to him...

      You should get modded down for this statement alone. Let your post stand on its merits, don't trick stupid moderators into moderating it up solely because of reverse psychology.

    14. Re:His comment on Slashdot: by 1iar_parad0x · · Score: 5, Interesting

      While I'm hardly a Linux zealot, I think Tanenbaum deserves quite a bit of credit. Tanenbaum's books are hands on. I'm not a CS major anymore; I'm a math major, so I don't claim to be up on every OS textbook in the field. However, I still like to get my hands dirty with interesting code and I've been a programmer professionally for several years.

      I don't know Tanenbaum at all; however, his books are more hands on than the standard fare. My OS book didn't come with any usable code at all. Frankly, I had to force code into my class. In fact, my professor (old to the computer industry, but young to academia) was prompted to bring more required labs to the class because of it. I've picked up a few of Tanenbaum's books. In my opinion, it's as good at teaching operating systems as the "dragon" book is on teaching compiler design.

      Why is Richard Stevens considered a genius and Tanenbaum not. Humility aside, like I said I never met the guy, most professors are a little bit pompous. As long as he doesn't torture his students with such BS, a little arrogance is fine by me. Including a small copy of a Unix-like variant to be examined with the book was revolutionary by pedagogical standards. I once had a copy of the "Lions Commentary on Unix". While it was interesting, it was written in C and Assembly (with some antiquated instruction set)**. The code was virtually useless for me. Despite popular opinion, I really don't have a PDP-11 in my basement. Tanenbaum's book|code was great. Finally a useful OS I could "play" with. Linux is too large to examine in a classroom. It's an industrial strength OS. Should I learn database theory by mucking with the source code for Oracle or DB2 (if this were even possible)? Of course not. Why should an OS be any different? You only learn by doing. You don't really learn by thinking about psuedocode. In this regard, MINIX fills a hole so desperately apparent in academia. MINIX provides a tangible example of modern OS design.

      If you've had this man for a class and can relate a specific instance about his arrogance, feel free to do so. That's a completely different story. However, if you're going to knock the man for having some pride in his work -- well tough. It's not like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Gary Killdall, et al isn't a little bit of a "prick" too.

      **I don't remember too much about the specifics of the "Lions Commentary on Unix".

      --
      What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean....
    15. Re:His comment on Slashdot: by Doctor+Faustus · · Score: 2, Interesting

      *description of Minix cut*

      That's the extent of Tanenbaum's achievenemts. Not that it's negligible, far from it, but somehow Tanenbaum feels entitled to think of himself as a pillar of computer science and computer history, and act accordingly.

      Not quite. He's also written a whole pile of books. I had one of them as the textbook for my networking class, and it's the single best textbook I've ever had for a computer class.

    16. Re:His comment on Slashdot: by Moridineas · · Score: 1

      Lol, that's a great name (luzumsuz lazim)

    17. Re:His comment on Slashdot: by xoboots · · Score: 1

      Hopefully, you will be modded down as a troll because you insult someone while using Anonymous Coward as your shield. Please, no more pulpit speeches from unknown persons. By-the-way, the public record of AST's comments are more insightful, thoughtful, generous and humble than your little cowardly barrage.

    18. Re:His comment on Slashdot: by Mind+Booster+Noori · · Score: 1

      I don't agree with any of you two... Tanenbaum is known by "the guy who wrote Minix" above all his other achievements, Minix was mainly known and used because it was a free implementation of an Unix-based system. People (like me, like Linus) used to use it before using Linux. As a matter of fact Linus left Minix when he started using Linux in it's v0.99, and I (unfortunatly) only started using it with 1995's Mini-Linux distro (I don't recall which Linux Kernel version it has, but I suppose it was 1.1.?).

      --
      Mind Booster Noori
    19. Re:His comment on Slashdot: by yog · · Score: 1

      Would you care to name the book and identify the things about it that caused it to be "universally despised"?

      I'm genuinely curious, not having read Tanenbaum's books but respecting him for creating Minix.

      I haven't noticed that he's particularly enthralled with himself; he simply stated facts about his background and accomplishments and rather mercilessly savaging this Brown character, who obviously deserves it.

      --
      it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
    20. Re:His comment on Slashdot: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      shut up Tanenbaum

    21. Re:His comment on Slashdot: by j-pimp · · Score: 1

      And, even if the OS itself was not so good, it doesn't matter, because people often learn the subject from the mistakes, shortcomings. After all, Linus wrote the Linux to improve Minix on Minix.
      Well, learning from other and correcting their mistakes by questioning everything is useful and important. However, its important to have second opinions to do that. Its good to go and read Tanenbaum's books on Operating Systems and browse the minix source to write your own, but one should also look at the source code of the TCP programs on OpenBSD to learn better tequniques to avoid buffer overflows. Now I've never read the minix sources, so they migh be 100% free of buffer overflow exploits. However, I've read through the OpenBSD source code while studying Beej's guide to socket programming. I'm a big C fan and enjoy exploring the finer points of casting, unions, and pointer math, but I wanted Theo's opinion on the matter. I may think I know everything about programming in C, but I know I know jack shit.

      --
      --- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
    22. Re:His comment on Slashdot: by Tony-A · · Score: 1

      He impresses me, as he appears to impress the orginal poster, as just the sort of intelligently sarcastic "prick," in the Swift/Dickens/Twain/Leacock mode, that I rather enjoy dealing with.

      And more enjoyable when he's coming from a different perspective.
      Some of like a good argument.

      "Linus would flunk one of his OS courses". (or some such) Or get an A. There can be an extremely fine line distinguishing the two. The threat will be there and it's not an idle threat. Something that almost works won't cut it.

      AST may now be something of a hero in the Linux revolution, but he's hardly part of the Linux fan club. This makes his setting the record straight all the more credible.

      Actually I think that Tanenbaum is right, but:
      It's feasible to make a monolithic kernel that's usable and not too wrong.
      It's not necessarily feasible to make a microkernel that handles all possible communication even if that would be cheaper, easier, and more efficient than a monolithic kernel with the same robustness.

    23. Re:His comment on Slashdot: by Tyler+Durden · · Score: 1

      Gosh but I wish I had a mod point for you. An AC got modded up for talking out of his ass and contradicting what was stated right in The Fucking Article. Pathetic.

      --
      Happy people make bad consumers.
    24. Re:His comment on Slashdot: by Banner · · Score: 1

      I had a prof named Tobin too who used to love to go on about Tannenbaum's books. Where was this at? (I was picking up some refresher classes). Wonder if it's the same guy...

    25. Re:His comment on Slashdot: by 0x0d0a · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Despite popular opinion, I really don't have a PDP-11 in my basement.

      Damn! Me and my friends have all been sure that you've had one in there for *years*.

      well tough. It's not like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Gary Killdall, et al isn't a little bit of a "prick" too.

      Jobs is an arrogant guy that didn't do the amazing engineering work that he gets credit for ("The Mac kicks ass so Steve Jobs kicks ass" is very faulty logic.) Maybe he's a good organizer, but he's also the source of a lot of the decisions that I feel hurt the Mac, including deliberately limiting expandability and the single button mouse. AFAICT, Jobs' main notable talent is his ability for marketing himself and associating himself with every good thing that's been achieved by all the engineers working on the Mac.

      --
      May we never see th
    26. Re:His comment on Slashdot: by 0x0d0a · · Score: 3, Insightful

      To be honest, the only times I've read anything directly written by Tanenbaum (and been aware of the fact) was when reading the minor flames between him and Linus and this recent webpage. (My OS class used the "dinosaur book".)

      From this tiny dataset, it doesn't really seem that AST is particularly arrogant. I've written much nastier flames than AST did on that infamous occasion. He backs up his claims -- "microkernels are better -- I can say this because I know better than you due to 20 years studying them" would be arrogant. "Microkernels take a relatively minor 20% performance hit or so and provide easier debugging" is a different story.

      --
      May we never see th
    27. Re:His comment on Slashdot: by Luscious868 · · Score: 1
      I'll at least meet the person before debunking him as an egotist.

      Which makes you a better person then, say, about 75 - 80 percent of all slashdot posters

    28. Re:His comment on Slashdot: by Mind+Booster+Noori · · Score: 1
      Of course I do, seeing I was talking about the category of people who used to use Minix and what they changed to.

      I didn't say that I am "big and important" nor something like that, the point here was to discuss about who used minix, why and what did they used after leaving minix.

      --
      Mind Booster Noori
    29. Re:His comment on Slashdot: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If Prof. Tanenbaum is known to you as only the "author of Minix" then I submit that you do not have much of a background in Computer Science. In the bookshelves beside my desk is 2 different editions of his Computer Networks book, both heavily used. His Operating Systems - Design and Implementation book is on another shelf. His architecture book is in another bookcase, with my "hardware" type books. Minix is exacatly as Prof. Tanenbaum said, an exercise to help his students study operating systems. While the creation of Linux and it's contribution to the field cannot be questioned, in the end Prof. Tanenbaum's contributions will be the ones that advanced the field. Like the originial Unix, Linux itself is not an advance, but provided a platform for advanced work to be done.

      Linux was not created in a void, nor was it the "greatest OS" built. When I started building a ISP in late '93/early '94, I looked at it and choose BSD/OS. I moved to FreeBSD a year or so later. I read the exchanges between Linus and Prof. Tanenbaum from that time period. Most of them were over "I want feature X" and Prof. Tanenbaum saying no that doesn't fit the design or requirments of Minix. Linus went off and wrote Linux. Prof. Tanenbaum criticized it's design with valid reasons. However, like MicroSoft, what Linus created was "good enough, but not as good as it could be." No shame in that.

      John Farmer, student of Computer Science since 1975...

    30. Re:His comment on Slashdot: by Mind+Booster+Noori · · Score: 1
      If Prof. Tanenbaum is known to you as only the "author of Minix" then I submit that you do not have much of a background in Computer Science.
      I didn't state that, nor I only know him for that. I said that Minix is the best known thing from him (mainly caused by the discussion he had with Linus).
      Minix is exacatly as Prof. Tanenbaum said, an exercise to help his students study operating systems.
      Undobtly, I didn't questioned his motives to build Minix, nor if he achieved them or not (which he did). I said that, as a side effect, lot's of people started to use it because it was a free implementation of an Unix-based system. More, it's completely obvious that Minix and Linux objectives were quite different, as well as the motivations of their authors to do them. Although, lot's of people that used both had the same interest in them: free implementations of Unix. When those who used Minix because of that saw that Linux was getting better then Minix (for their purpose) the started migrating.

      Besides this points, I generally agree with you.

      --
      Mind Booster Noori
    31. Re:His comment on Slashdot: by Zeinfeld · · Score: 1
      I'm not trying to make a hero out of AST, but he has been one of the most influential person in computer science. Not only has he contributed in terms of his creative input, but his bigger contribution is in teaching. His book on Computer Networks inspired me to write one myself.

      I don't get why Linus supporters feel the need to dump on Tanenbaum. His books are very well received in academia and are widely used as teaching texts. He certainly understands operating system and network design.

      I don't remember Andy discovering anything of extraordinary note, but then again maybe one out of fifty academics manages that even in the top schools. Most academics do nothing more than write tedious articles on minutiae that have no relevance to anything other than tenure committees. Andy's books prove that he can at least see the big picture - something many hyperspecialized academics are incapable of. I had an argument with a person like that last week over a technical issue in a spec. As he started to explain that the effects of a proposed correction could not be predicted I suddenly realized that this subject was a couple of milimeters outside his field of expertise and he actually had no thinking skills at all.

      Telling a 20 year old kid writing an O/S that he might want to look at the latest research rather than rehash an obsolete design does not sound like an unreasonable thing for an experienced prof to do. I think the people objecting here are more caught up in church of Linux religious bigottry than sense.

      --
      Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
      Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
    32. Re:His comment on Slashdot: by Coz · · Score: 1

      P. Tobin Maginnis, University of Mississippi... Hiya, Tobin!

      --
      I love vegetarians - some of my favorite foods are vegetarians.
  4. the article... by manavendra · · Score: 0

    ...well the first three paragraphs sound much too self-indulgent for my taste, yuck!

    I know for sure I'd be flooded with angry /.'ers - but hey, that's what I felt!

    --
    http://efil.blogspot.com/
    1. Re:the article... by bladesjester · · Score: 1

      12 replies to this and he's already been slashdotted? sheesh

      his bandwidth must be issed by a hamster.

      --
      Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
    2. Re:the article... by roll_w.it · · Score: 1

      12 replies to this and he's already been slashdotted? sheesh

      his bandwidth must be issed by a hamster.

      Give it a break - it's in the Netherlands...

    3. Re:the article... by njcoder · · Score: 0, Offtopic
      Actually, it's not slashdotted, it's just really slow.

      He mentions it's running on a sun box with apache. He also mentions that the last time it was on slashdot it didn't go down. This has been my experience with apache on sun. It may sometimes be very slow... but you'll eventually get the page in most cases under heavy load. Sun's app server works in the same way. I don't know if it's their philosophy but the servlet engine comparison's I've seen, the other servlet containers I've seen, Sun's product starts slowing down a bit earlier than the others under stress, but it returned far fewer errors.

      The point is, if you wait 20-30seconds, you'll get the page.

      --
      Open Source Java DAO Generator
    4. Re:the article... by njcoder · · Score: 1
      how is this offtopic? The guy claims he was slashdotted... which normally means the site gets so many hits it goes down. In AST's article it states that his site never went down and he referenced how good his sun box and apache software were. I also was able to see the site with no problem though it was slow.

      I guess more importantly, how is this off topic when it references the parent post, comments on specifics in the linked text and adds my own opinion and observation related to the comment... while the original post isn't?

      --
      Open Source Java DAO Generator
    5. Re:the article... by Mind+Booster+Noori · · Score: 1

      It was really slashdot'ed when I read it first time.

      --
      Mind Booster Noori
  5. Mirror mirror on the wall ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    We already need a mirror ... man the /. effect hit quick and hard these days.

    1. Re:Mirror mirror on the wall ... by brix · · Score: 3, Informative

      Article is mirrored at Newsforge.

    2. Re:Mirror mirror on the wall ... by Halfbaked+Plan · · Score: 2, Funny

      Do they really forge news items at that site?

      Have they applied for work at the New York Times?

      *rimshot*

      --
      resigned
  6. Round Two by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny
    "This attention resulted in over 150,000 requests to our server in less than a day, which is still standing despite yesterday being a national holiday with no one there to stand next to it saying "You can do it. You can do it." Kudos to Sun Microsystems and the folks who built Apache."

    Just when he thought it was over, here we come for another round. . .

    1. Re:Round Two by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 5, Funny

      On Wall Street, we called this technology "BOHICA": Bend Over, Here It Comes Again.

      --

      --
      make install -not war

    2. Re:Round Two by ValourX · · Score: 3, Interesting

      150k is about three times the normal Slashdot effect (the best Slashdotting I ever got was just over 50k, and the lowest Slashdotting was around 25k -- this is in one day). Tanenbaum's note got picked up by a lot more places than /.

      -Jem

    3. Re:Round Two by jpu8086 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Not arguing your point about being multilinked, but making a point regarding the variance in slashdotting:

      I suppose the popularity of GNU/Linux, the historic Linus vs. Andy debates, the FUD being brought out by ADTI (and the aforementioned Brown book) all must play a role in getting a "bigger slashdotting".

      This report was of core essence to all users (and fans) of GNU/Linux, so one can easily assume a slashdotting of great proportions. It only helps that a person of great respect, prestige, and fame has tarnished the credibility of Brown and boosted the legality of the Linux kernel in the report.

      --
      now supporting:
      cmdrTaco for president '04
      michael for oval office intern summer '05
    4. Re:Round Two by smithmc · · Score: 1

      On Wall Street, we called this technology "BOHICA": Bend Over, Here It Comes Again.

      LOL, sweet memories - the student newspaper at my alma mater was called "The Bohican".

      --
      Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
    5. Re:Round Two by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why keep the gloves on? This AC will say it straight-out:

      Few give a shit about some emerald thing we've never heard of before or since. Anyone who has taken a 2nd-year compsci course has heard of Tanembaum, even if we can't spell his name right. 50k is for pussies and big-heads.

    6. Re:Round Two by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      150k is about three times the normal Slashdot effect

      You're confusing requests with hits. Only Slashdot has the habbit of letting everybody go to the original page. A normal hit from slashdot generated 3 counted requests (redirect:add slash, 1 picture, background not counted). We're currently at 300k+ requests, now a bit stopped I guess because only whatever.slashdot.org is still up. (That 1 request took 20 sec, is due to the redirect and 2 htaccess files I guess. No thanks to AST from me for that, as I'm a CS.VU student...)

      Some data from 21 may 16h +0200:
      /net/www/apache/logs> grep "/~ast/brown" cs_access_log >/tmp/pktest
      /net/www/apache/logs> wc /tmp/pktest
      189695 3805895 36284415 /tmp/pktest
      /net/www/apache/logs> grep "/~ast/brown/" /tmp/pktest|wc
      143054 2866017 27688099
      /net/www/apache/logs> grep "/~ast/brown/vote.jpg" /tmp/pktest|wc
      52597 1056889 10427485
      /net/www/apache/logs> grep "GET /~ast/brown/" /tmp/pktest|wc
      126329 2528844 24557724
      /net/www/apache/logs> grep "GET /~ast/brown/followup" /tmp/pktest|wc
      1622 32522 318522
      /tmp> grep groklaw pktest|wc
      3928 78594 801002
      /tmp> grep slashdot pktest|wc
      69719 1422202 13344465
      /tmp> grep eweek.com pktest|wc
      2815 57697 655463
      /tmp> grep theregister.co pktest|wc
      2021 40909 454919
      /tmp> grep barrapunto.com pktest|wc
      1102 21791 212046
      /tmp> grep news.com pktest|wc
      1538 31641 384089
      /tmp> grep linux pktest|wc
      3941 77583 839585
    7. Re:Round Two by tiger99 · · Score: 1
      Yes, the server kept running, but there was a bottleneck somewhere. I don't know how much bandwidth the connection has, but yesterday it took me hours see the article, but it was worth the wait. The second one is even better.

      I hope that mainstream journalists and book reviewers can get their heads round this, and understand what is really going on here, and of course, that no-one buys the book! No doubt, there will be a bulk order from Redmond, but as far as the rest of the world is concerned, it is a total waste of rain-forest.

    8. Re:Round Two by Minna+Kirai · · Score: 1

      150k is about three times the normal Slashdot effect

      How do you know what the "normal" traffic from a Slashdot story is? Are you committing the classic error of examining one data point (your own website) and assuming that a single sample is representative of the universal average?

    9. Re:Round Two by ValourX · · Score: 1

      I've been Slashdotted 6 or 7 times in the past year. I suppose that's not enough data for you though.

      Actually one of my articles is on the front page right now, but I didn't publish it on my site this time.

      -Jem

    10. Re:Round Two by Minna+Kirai · · Score: 1

      I've been Slashdotted 6 or 7 times in the past year. I suppose that's not enough data for you though.

      Of course it's not. You only have one website, and although you can put up different pages there, they all share an author and all are based on your personal interest. The degree to which Slashdotters click on those links is based on the correlation between their interests and yours. You seem to mostly review consumer-level FOSS and *nx software- so how would you know what the response is to a story on spaceflight, or anime movies, or ongoing corporate litigation?

      Could the late Stephen King have looked at the sales of the last 7 of his books and judged the average sell-through for a hardback horror-fiction title?

    11. Re:Round Two by ValourX · · Score: 1

      Well whatever.

      Stephen King is not dead, though. The fact that you believe an urban legend makes this and any future conversations between us totally pointless from my frame of reference.

      -Jem

    12. Re:Round Two by Minna+Kirai · · Score: 1
      Stephen King is not dead, though.

      Does it take much effort to be that obtuse?

      The fact that you believe an urban legend makes this and any future conversations between us totally pointless from my frame of reference.

      It doesn't even approach the status of urban legend- the most it's achieved is "over-repeated joke that wasn't even funny the first time".

      Since you've decided I'm pointless, I'll have to counter that with a free clue: compared to the general population, a Slashdot reader is much more likely to possess some of the following traits:

      For any of those reasons, if you're going to plug a website in your Slashdot signature, consider making it one that appears as something other than a blank black page when viewed by a person without the Macromedia Flash plugin.
  7. Little Help? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Who is Professor Tanenbaum? Who is Ken Brown?

    I suppose I should be embarassed I'm not "in the know" with these inside stories on the Slashdot community, but a little sympathy or perhaps the occasional link to everything2.com (anybody remember those days?) would be nice.

    1. Re:Little Help? by cmowire · · Score: 4, Informative

      Prof. Tanenbaum made MINIX, which predates Linux and provided some inspiration, but no actual code. MINIX initially hosted the Linux environment until it was able to exist on its own. Prof. Tanenbaum and Linus had a massive flamefest early in the days of Linux over microkernel vs. monolithic kernel.

      Ken Brown works for the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, who is basicly in the business of writing "impartial" reports for people with money. It's public knowlege that they've taken money from Microsoft in the past for reports. He is writing a book accusing Linus of not writing Linux.

      --
      Gentoo Sucks
    2. Re:Little Help? by Geoffreyerffoeg · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Tanenbaum wrote MINIX, an operating system that was mildly popular in the days Linux was getting started. Tanenbaum and Torvalds had a famous debate on OS design and the like between MINIX and Linux.

      Ken Brown is employed by the Alexis de Tocqueville Institute, a firm that some Slashdotters speculate is in the pay of SCO, MS, or the ilk, and is trying to find criticisms against Linux, recently making the claim that Torvalds did not write Linux, which is probably too open to interpretation. Torvalds wrote Linux to the extent that he typed it, but he did built on prior work, just like everyone else. Even Microsoft originally bought all rights to DOS from a third party and modified and licensed it to IBM for their contract.

      (At least, this is what I myself have gleaned from Slashdot. Some detail is probably wrong.)

    3. Re:Little Help? by HBI · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You're being way too fair to Microsoft. They bought a clone of CP/M ported to the 8086. Then, they sold a license for it to IBM.

      In other words, they pretty much pulled a SCO, or at least SCO's stated intention at the outset of the current flurry of lawsuits.

      --
      HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
    4. Re:Little Help? by bcrowell · · Score: 2, Informative

      You're being way too fair to Microsoft. They bought a clone of CP/M ported to the 8086. Then, they sold a license for it to IBM.
      Really? Can you document that? I worked for Digital Research around that time, and there were many tales about how the MS/IBM thing happened, but I never heard this version. And what do you mean by "a clone of CP/M ported to the 8086"? There were three versions of CP/M at that point, one of which was an 8086 version.

      --
      Find free books.
    5. Re:Little Help? by LordK3nn3th · · Score: 1

      Actually, I believe in the very, very early version of linux, before it was even distributed, Linus did use some Minix code.

      --

      ---
      Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
    6. Re:Little Help? by Geoffreyerffoeg · · Score: 1

      I was not being fair or unfair to Microsoft. I was being neutral, which is a good strategy when trying to inform, not debate. Actually, the focus here is on AdTI, Tanenbaum, and MINIX/Linux, not MS or SCO, so I compressed that part.

      Maybe I was incorrect, but you have not informed me where. From what I have heard, MS bought QDOS, based on CP/M. I assume they modified it. Then they licensed it to IBM. I still do not see how this was something I was wrongly "fair" to. Maybe it was morally wrong to most people or to you, but businesswise it was brilliant.

    7. Re:Little Help? by LordK3nn3th · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You know, not everyone comes to slashdot for just OS and linux news. It's "news for nerds", yes, but some people are more interested in parts other than the creation of linux.

      --

      ---
      Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
    8. Re:Little Help? by HBI · · Score: 4, Informative

      CP/M 86, the 8088/8086 version of CP/M, was released in 1982, long after the IBM search for a disk operating system for the PC (which was in 1980). The very reason Seattle Computer produced their QDOS was that CP/M 86 wasn't available yet. This is what Microsoft bought, a veritable port of CP/M to the 8086.

      If you were working at DRI, it was after the events cited, obviously.

      --
      HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
    9. Re:Little Help? by Siva · · Score: 1

      actually, linux, before it even had a name, was a terminal emulator. read the book. it discusses the origins of linux...i don't recall, and can't find, anything saying he copied any bit of code. only things like "...because the Minix file system was well-documented...I made my file system compatible with the Minix file system." (p78)

      --

      Keyboard not found.
      Press F1 to continue.
    10. Re:Little Help? by alangmead · · Score: 3, Informative

      Professor Andrew Tanenbaum is a professor who has written some great books. I'm very happy to have read read them. One of his books was Operatin g System Desgin and Implementation in which he describes operating systems with a toy, minimal, Unix-like operating system for the 8088 called Minix. It wasn't a really useful OS, but it was small enough to take a look at the code to any particular subsystem and learn how it worked. As an example of its mimilalism, it did have some hardware memory protection between processes, but did so with segment registers. That limited the size of each program to 64k.

      Minix wasn't free or open source software. (ideas that were pretty much in their infancy) Tanenbaum sold it through his book publisher. Not for much, probably just enough to make it worth Prentice-Hall's time. Without the Internet as a cost effective distribution medium, someone had to take the orders and mail the disks. People loved tinkering with Minux, though. They ported it to other platforms, (Atari ST, Amiga, Sparc, 80306, etc.) They added to it and started distributing patches. Linus was using Minix-386 before he managed to get Linux to be self-hosting. In some reports, it was Linus' annoyance at having to pay for Minux that inspired him to make Linux free software.

      Ken Brown, on the other hand, is someone whose name isn't very recognizable in technical circles. I'm tempted to say that he is a nobody, but maybe I just don't hang around the right circles. (Or on the other hand, maybe if I've never heard of him that means that I hang around the right circles.) I first read about the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution a couple of years ago when they published a paper questioning the security of free and open source software, and sold the paper in a through a system that allowed people to download the paper without purchasing it. Most of the links on their site are either links to articles from news sites about the institutes press releases, or links to papers that they promise will be ready soon.

    11. Re:Little Help? by HBI · · Score: 1

      They pretty much were the Linux of their day, is my point. Their OS was a clone of CP/M. It wasn't anything original. You didn't say anything incorrect, you were just being too generous to them imo.

      --
      HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
    12. Re:Little Help? by nathanh · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Who is Professor Tanenbaum? Who is Ken Brown?

      Tanenbaum (AST) is a Professor who worked at AT&T and has written many textbooks aimed at university students. AST's most famous book - Operating Systems: Design and Implementation - includes a UNIX-alike operating system called Minix that he wrote himself. Minix includes binaries and source code for the kernel, C library, C compiler, and all the utilities. AST wrote Minix and the book to teach students how operating systems are written. Any computing science student who attended a decent university in the past decade has probably had at least one of AST's books as a required text.

      Minix ran on an 8086 and didn't have modern virtual memory (VM) features. When the 80386 came out there were some unofficial patches to make Minix/386. These patches added virtual memory and paging and memory protection, turning Minix into an useful OS. AST refused to add these patches to Minix, rightly arguing that they would make Minix too complex for a student to understand. Minix was a teaching tool, not a general purpose OS, even though Minix/386 was a pretty good general purpose OS. Unfortunately the license back then didn't permit forking. Despite these limitations, Minix had a very large user community. .

      When Linus came along and announced Linux a lot of people realised that GNU (basically all of UNIX except for the kernel) and Linux (basically none of UNIX except the kernel) when combined would produce a UNIX-alike operating system. Just like Minix but with VM and the more relaxed GPL for a license. There was no Linux news group so all the discussions were on the Minix news group.

      AST put his two cents in on the Linux kernel. He correctly pointed out that the Linux design was a 30 year old monolithic design; not elegant or modern. Linus argued back that monolithic kernels are more practical. AST said Linus would fail his OS class, if Linus was his student. That's the infamous AST/Linus flamewar. It wasn't very hot, as far as flamewars went. AST was right, so was Linus. They just had different perspectives.

      Ken Brown is an ignorant idiot who is selling a book claiming that Linus didn't write Linux. He argues that noone could write something so complex as a UNIX-like kernel without stealing code. Ken is under the delusion that writing a UNIX needs a huge team of people working for many years. He seems to be ignorant of the fact that the first UNIX was written by Ken Thompson on a computer so ancient that your wrist watch has more computing power. For "research", Ken Brown spoke to AST. Notably he did not speak to Linus Torvalds. AST is pointing out that Ken is lying in his book; AST has pointed to several examples of single authors who created a UNIX-like kernel, AST included.

      The confusion might be that Ken Brown doesn't understand that Linux is just a kernel. The first "Linux" that you ran back in 1991 was actually GNU/Linux. Linux comprised less than 2% of that system. RMS and his team had been working on GNU for nearly a decade by that stage (longer if you count emacs). Linux The Kernel was a small piece of the puzzle. An essential piece, but certainly writable in 6 months by a bright and talented person. These days, Linux is an incredibly tiny piece of a "Linux distribution". Ken Brown might think that Linus is laying claim to the entire system. Of course, Linus has only ever claimed credit for the first kernel. Recent kernels have very little "Linus" in them. And the distro you have on the desktop is less than 1% Linux anyway.

      The other theory is that Ken Brown is being paid by SCO/Microsoft/LatestPariah to create FUD over the legal origins of Linux.

      I prefer my own theory. Ken wants attention. Saying something ridiculous gets easy attention and increases book sales. We're playing right into his hands by giving him the time of day. It gives him false credibility by creating a "controversy" when in reality there is no controversy. Just Ken saying ridiculous things with no evidence to back them up. It's like all those authors who write books on Noah's Ark, or the location of Atlantis. They must have a huge grin on their face when somebody pays attention to them.

    13. Re:Little Help? by First+Person · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Many people don't remember that one of Microsoft's first products was a CPM board for the Apple II. The Apple II was 6502 based, but I recall that the CPM board had an 8086 (or similar process from that family) on it.

      --
      Given one hour to live, the student replied: "I'd spend it with professor FP who can make an hour seem like a lifetime."
    14. Re:Little Help? by JPriest · · Score: 4, Informative

      Linux was written on Minix and based partly on it (and partly on many other operating systems). But Linux does not and never did contain any Minix source code. For one Linux is a monolithic kernel and Minix is a microkernel. Not just different code but entirely different implementations. I highly recomment reading a usernet post from Andy Tanenbaum in 1992 titled "LINUX is obsolete" and the corresponding response from Linus.

      --
      Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
    15. Re:Little Help? by Jeremy+Erwin · · Score: 1

      The Microsoft CP/M softcard used a z80 processor,

    16. Re:Little Help? by jay-be-em · · Score: 0

      Try google.

      --
      "Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." --Eric Blair
    17. Re:Little Help? by Halfbaked+Plan · · Score: 2, Informative

      One of Microsoft's first products was the BASIC interpreter(s) that just about every early producer of microcomputers included with their machine.

      All the TRS-80 machines included Microsoft Basic in ROM, for instance. The IBM-PC had Microsoft Basic in ROM that you could run without even having a floppy disk controller in your PC.

      Microsoft was an early entrant in the hobby/personal computer market with one of the first significant commercial products that people found useful.

      However, it's more popular to believe the anti-Microsoft drivel and revisionist history written by pundits years later.

      Anybody with a sense of ethics and value for historical accuracy would be ashamed to be involved with the early 'history' part of the film 'Revolution OS' or that Robert X. Cringely (not his real name, just a shared psuedonym he stole control of and commercialized) fraud-history work 'Pirates of Silicon Valley.'

      --
      resigned
    18. Re:Little Help? by gustgr · · Score: 1

      Professor Tanenbaum is the "Operating Systems Pope", one of the most respected research in action nowdays.

    19. Re:Little Help? by gustgr · · Score: 1

      s/research/researcher/

    20. Re:Little Help? by cmowire · · Score: 3, Informative

      Not really. Linux never had any Minix code. I think you are confusing how Linux 0.1 had no real userland, which meant that you needed to install it over an existing Minix install.

      --
      Gentoo Sucks
    21. Re:Little Help? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Other then the fact that Linux is probably the single most important thing to happen to geek and nerd-dom since the creation of the first PC, you can look at the front page of Slashdot and notice that most of the stories have very little, if anything, to do with Linux.

      So stop your whining.

    22. Re:Little Help? by mdielmann · · Score: 1

      Or, more correctly, SCO is trying to pull a Microsoft. The only difference is, MS (apparently) had a leg to stand on, so didn't have to do it in court.

      --
      Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
    23. Re:Little Help? by subsolar2 · · Score: 1
      The Apple II was 6502 based, but I recall that the CPM board had an 8086 (or similar process from that family) on it.
      Actually it was Z-80 based, not that it really matter.
    24. Re:Little Help? by AndroidCat · · Score: 2, Interesting
      There was no Linux news group so all the discussions were on the Minix news group.

      With various progress reports cross-posted into other newsgroups like comp.os.coherent to mixed reception as I recall. :) (Note that the Google archives seem pretty spotty for that period.)

      --
      One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
    25. Re:Little Help? by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

      A respected researcher? One who describes a true multitasking and multi-threaded I/O as "a performance hack." soley because its based on a macrokernel?

      Just because we read something by him on his own site does not mean is not non biased.

      Go read his section on expected a 20% performance his from running a microkernel is worth it because no macrokernel is reliable or stable enough? Riiigghht.

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
    26. Re:Little Help? by 36-bitter · · Score: 1

      Mmmm, the way I heard it, IBM *wanted* CP/M but Gary Kildall wouldn't talk to them. They turned to Microsoft, and since Microsoft had nothing to sell them but wanted the sale, they bought 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products.

      Rats, I can't find the reference. I did find yet another take on the story in _DOS Programmer's Reference, 2/e_ by Dettmann and Kyle (1989, Que Corporation.

    27. Re:Little Help? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      BASIC wasn't all that useful. It's weak in just about every measure one can think to be of use, especially Microsoft's incarnations of the language.

      Moreover, the infrastructures developed around BASIC were weakly standardized, which damned it to the depths of the obsolete. About its only advantages over C were the interpreted whitespace at the end of the line, the use command-context as grouping instead of curly braces, and the lack of a need to compile, being mostly interpreted.

      I find that people who can't understand the reduced semantic nature of whitespace in almost all modern language (except notably Python) shouldn't be programming anyways.

      So BASIC had some utility in being horribly unoptimizable since you couldn't even specify a bit shift or even XOR in most versions, taught a generation of programmers how to use goto in strange ways to get what you want, and in general was hobbled by a lack of compatibility among competing implementations and the veritible lack of a standards body.

      That's great. Way to go MS.

    28. Re:Little Help? by tliet · · Score: 1

      The Microsoft SoftCard as it was called, contained the Z80 processor, the most popular chip to run CPM on.

    29. Re:Little Help? by Typhon100 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You may not agree with him, but you'd have a tough time arguing he's not a respected researcher. His books are standard texts at many universities...Modern Operating Systems is the one used in the undergrad OS class here at Harvard.

    30. Re:Little Help? by tiger99 · · Score: 1
      I think you will find that CP/M 86 got more testing and debugging time than did MessyDOS, hence it was later. There is a lesson there, I think! The initial work of porting CP/M could not have neded more than a couple of weeks by a competent programmer. Even if it was all written in assembler (most of it was C IIRC), Intel had already worked out, and published, how to map each 8080 instruction to 8086, so a rough port would take very little time at all, but would not of course be terribly efficient.

      Why IBM went to a bunch of hopeless, dishonest incompetents with a bad track record (buggy, bloated, late basic interpreters) and insatiable greed, for their OS, is well beyond my comprehension.

    31. Re:Little Help? by Halfbaked+Plan · · Score: 1

      Don't be a putz. Back in the day, you coded in BASIC or you wrote in Assembler. Those were the choices. All C is, is a portable Assembler, with 'system' hooks where they are available. Equivalent in the early 'home computer' days was BIOS calls for various purposes.

      The regular folks wrote in BASIC, the hackers, i.e. Peter Norton types, wrote in Assembler. That was virtually all there was.

      Times have changed, obviously. Remember, we're talking about before the Borland Pascal and C era. Hell, we're talking about the cassette, paper tape, and Hex keypad era, when an advanced Interface was a teletype or dumb terminal. The period which bootstrapped everything later. C implementations for micros existed back then, i.e. Aztec, but were expensive and rare.

      --
      resigned
    32. Re:Little Help? by tiger99 · · Score: 2, Interesting
      "It's like all those authors who write books on Noah's Ark, or the location of Atlantis."

      I would have said more like those so-called professional historians, and the guy who allegedly perfected the Gas Chamber and the Electric Chair, who visited Auschwitz, saw with their own eyes, and then denied that the Holocaust ever happened. BTW I am not Jewish, I have no axe to grind, but well-established facts with overwhelming eyewitness and photographic evedence are exactly what they seem, the contrary opinion is highly offensive lies and deception.

      They make me sick, the way they twist facts. I saw Mr. Electric Chair (no doubt /.ers will fill in the name) on TV taking a sample from the surface of the brickwork, which he sent to a lab, to test for Zyklon B, of which there of course was no trace. A gas would not be retained for minutes, far less over 50 years, yet his actions, and his self-confessed expertise in the field of so-called humane executions, might have given credibility to his claims to anyone without a proper scientific education.

      Yet vile scum like that are believed by fanatics, and even apparently sensible people. I call him scum by the way, because both of the methods of execution in which he is allegedly an expert are in fact death by slow, agonising torture, yet some state legislatures, on his advice, believe that the electric chair is humane.

      Fortunately human life does not figure in Brown's rantings, at least not on this occasion, but who knows what other vile and dangerous lies he may be capable of propagating.

      Funnily enough, Mr. Electric Chair clearly had no competence in technical matters either, just like Brown.

      People like that are a danger to society and should be locked up. I hope that Brown is the subject of so much legal action ,when his book is published, that he is never listended to again, by anyone, anywhere.

      I wonder about his politics, is he a Fascist like these other guys, or just a Bill-worshipper? Or is it the great god Mammon, meaning he has no principles at all, except to get rich quick?

    33. Re:Little Help? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      An ATM and IEEE fellow, Professor of Computing at the Amsterdam University with over 20 years of experience both theoretical and practical, whos books are standard texts in almost all CS classes...or you, Mr. Slashdot Poster. Right, well, thanks for the insight. Don't call us, we'll call you.

    34. Re:Little Help? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fred Leuchter: Proto-Nazi, Holocaust-denier, builder of executioning equipment.

      This guy makes me want to puke.

    35. Re:Little Help? by joescrooge · · Score: 1

      JPriest, thank you for the trip down memory lane. What a riot seeing old friends names in those posts. You made my Saturday night!

      --
      never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes
    36. Re:Little Help? by LordK3nn3th · · Score: 1

      I simply thought that when Linus first started on linux, he used the minix source code, then moved away from that, which was perfectly useful and good for what Minix was created for. By the time it was put onto FTP, however, it was free of all Minix source code. Is this possible?

      --

      ---
      Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
  8. here is what he had to say by sleepnmojo · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Ken Brown's Motivation, Release 1.2 Background On 20 May 2004, I posted a statement refuting the claim of Ken Brown, President of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, that Linus Torvalds didn't write Linux. My statement was mentioned on Slashdot, Groklaw, and many other Internet news sites. This attention resulted in over 150,000 requests to our server in less than a day, which is still standing despite yesterday being a national holiday with no one there to stand next to it saying "You can do it. You can do it." Kudos to Sun Microsystems and the folks who built Apache. My statement was mirrored all over the Internet, so the number of true hits to it is probably a substantial multiple of that. There were also quite a few comments at Slashdot, Groklaw, and other sites, many of them about me. I had never engaged in remote multishrink psychoanalysis on this scale before, so it was a fascinating experience. The Brown Book I got an advance copy of Ken Brown's book. I think it is still under embargo, so I won't comment on it. Although I am not an investigative reporter, even I know it is unethical to discuss publications still under embargo. Some of us take ethics more seriously than others. So I won't even reveal the title. Let's call it The Brown Book. There is some precedent for nicknaming books after colors: The International Standard for the CD-ROM (IS 10149) is usually called The Red Book. Suffice it to say, there is a great deal to criticize in the book. I am sure that will happen when it is published. I may even help out. Brown's Motivation What prompted me to write this note today is an email I got yesterday. Actually, I got quite a few :-) , most of them thanking me for the historical material. One of yesterday's emails was from Linus, in response to an email from me apologizing for not letting him see my statement in advance. As a matter of courtesy, I did try but I was using his old transmeta.com address and didn't know his new one until I got a very kind email from Linus' father, a Finnish journalist. In his email, Linus said that Brown never contacted him. No email, no phone call, no personal interview. Nothing. Considering the fact that Brown was writing an explosive book in which he accused Linus of not being the author of Linux, you would think a serious author would at least confront the subject with the accusation and give him a chance to respond. What kind of a reporter talks to people on the periphery of the subject but fails to talk to the main player? Why did Brown fly all the way to Europe to interview me and (and according to an email I got from his seat-mate on the plane) one other person in Scandinavia, at considerable expense, and not at least call Linus? Even if he made a really bad choice of phone company, how much could that cost? Maybe a dollar? I call the U.S. all the time from Amsterdam. It is less than 5 cents a minute. How much could it cost to call California from D.C.? From reading all the comments posted yesterday, I am now beginning to get the picture. Apparently a lot of people (still) think that I 'hate' Linus for stealing all my glory (see below for more on this). I didn't realize this view was so widespread. I now suspect that Brown believed this, too, and thought that I would be happy to dump all over Linus to get 'revenge.' By flying to Amsterdam he thought he could dig up dirt on Linus and get me to speak evil of him. He thought I would back up his crazy claim that Linus stole Linux from me. Brown was wrong on two counts. First, I bear no 'grudge' against Linus at all. He wrote Linux himself and deserves the credit. Second, I am really not a mean person. Even if I were still angry with him after all these years, I wouldn't choose some sleazy author with a hidden agenda as my vehicle. My home page gets 2500 hits a week. If I had something to say, I could put it there. When The Brown Book comes out, there will no doubt be a lot of publicity in the mainstream media. Any of you with contacts in the media are actively encouraged to point reporters to this p

  9. Raises some interesting questions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Some of which are easier to answer than others:

    Why did Brown fly all the way to Europe to interview me and (and according to an email I got from his seat-mate on the plane) one other person in Scandinavia, at considerable expense, and not at least call Linus?

    I think the answer is "because calling Linus wouldn't have allowed Brown to get the Alex de Torqeville Institute to pay for him to take a vacation to Holland".

    1. Re:Raises some interesting questions by kfg · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Of course that's the obvious funny answer. I'm sorry you beat me too it.

      Of course the real, and obvious, reason that they did not talk to Linus is because they did not want to.

      Things that make you go (as they obviously have for the good professor), "Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm."

      KFG

    2. Re:Raises some interesting questions by Shivantrill · · Score: 0

      Maybe this is what is behind his book, good legal ganja. Which would explain how he would take a healthy debate between two academics and turn it into a blood feud.
      Besides, No matter what dirt any one thinks they can dig up on Linus, he "wrote" Linux. He may have leveraged from other people's work but that is what all GOOD programmers do. Why reinvent the wheel?
      Linus is amazingly bright and will continue doing great things for the industry, despite enterprising authors who just want a free trip to Amsterdam to get some (some==anything that is legal in amsterdam but not in the US... use your imagination people).

      --
      Karma, We don't need no stinkin' karma!
    3. Re:Raises some interesting questions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't get it

  10. You lose. [MODERATORS?] by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    MODERATORS: For the benefit of those of us who still read at Threshold 0, would you please moderate up the FIRST mirror and moderate down this one or any other additional redundant ones which may appear later on, so that we don't see four of them scattered throughout the thread, all at Score:3?

    1. Re:You lose. [MODERATORS?] by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Your mistake is to imagine that moderators read at threshold 0. Neither have they read the moderating faq, and frequently not even the article.

    2. Re:You lose. [MODERATORS?] by Blastrogath · · Score: 1

      >Your mistake is to imagine that moderators read at threshold 0. Neither have they read the moderating faq, and frequently not even the article.

      Well, of course not. They're suposed to be average slashdotters right?

      --
      "The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." -Plato
    3. Re:You lose. [MODERATORS?] by 1u3hr · · Score: 1
      would you please moderate up the FIRST mirror

      Don't moderate up ANY mirrors. The original site is holding up quite well, Tanenbaum comments that it took the first slashdotting without any problems "over 150,000 requests to our server in less than a day, which is still standing despite yesterday being a national holiday..."

    4. Re:You lose. [MODERATORS?] by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 2, Informative
      Your mistake is to imagine that moderators read at threshold 0. Neither have they read the moderating faq, and frequently not even the article.


      Well actually if you had read the moderator FAQ you would know that you should really browse at -1 in order to catch abuses.

    5. Re:You lose. [MODERATORS?] by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't worry, I have read it. But I think moderators going from browsing at 2 to browsing at 0 is a big enough jump as it is, and quite frankly I'd settle for that.

    6. Re:You lose. [MODERATORS?] by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I always read at -1 Nested Oldest First, regardless of wether I have moderator points. It always pisses me off to see that some dumbass with some bizzare configuration (+4 Threaded Highest Scores First, with a +1 Insighful Bonus, or something equally as brain dead) has gone about and moderated everything in some seemingly random manner.

      If you have Moderator Points you should be forced into -1 Nested Oldest First!

  11. Tanenbaum is being disingenious by Roland+Piquepaille · · Score: 2, Insightful

    In his email, Linus said that Brown never contacted him. No email, no phone call, no personal interview. Nothing. Considering the fact that Brown was writing an explosive book in which he accused Linus of not being the author of Linux, you would think a serious author would at least confront the subject with the accusation and give him a chance to respond. What kind of a reporter talks to people on the periphery of the subject but fails to talk to the main player?

    Hmmm, duh!

    How many "explosive" books on Diana were published without giving Diana a chance to respond in the book?

    Dragging someone's name into the dirt in a book and not including an interview of that person in the book is the hallmark of a trashy book. But then, we all knew it, since it's a Microsoft PR ploy ultimately, so no surprise there.

    1. Re:Tanenbaum is being disingenious by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      How many "explosive" books on Diana were published without giving Diana a chance to respond in the book?

      Linus isn't dead yet you insensitivite twit.

    2. Re:Tanenbaum is being disingenious by Dinglenuts · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      Unfortunately for Princess Di, the stupid bitch was too high on antidepressants (and stupid, to boot) to learn how to use the internet to let everyone know what a bunch of fucktards your so-called "authors" were.

      --


      Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
    3. Re:Tanenbaum is being disingenious by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      She was also too stupid to wear a seatbelt. She would have lived if she'd bothered.

    4. Re:Tanenbaum is being disingenious by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you knew anything about antidepressants you'd know you can't get "high" on them.

  12. The Netherlands Connection is the key by Vengeance · · Score: 5, Funny

    There is no other way to explain the conclusions we've seen reported for this book, except that Brown spent a good deal of time in Amsterdam coffeehouses, consuming high-grade grass.

    --
    It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
    1. Re:The Netherlands Connection is the key by kfg · · Score: 2, Funny

      Which is no excuse really, as such is commonly available where Linus resides as well, so he could have just as easily produced a wigged out interview with Linus as with Prof. Tannenbaum.

      And the weather's better in So Cal.

      I can fully understand being willing to do just about anything to get out of D.C. for awhile though.

      KFG

    2. Re:The Netherlands Connection is the key by YetAnotherDave · · Score: 1

      >> Which is no excuse really, as such is commonly available where Linus resides as well

      That's a bald-faced lie. SoCal pot is generally pretty sad, in my experience...

      Since Brown was manufacturing most of his 'research' anyway, he could have just come to BC, smoked our fine herb, and wasted the time of professorial types here...

    3. Re:The Netherlands Connection is the key by Flyboy+Connor · · Score: 4, Funny

      This get me so irritated. People who immediately start yelling "drugs" when the Netherlands comes up. We have so many interesting other things! There is... uhm... (should not mention hookers here)... uhm... ... I'll get back to you.

    4. Re:The Netherlands Connection is the key by Gorny · · Score: 1

      How about?

      1) tulips
      2) wooden shoes
      3) mills
      4) xtc (export product #1)

      --
      Alan Perlis once said: "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing"
    5. Re:The Netherlands Connection is the key by chthon · · Score: 1

      Hey, hey, I thought that we Belgians were the number 1 XTC exporters !!

    6. Re:The Netherlands Connection is the key by Gorny · · Score: 1

      I meant that xtc is the #1 export product in the Netherlands :) Maybe that is also the case for Belgium.

      --
      Alan Perlis once said: "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing"
    7. Re:The Netherlands Connection is the key by Mac+Degger · · Score: 1

      I would have mentioned a liberal government, decent schooling, and the like. But then I realised that was before the primary schooling system got reorganised according to some american system and now turns out morons who need a graphical calculator for the most basic task, and before 9-11 and Bush pushing his kind of 'democracy', 'law' and 'privacy' down europe's throat.

      Oh well....

      --
      -- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
    8. Re:The Netherlands Connection is the key by Uerige · · Score: 1

      There's still vla!

    9. Re:The Netherlands Connection is the key by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, it's our fault that your country sucks.

    10. Re:The Netherlands Connection is the key by cowbutt · · Score: 1
      5) The Gathering (Hello, Anneke!)

      --

  13. Disclosure by Vihai · · Score: 4, Funny

    I got an advance copy of Ken Brown's book. I think it is still under embargo, so I won't comment on it

    Ok, fair enought

    Let's call it The Brown Book

    So, why are you disclosing the color of the cover!?!? Baaad guy Andy :)

    1. Re:Disclosure by grub · · Score: 4, Funny


      I think "The Brown Book" describes what the book and author are full of. That the author's name is Brown must surely be a coincidence.

      --
      Trolling is a art,
    2. Re:Disclosure by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I assume by brown he is refering to shit..

    3. Re:Disclosure by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      I wonder if the Brown Book is anything like the "Brown Noise"

      *duck*

    4. Re:Disclosure by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's the Brown book because Tannenbaum ran out of toilet paper.

    5. Re:Disclosure by Vony · · Score: 1

      So, why are you disclosing the color of the cover!?!? Baaad guy Andy :)

      Or, more accurate: So, why are you disclosing the smell of the cover!?!?

      -Vony

    6. Re:Disclosure by tverbeek · · Score: 1
      I think "The Brown Book" describes what the book and author are full of. That the author's name is Brown must surely be a coincidence.

      When I was in college, "brown" meant "high on marijuana". Maybe AST is hinting that the interview took place over hash brownies? ;)

      --
      http://alternatives.rzero.com/
    7. Re:Disclosure by tiger99 · · Score: 1

      No, he was describing the colour after putting some of the pages to good use. I hope that the paper was satisfactorily soft, haemerrhoids can be quite nasty!

    8. Re:Disclosure by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe AST is hinting that the interview took place over hash brownies?

      I thought those were a kind of potato fritter?

    9. Re:Disclosure by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      hash brownies are laced chocolate brownies. hashed browns are fried potatoes.

  14. Changed opinion by Dasein · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You know, I think I had AST wrong. I'd seen the thread where he bashes Linus for not doing a microkernel design and thought that maybe it was sour grapes.

    His exchanges on this subject have changed my opinion on that. He's been nothing but kind toward Linus, generous with his time, and well-spoken.

    If anything good come out of this whole mess, maybe it's that AST really got to show us what he's really like instead of all of us just assuming that he was bitter about the MINIX/Linux history.

    --
    You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake -- but you could be if you got off your ass.
    1. Re:Changed opinion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      His exchanges on this subject have changed my opinion on that. He's been nothing but kind toward Linus, generous with his time, and well-spoken.

      Perhaps this is because ten to fifteen years have elapsed since then and he's had time to cool down?

    2. Re:Changed opinion by pankajsethi · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I agree that a lot of people in academia have superinflated egos, but the ones who are at the top are because of their earnest desire to learn and explore new realms of their beloved fields. If Tannenbaum was narrow minded to get entangled in micro-kernel vs. macro-kernel, he wouldn't be where he is right now.

      Remember that research is more about asking questions, engaging in discussions, acting as a devil's advocate to prove yourself wrong, and dealing paradoxes then it is about answering them. I'm sure nobody around here as any doubt about contribution Tannenbaum has made to computer sceience can be surpassed only by few.

      He so totally rocks and has been my inspirtation since my undergrad days and has written a few books that I will never part with.

    3. Re:Changed opinion by dan_sdot · · Score: 5, Insightful
      You know, I think I had AST wrong. I'd seen the thread where he bashes Linus for not doing a microkernel design and thought that maybe it was sour grapes.
      Well, its good that you made such an informed judgement on his character so early. I think that way to many /.ers are doing that. They read one thread that was linked to a couple days ago, and just because it was an argument with Linus, he must be the bad guy. Remember that, after all, he was being very polite in that discussion and in the end Linus had to apologize for being too hotheaded. He simply strongly believes that microkernels are the best approach.

      So please, /.ers, stop thinking that you have to have an opinion on everything, even the things that you don't really know about.
    4. Re:Changed opinion by iggymanz · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I have used AST's book with MINIX CDROM in an OS internals class I took in the evening, and I think he's the greatest. That being said, I chuckle at his stating a microkernel OS will give about a 20% performance hit compared to a monolithic (the "big mess" type, as my professor jokingly called them), but good design/ease of debugging worth that price. It is easy to see how most Linux users would side with Linus and have a "hot-rodded" OS even if more of a challenge to design and debug.

      It kind of reminds me of the performance I get on my sparcstation 5 using SunOS 4.1.3 or OpenBSD versus Solaris 2.x (though I know there's some complex issues there)

    5. Re:Changed opinion by Alomex · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You know, I think I had AST wrong. I'd seen the thread where he bashes Linus for not doing a microkernel design and thought that maybe it was sour grapes.

      Well shame on you. While I've never fully bought into Tanenbaum's arguments on microkernel they have never been antyhing but cogent, coherent and well made.

      It is the kind of debate that academics are used to making all the time and AST as the distinguished and brilliant OS professor he is, gave us a good example of.

      It seems Linux kiddies weren't mature enough to handle them and asumed malice on AST's part.

    6. Re:Changed opinion by Omnifarious · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I sort of thought that way about him after I read the initial argument, though I still had a lot of respect for his books. But, after reading his first article about the Brown book, I didn't feel that way anymore. It was clear to me that his comments in the middle were him gleefully taking advantage of the fact that he (deservedly) had a wide audience to point out that he still considers monolithic kernels a poor design choice and to give reasons why.

      I detected no note of bitterness or anger over Linux's success. Though I did find some of his comments about Minix licensing to be slightly revisionist. I found people's comments here to be more amusing.

      I sometimes think that people who do not have a scientist mindset mistake heated debate among scientists for petty emotional rancor. The latter does happen, but heated debate is not a definitive indicator.

      --
      Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
    7. Re:Changed opinion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      So please, /.ers, stop thinking that you have to have an opinion on everything, even the things that you don't really know about.

      Pot, meet kettle. Kettle, this is pot.

    8. Re:Changed opinion by iabervon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Linus is an engineer, and is wants to make a system that works really well. Tanenbaum is an academic, and wants to make a system which is informative. Both have been wildly successful at their respective goals.

      The microkernel argument was an academic argument, of the sort that which is not held for the purpose of winning it, but of coming to an agreement on the relative merits of different approaches. As for winners, Linux obviously continues to be a monolithic kernel. But it should not be ignored that you can now add filesystems to a running kernel as modules, and even build them outside of the kernel tree. At this point, Linux is essentially a microkernel design running as a monolithic kernel for performance reasons as an implementation detail. A future version could offer the option of running the filesystems in userspace if you want. (That is, running all of the filesystems in userspace with the kernel fs API; there's already support for having filesystems in userspace if you want.) I wouldn't be surprised if people having weird problems would be advised to try the "ext3.userspace" option, and if you could avoid tainting your kernel with "nvidia.userspace".

    9. Re:Changed opinion by DJCouchyCouch · · Score: 4, Funny

      So please, /.ers, stop thinking that you have to have an opinion on everything, even the things that you don't really know about.

      But... but... that would BREAK Slashdot!

      DJCC

    10. Re:Changed opinion by Tony-A · · Score: 1

      Some people like to argue.

      I reserve the right to have an opinion and to defend it. This doesn't mean that your opposite opinion isn't better (not that I'd let myself be forced to admit it;)

    11. Re:Changed opinion by vondo · · Score: 1

      In his first article he made one comment I thought was strange, something about Linus not crediting people enough. Anyone have more thoughts on that? I've only casually followed the history of Linux, but I always understood that Linux was written because Linus was frustrated with Minix, but I also seem to recall him saying Linux (early versions) weren't as good as Minix or GNU. Reading those ancient posts, I always felt Linus was quite deferential.

    12. Re:Changed opinion by be-fan · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Please, respond when you know what you are talking about.

      Someone in an academic environment supposed to be open to idea's and non baised. Most though have ego's including Tanenbaum which blind them.
      Who said academics are supposed to be biased? Most are very biased towards their own ideas, and push them whenever possible. Its a natural part of the competitive system that allows academia to advance.

      Funny, Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, and As/400 have uptimes that measure in years if you do not include security patching.
      Even funnier is the fact that, with a microkernel OS, lots of downtime due to security-patching is unnecessary, because critical services run as easily restarted userspace tasks. There is no doubt that Linux, Solaris, *BSD, etc, are highly stable, but they are something you trust your server to --- a microkernel like QNX is what you trust your nuclear reactor to!

      MacOSX is less stable than a macrokernels like Linux according to those who use it as a server.
      MacOS X has a monolithic kernel. Mach and BSD both run in kernel-space, with messaging replaced by direct function calls wherever possible. That was one of the chief changes between NeXTStep and OS X.

      --
      A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
    13. Re:Changed opinion by sl0wp0is0n · · Score: 1

      Now-a-days, you can write user space USB drivers for any USB device in a portable way. The last issue of Linux Journal describes the technique. Each technique has its advantages. What's needed are ways for a programmer to harness both techniques. Then a system could be built by using one of these to cater to a particular set of requirements. For example, someone putting a Linux kernel on his wrist watch might think that a microkernel brings more baggage than power. On the other hand, powerful server OS could use the microkernel approach to improve stability.

      --
      My other dog is a Wienerschnitzel.
    14. Re:Changed opinion by nathanh · · Score: 1
      If anything good come out of this whole mess, maybe it's that AST really got to show us what he's really like instead of all of us just assuming that he was bitter about the MINIX/Linux history.

      I'm not sure "all of us" assumed anything of the sort. I always thought AST was doing what he does best; arguing the technical merits of the design. If you hang out on LKML then you see the same sort of arguments every single day (though usually about VM these days). I never thought AST was arguing out of bitterness. I don't think AST ever wanted the attention that came with Minix.

      How about you say "some of us" instead.

    15. Re:Changed opinion by nathanh · · Score: 4, Informative
      But it should not be ignored that you can now add filesystems to a running kernel as modules, and even build them outside of the kernel tree. At this point, Linux is essentially a microkernel design running as a monolithic kernel for performance reasons as an implementation detail.

      Dynamically loadable modules does not make Linux a microkernel design. It would only be a microkernel if the filesystem code ran in a different address space. But because ext3.o runs in the same address space as the kernel, it is most definitely a monolithic design. It is not a "microkernel design running as a monolithic kernel". That's just a nonsensical statement.

      A future version could offer the option of running the filesystems in userspace if you want. (That is, running all of the filesystems in userspace with the kernel fs API; there's already support for having filesystems in userspace if you want.) I wouldn't be surprised if people having weird problems would be advised to try the "ext3.userspace" option, and if you could avoid tainting your kernel with "nvidia.userspace".

      You clearly understand that the significant distinction between microkernel and monolithic is the address space for the subsystems. So I can't understand why you'd suggest that kernel modules makes Linux "essentially a microkernel design". Look at the address space for ext3.o; it's kernel space.

      I don't see Linux evolving into a microkernel until there's hardware support for cross address space branching. Don't hold your breath.

    16. Re:Changed opinion by niew · · Score: 1
      I sometimes think that people who do not have a scientist mindset mistake heated debate among scientists for petty emotional rancor. The latter does happen, but heated debate is not a definitive indicator.

      A bit off topic, but your post reminded me of a funny family story along these lines...

      Before my wife and I got married, my Brother, Dad, future Wife and I went to see my Grandfather. It was the first time she had met my him and she seemed a bit shy during the visit (didn't really seem like her...)

      On the drive home with just me and my f.w. in our car, she told me how *horrible* we all were to each other and she couldn't believe how we talked to our sweet old Grandad! ;)

      It was difficult to explain to her that we where "Discussing Enthusiastically" (TM), nothing more...

      She got used to visits with Grandad... (It's a good thing to, I'd of missed her ;)

    17. Re:Changed opinion by WinterSolstice · · Score: 1

      Hehehe

      Reminds me of the OpenVMS/Unix security flamewars :)

      -WS

      --
      An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
    18. Re:Changed opinion by Halfbaked+Plan · · Score: 1

      He's also had fifteen years to do other cool stuff that many people aren't aware of, but would be fascinated with if they were.

      I keep wondering why nobody ever mentions Ameoba around Slashdot. It's a pretty neat piece of work.

      --
      resigned
    19. Re:Changed opinion by Halfbaked+Plan · · Score: 1

      Where does one get a copy of pre-Solaris SunOS?

      It's something I've never been able to play with. I have plenty of Sun hardware and would love to put SunOS on some of it.

      --
      resigned
    20. Re:Changed opinion by Halfbaked+Plan · · Score: 1

      Lots of people consider monolithic kernels a poor design choice. In fact, plug-in modulular device drivers are a work-around for one of the real problems with them. IOW, even Linux kernel maintainers acknowledge the fact.

      --
      resigned
    21. Re:Changed opinion by geoswan · · Score: 1
      I wondered about that passage too.

      I don't think he meant Linus hadn't credited him enough.

      Is it possible he meant he thought Linus should give more credit to Ken Thompson? Or, lol, Richard Stallman?

    22. Re:Changed opinion by notsoclever · · Score: 1

      By the same token, you have to actually look at how Minix implements its message-passing. I hacked on Minix quite a bit for an undergraduate project, and IIRC all of the kernel processes still run in a single address space anyway. It's a microkernel API still running like a monolithic kernel. The only real difference between Linux and Minix at that point is the API used, since Minix makes it obvious that it's at least pretending to make message calls while Linux is just removing the smoke and mirrors.

      --
      There are 10 kinds of people: ones who understand ternary, ones who don't, and ones who think this joke is about binary
    23. Re:Changed opinion by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

      What that only a microkernel is stable?

      False

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
    24. Re:Changed opinion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're still an idiot for using that sig. If you don't like the rules the programming language sets out for you, why don't you invent your own language, see how popular that gets. Or better yet, just learn how to program...

    25. Re:Changed opinion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You just missed it on ebay

    26. Re:Changed opinion by 0x0d0a · · Score: 1

      A future version could offer the option of running the filesystems in userspace if you want.

      There are two separate systems for doing this in Linux today: LUFS and FUSE.

      I don't believe anyone's bothered to port the existing kernel-based filesystems to either because they, y'know, work and are faster, but it would be possible to do so.

      --
      May we never see th
    27. Re:Changed opinion by Typhon100 · · Score: 1
      It is certainly stabler. The amount of stuff in a monolithic kernel that can go wrong and crash a system is immense.

      Personally I don't believe that makes microkernels better, especially with todays memory prices, but they *are* inherantly simpler, and simpler == stabler.

    28. Re:Changed opinion by Vlad_the_Inhaler · · Score: 1

      To me, the important bit is that 20% (ok - that is a wildly inaccurate figure) performance hit associated with a microkernel.

      Yes - I'll agree that this is acceptable on a non-gaming desktop machine, but it is not acceptable on a (for example) database server. Linux was always looking to be a server-OS and is increasingly aiming at the sexy high-performance end of the market. Minix was never going to head that way.

      --
      Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
    29. Re:Changed opinion by roeland · · Score: 1

      Linus is an engineer, and is wants to make a system that works really well. Tanenbaum is an academic, and wants to make a system which is informative.

      No, rather: the engineer wants to make a system that has 80% efficiency in 80% of the cases with an error margin of 7%. The academic wants to make a system that can be mathematically proven to be 100% correct in 3 predetermined, closed systems. Other than that, it doesn't have to work.

    30. Re:Changed opinion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well linux is a macro-kernel thing. Linus and other often said that their approach is better for the real world than a micro-kernel. But if you look at the linux kernel these days you see kernel threads for different things. AST would have implemented those in user space.

      My point here is that linux is envolving in a direction where it might become a micro-kernel or at least something close.

      Linux tasks took not (so much) more time to be switched than linux threads. So it might be possible to convert kernel threads to tasks in the future. (Or just add protected memory to those threads, which would be more or less the same).

    31. Re:Changed opinion by sjames · · Score: 1

      PArt of the problem is that the argument came down to a value judgement.

      On the Microkernel side, the value is robustness and stability even in the face of a developing system as well as developer time as the primary values.

      On the monokernel side, we have performance as the primary value.

      Depending on what you value most, either AST or Linus may be considered 'right'

      As the hardware becomes faster and faster, the typical value may change.

      This is related to the latency vs throughput. Mainframes tend to have really good throughput, but 'feel' slow because they have a high latency for user interactions. PCs are much slower overall, but 'feel' fast because of their low latency in responding to the user.

    32. Re:Changed opinion by WhiskerTheMad · · Score: 1

      So please, /.ers, stop thinking that you have to have an opinion on everything, even the things that you don't really know about.

      Doesn't that violate the w3c or something?

      --
      Love your country always, but respect your government only when it deserves it. -- Mark Twain
    33. Re:Changed opinion by Alomex · · Score: 1

      Indeed, how could your favorite programming language be other than perfect? What was I saying about Linux kiddies not knowing how to handle reasoned criticism?

      By the way, the bug I pointed out has been fixed in Python, and similar bugs have been fixed in C, so there is not reason why it couldn't be fixed.

    34. Re:Changed opinion by Alomex · · Score: 1

      PArt of the problem is that the argument came down to a value judgement.

      You are mixing two things here: whether AST was right or wrong and what were his motivations. Sure it came down to a value judgement which is one reason I never fully bought into his arguments, but that in no way implies he was "out to get Linux" or "just sour grapes".

      Lastly over the years we seem to have more and more spare CPU cycles while user driven demand is lagging. Because of this, I have changed my mind, for example, about automatic arrays bound checking. Back in the early 80's programs IBM PC programs were short enough that a good programmer could keep track of not violating array bounds, while the penalty of checking said bounds everytime was too high.

      Today I see positively no reason to use a language without array bounds checking for a user app. The only applications that I can think you wouldn't want to do this are the OS kernel and real time control software.

      Ditto for kernels. In today's world of worms and viruses we should gladly pay a 20% penalty in exchange for extra security.

      Keep in mind that Linux/Unix is not half as secure as more people think it is. For example almost all mail clients are prone to buffer overflow errors on the subject line, for one. Most of them don't handle control or extended ascii characters correctly either.

    35. Re:Changed opinion by sjames · · Score: 1

      I certainly never meant to imply that AST was in any way out to get Linux at any time, only to explain how there can be so much genuine and honest contention (mostly friendly, or at worst unemotional) as to micro or mono kernel being superior.

      Certainly agreed, the way CPU power is growing faster than user demand, many of the robustness and correctness functionality we used to avoid for performance reasons are now looking like good ideas.

    36. Re:Changed opinion by iabervon · · Score: 1

      From the point of view of the kernel binary, Linux is a monolithic kernel. But from the point of view of the source of a filesystem, there's no way to tell. It could, in principle, be in a different address space, with access only to the things it's supposed to have access to.

      So I think that Linux is now a microkernel design, with a monolithic implementation. Of course, it doesn't use a generic message passing system, and does a lot of communication by shared memory, but that doesn't change the fact that, from the filesystem programmer's point of view, there are only certain APIs available, and the rest cannot be used directly with any hope of having it work.

    37. Re:Changed opinion by iabervon · · Score: 1

      I actually mentioned that (paranthetically); what Linux doesn't support is running the same code as either a kernel module or in userspace with one of those. The thing that would be useful would be to be able to say, "I think ext3.ko is misbehaving on occasion. I'll stick it in userspace and see if I see a segfault." If you were running a different implementation in userspace than in kernel space, this wouldn't be informative.

    38. Re:Changed opinion by Minna+Kirai · · Score: 1

      For example almost all mail clients are prone to buffer overflow errors on the subject line, for one.

      Name one.

      (Better yet, since I count 8 popular Linux mailreaders, name 5 and then MAYBE you'll be believed)

    39. Re:Changed opinion by iggymanz · · Score: 1

      I can't even find my old SunOS CD's - OpenBSD for the common 32 bit Sun workstations are so superior in every way I haven't run the Sun stuff in 4 years. Why not be able to run the latest applications, program with the latest libraries & languages, and have the best security? SunOS would cripple your machine.

    40. Re:Changed opinion by Alomex · · Score: 1


      Name one.

      Pfft. The very fact that you have a hard time believing it shows how little you know about Unix/Linux security.

      To give a very recent example, about a month ago I received a weird piece of mail which made pine barf and try to execute the next line of the message in a shell. I couldn't even delete the message, so I tried mutt, elm and mail. All of them choked equally. This is the n-th time that this has happened. I've seen it on a sun, dec unix and a linux box at one time or another, btw.

      In the end since the message was at the end of my mailbox it was easier to "head" the file to the right location and thus dispose of the message.

    41. Re:Changed opinion by Minna+Kirai · · Score: 1

      All of them choked equally.

      Really? They all executed the remainder in shell?

      Because if not, just failing to delete a malformed message is a weak form of a security flaw. (Although it does open a DOS vulnerability of sorts)

    42. Re:Changed opinion by 0x0d0a · · Score: 1

      "Subject line" is pushing it -- I don't believe that this is a major problem.

      Buffer overflows based on parsing mail is not an uncommon problem, though.

      Let's take a look (I'm not going to bother with more than one per client).

      Here are bugs for mutt, pine, evolution, kmail, elm (elm is apparently vulnerable to an overflow in the Subject line :-) ).

      I assume that the last is what the grandparent was referring to.

      --
      May we never see th
    43. Re:Changed opinion by Halfbaked+Plan · · Score: 1

      I have so many Sparc boxes lying around these days that cripping one as a 'reserve' for a vintage OS isn't really a problem. I could easily dedicate a fully loaded IPX to such an endeavor.

      Hell, I got a complete SparcStation 20 with memory and two CPUs, missing only the hard drive, for $10 at auction yesterday.

      --
      resigned
    44. Re:Changed opinion by Alomex · · Score: 1

      They all started processing the header into an abnormal instruction sequence (for example one of them started interpreting the next line as commands typed within the mail client). Only one called the shell.

    45. Re:Changed opinion by iggymanz · · Score: 1

      just keep cruising eBay then, SunOS is sometimes listed as "Solaris 1.x.x" too. Sadly at the moment, for old OS there are only a couple copies of Solaris 2.4 (from 1995) up for auction ending May 27th-ish. As an aside for those who wish to make money with an old ultraparc Sun box, in all my consulting work for the past 4 years, have heavily used 2.6, make sure to have that.

    46. Re:Changed opinion by leandrod · · Score: 1
      > the important bit is that 20% (ok - that is a wildly inaccurate figure) performance hit associated with a microkernel [...] it is not acceptable on a (for example) database server

      Quite to the contrary, any responsible DBA would go nuts for a system with 20% performance hit but with less security and stability risks.

      You realise, it is not hard to tell users their reports will take longer, or to tell coders they can't really continue embellishing their apps to eat up all CPU. But it scares us to think the server could be down for any extended period or our data could fall into the competition's hands.

      We like to sleep well at night.

      --
      Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
      DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
      GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
  15. ./ effect by larry2k · · Score: 2, Funny
    Professor Tanenbaum responds to the slashdot effect

    And he is living the ./ effect hell again

    --

    The package said "Windows XP or better. Pentium Class Processor or better"... So I got a Mac with OS X

    1. Re:./ effect by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      but why would you want to execute " effect"?

    2. Re:./ effect by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are you talking about this guy?

      http://slashdot.org/~dotslash

      If you are, you're a fucking retard. And if you're not, well, you're a fucking retard anyway for getting the slash and the dot backwards!

  16. Arrogance by Quo_R · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Can't help it, but whenever I read something from Tanenbaum, I am thinking "oh my, is this guy arrogant".

    1. Re:Arrogance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      whenever I read something from Tanenbaum, I am thinking "oh my, is this guy arrogant".

      Hey, he's a Dutch professor!

    2. Re:Arrogance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Hey, he's a Dutch professor!

      He was born, raised and educated in the US, and I think he still holds a US passport.

    3. Re:Arrogance by gaj · · Score: 5, Interesting
      Not arrogant -- confident.

      There is a difference, though it is often colored by the listener's own sense of self confidence.

      In the spirit of AST's baseball analogy, I refer you to the immortal words of Dizzy Dean: " It ain't bragging if you can do it."

    4. Re:Arrogance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny
      Can't help it, but whenever I read something from Tanenbaum, I am thinking "oh my, is this guy arrogant".

      Funny, I feel the same way when I read Slashdot.

    5. Re:Arrogance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      > Hey, he's a Dutch professor!

      He was born, raised and educated in the US, and I think he still holds a US passport.

      Why... That's even worse!

    6. Re:Arrogance by cheese_wallet · · Score: 1

      " It ain't bragging if you can do it."

      According to Websters: Brag--To glorify oneself in speech; talk in a self-admiring way

      It has nothing to do with whether or not you are lying.

    7. Re:Arrogance by Frisky070802 · · Score: 1
      He was born, raised and educated in the US, and I think he still holds a US passport.

      Yup, and check out the banner ads on the pages criticizing Brown.....

      --
      Mencken had it right. So glad that's old news.
    8. Re:Arrogance by N1KO · · Score: 1

      So that's where the arrogance comes from.

  17. Wow by bgackle · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I read Linus' book and heard about the "feud" between him and Tanenbaum... somehow, I never connected that Tanenbaum to the one that wrote my networking text...

    Whatever else may be said about Prof. Tanenbaum, I learned much of what I know about networking from his excellent text. It should be said that he is excellent at what he does (that is, teaching students about computers).

    --
    What we really need is a ten day waiting period and a background check before you can buy a congressman.
    1. Re:Wow by Jagasian · · Score: 1

      I bet people apply to Tanenbaum's school just because of this Brown fiasco. Good karma helps.

    2. Re:Wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He's great at writing books, teaching in person isn't quite his forte, he's visably annoyed when people aren't quite as intelligent as he himself is.

      He's probably great with his PhD-candidates (proud as a mother hen?), but less so with undergrads. And to get to the stage where he takes you on for a PhD.. Well, let's just say that honey catches a lot of flies..

      Anonymous coward for obvious reasons.

  18. Okay. by mcc · · Score: 4, Informative

    It isn't that you're "out of the know" it's just that you didn't see the previous article on this subject on slashdot two days ago.

    You want to read this article. It should explain what is happening.

    And you would pick this up from the links, but just for the record: Tanenbaum is this european guy who once upon a time in the 80s wrote a textbook on operating systems which came with a simple UNIX-like operating system called "Minix". Ken Brown is some guy who works for something called the "Alex de Torqueville" (sic?) institute and he's writing a book which appears to mostly consist of slander against Linus Tourvalds and/or the Free Software movement.

    --
    Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
    1. Re:Okay. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Tanenbaum is this european guy

      He's an American who happens to live in Europe.

    2. Re:Okay. by The+Cydonian · · Score: 2, Informative

      Seems to be American, judging by the flag on his photo.

      --
      More than mere navel gazing.
    3. Re:Okay. by gronnsak · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Tanenbaum is this european guy who once upon a time in the 80s wrote a textbook on operating systems which came with a simple UNIX-like operating system called "Minix".

      As a european I'm flattered that you think that Tannebaum is one too, but he's really an american working at a european university. The textbook you refer to, Operating Systems: Design and Implementation, is an excellent introduction to operating systems and the second edition is from 1997. It is an important book for us linux geeks, as it is the book that inspired Linus to write his own operating system.

    4. Re:Okay. by frost22 · · Score: 2, Informative
      Seems to be American, judging by the flag on his photo.
      Ok. One click away from that photo we find Andrew S. Tanenbaum's FAQ. To quote:
      Your name is German, you live in The Netherlands, but you write almost as well as a native English speaker. What's the scoop?

      My paternal grandfather was born in Chorostkow, currently in Ukraine, historically in Poland, at the time under Austro-Hungarian management. He came to the U.S. in 1914. I was born in New York and grew up in White Plains, NY. I went to Amsterdam as a postdoc and have sort hung around ever since.
      HTH

      --
      ...and here I stand, with all my lore, poor fool, no wiser than before.
    5. Re:Okay. by PeeCee · · Score: 1

      Does anyone else find it amusing that most of the book covers on that page feature all sorts of cutesy, cartoonish characters? Why is that? Do editors think that all computer-related books are so boring that they need a little eye-candy to get them to sell?

    6. Re:Okay. by The+Cydonian · · Score: 1

      Heheh, I think it's more a result of Tanenbaum, rather than the editors; note that only the books authored by him have cartoons kinda showing the entire subject matter at a glance. :-)

      --
      More than mere navel gazing.
  19. MOD PARENT UP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    thanks...

  20. Pure genius! by SuperBanana · · Score: 5, Funny
    Professor Tanenbaum responds to the slashdot effect

    ...by getting slashdotted again!

    --
    Please help metamoderate.
    1. Re:Pure genius! by Phosphor3k · · Score: 1

      You did notice at the bottom of the article he explicitly gave permission for mirrors of the article to be posted?

      He knew what was coming.

  21. That's the point the professor was trying to make by StevenMaurer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This isn't being disingenious, that is a highbrow critique.

    If the author was serious then he would have given his "target" - Linus - at least some chance to respond. He didn't. Therefore he isn't a serious author.

    Professors generally don't go saying directly, 'that author is such a luuusor dude!' And authors who write trash books about Di aren't exactly people to take seriously either.

  22. NOTES != REPOST OF ENTIRE ARTICLE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You, sir, are a dumbass.

    1. Re:NOTES != REPOST OF ENTIRE ARTICLE by Mind+Booster+Noori · · Score: 1

      'Some notes on the "Who wrote Linux" Kerfuffle' was the name of the first AST's writing on this issue.

      --
      Mind Booster Noori
  23. I resent that! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ken Brown is some guy who works for something called the "Alex de Torqueville" (sic?) institute and he's writing a book which appears to mostly consist of slander against Linus Tourvalds and/or the Free Software movement.

    No it isn't, and I resent that! Slander is spoken. In print it's "Libel".

    Sincerely,

    Kenneth Brown
    President, Alexis de Tocqueville Institution

    1. Re:I resent that! by AndroidCat · · Score: 2, Informative
      Mmm, that's good enough for most purposes, but not quite right. Here's my IANAL understanding of it: Slander is transitory. Libel is in an enduring format. Until the last century or so, spoken vs print was good enough without audio/video recordings, broadcasts, network TV coverage, Usenet archives, IRC logs, etc to confuse the issue.

      And besides Ken, you really work for the Tomás de Torquemada Institute who had connections to the Monastery of Santa Cruz! I bet you weren't expecting that!

      --
      One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
    2. Re:I resent that! by Ralph+Yarro · · Score: 1

      Mmm, that's good enough for most purposes, but not quite right. Here's my IANAL understanding of it: Slander is transitory. Libel is in an enduring format.

      You are correct.

      Until the last century or so, spoken vs print was good enough without audio/video recordings, broadcasts, network TV coverage, Usenet archives, IRC logs, etc to confuse the issue.

      No. Paintings can be libelous. Statues can be libelous. Semaphore messages would only usually be slanderous. Print vs speech has never been an adequate description of the difference between slander and libel.

      --

      The real Ralph Yarro posts as Anonymous Coward. Anyone else is an impostor.
    3. Re:I resent that! by 0x0d0a · · Score: 2, Funny

      No it isn't, and I resent that! Slander is spoken. In print it's "Libel".

      Sincerely,

      Kenneth Brown
      President, Alexis de Tocqueville Institution

      I am fairly certain that this person is not the real Kenneth Brown.

      Based on his misleading attacks on Linus, I would say that the real Kenneth Brown would have written something like the following:

      No it isn't. Three legal experts that I've consulted have agreed that the person is making entirely unsubstantiated claims. Open source advocates have been known to make wildly inaccurate legal claims to suppress people that disagree with them. This economist that I consulted confirmed that suppressing data leads to less efficient markets, which leads to loss of money. Personally, I wouldn't use any OS that causes you to lose money.

      --
      May we never see th
    4. Re:I resent that! by tiger99 · · Score: 2, Funny
      Well Ken, I see that it is obviously beyond your expertise to sign up properly to Slashdot and get a real username, which fits well with the other inabilities you have demonstrated, such as basic comprehension of facts.

      If you can't handle signing up for a Slashdot account, I suggest that you ask your boss, Sir Bill, to get one of his few competent people to help you out.

    5. Re:I resent that! by AndroidCat · · Score: 1

      Ah yes, paintings and statues and such, doh. I wonder how skywriting or writing statements in snow would be classified?

      --
      One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
  24. Brown... by Ann+Elk · · Score: 1, Redundant

    ...is an appropriate color for this book.

  25. Childish by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Redundant

    I'm not impressed by this. The Open Source/GNU/GPL/whatever movement needs to start moving away from soiling its hands in the personality politics of gurus and counter-guru commentary.

    A small gem is where he disclosed that Ken Brown can't multiply simple positive integers

    No. This is not a "small gem", its an ad hominem attack and as such is almost totally redundant, as is this whole debate. The authorship of Linux can be easily asserted through a thorough review of the facts, not through this pointless bickering.

    1. Re:Childish by ArekRashan · · Score: 1

      But where is it? I honestly don't know where this 'gem' is in the article, and I'm not sure the AC parent does either.

    2. Re:Childish by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That was my, I mean his, ok, my point actually.
      It is hyperbole and misrepresents the story.

    3. Re:Childish by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      - A small gem is where he disclosed that Ken Brown can't multiply simple positive integers

      No. This is not a "small gem", its an ad hominem attack
      An ad hominem attack on Ken Brown after he accepted cash from Microsoft to ad hominem Linus? My heart bleeds for him!

      PS: That high horse you're on go through much hay?

  26. I am confused. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How, exactly, is it "disingenious" of Tanenbaum to imply that Brown's book is trashy, when you yourself seem to agree with this sentiment?

    1. Re:I am confused. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hmm, tell me, do you know what "disingenuous" means?

    2. Re:I am confused. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Not straightforward or candid; insincere or calculating."

      Are you going to answer my question now?

    3. Re:I am confused. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It also means "falsely naive". Now re-read the original post and answer your own question.

    4. Re:I am confused. by Halfbaked+Plan · · Score: 2, Funny

      'disingenious' is one of those great words to watch fools try to work with.

      Its somewhat similar to watching someone who is drunk try to manouvre around a pole with unbalanced swinging weights on each end.

      --
      resigned
    5. Re:I am confused. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why don't you humor us and explain how your "falsely naive" definition applies?

  27. I like the black on white. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The colors of the original made my eyes water

  28. Linux is Obsolete by jsse · · Score: 4, Informative

    First, I REALLY am not angry with Linus. HONEST. He's not angry with me either. I am not some kind of "sore loser" who feels he has been eclipsed by Linus. MINIX was only a kind of fun hobby for me.

    For the rest of you who don't know 'the past' Prof. Tanenbaum with Linus, you may refer to the famous mailing list log "Linux is Obsolete".

    Linus seems to be doing excellent work and I wish him much success in the future.

    So I guess Prof. Tanenbaum can give higher grade than "F" to Linus now. :)

    Both Prof. Tanenbaum and Linus are my favourite persons. I'm so happy to see this happy ending in real life. :~)

    1. Re:Linux is Obsolete by dan_sdot · · Score: 5, Insightful
      So I guess Prof. Tanenbaum can give higher grade than "F" to Linus now. :)
      Actually, I still don't think that he would. He still affirms that the point of view from which he looks at OS design is academic. He emphasizes that he is a PROFESSOR, not someone trying to make a production grade operating system. As are many academics, he is a purist and thus believes in a conceptually optimized design (microkernel) rather than a practical design (monolithic kernel). So, if Linus was still in his class, the "F" would probably stand, because Linux does not follow all the conceptual guidelines that Tanenbaum feels so strongly about.
      This argument was never really a big deal in the first place, it was just a classic arguemnt between a realist and a purist.
    2. Re:Linux is Obsolete by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think Linus would get a C+ now. Linux is hybrid; modularized monolithic kernel. To a purist, this is still not good enough. But for a bystander it's the best of both worlds, because it modularizes a monolithic kernel witout sacrificing performance.

    3. Re:Linux is Obsolete by Halfbaked+Plan · · Score: 2, Insightful

      But was Linus ever in his class? I thought it was more a hypothetical comment.

      Tanenbaum was engaged in an intellectual arguement. That so many zealots interpret it as a political arguement reflects badly on the zealots, not on AST.

      --
      resigned
    4. Re:Linux is Obsolete by MrHanky · · Score: 3, Informative
      I think he would pass, even in the beginning. AST was clearly ironic -- he even put a smiley in his post:
      I still maintain the point that designing a monolithic kernel in 1991 is a fundamental error. Be thankful you are not my student. You would not get a high grade for such a design :-)

      Linus would also get a second 'F' for writing i386 specific code, but that problem is long gone. Are there any other OS, apart from NetBSD, that supports as many architectures as Linux?

      It seems to me that AST was quite impressed with Linux from the start -- especially the Posix compliance -- but disagreed strongly with the design (or lack thereof). You have to remember that many people actually wanted to turn Minix into something like Linux, and that was out of the question. Linux is not as good for what Minix was supposed to do: teach OS principles. If you consider the context of the discussion, AST does not look as arrogant, and certainly not stupid (although his predictions for the future were a bit off target, but I don't think Linus expected his little hobby to be the subject of a multi-billion dollar suit either).
    5. Re:Linux is Obsolete by DashEvil · · Score: 1

      You clearly know nothing about microkernels.

      The modules loaded are still in kernel space. What he's talking about is having a small basic kernel, with everything else running as a userland process.

      --
      -If God wanted people to be better than me, he would have made them that way.
  29. 2500 hits by bandicot · · Score: 5, Funny

    Examining his home-page hit rate:

    1600 come from search-engine bots
    450 come from kids attempting to compromise his apache server with IIS-specific exploits
    350 come from a single female grad student who is all aflutter over AST's [micro-kernel] hacking skills.
    75 come from accidentally mis-spelling 'whitehouse.gov'
    24 come from /. users
    1 comes from his mother.

    1. Re:2500 hits by surprise_audit · · Score: 1
      1600 come from search-engine bots
      450 come from kids attempting to compromise his apache server with IIS-specific exploits
      350 come from a single female grad student who is all aflutter over AST's [micro-kernel] hacking skills.
      75 come from accidentally mis-spelling 'whitehouse.gov'
      24 come from /. users
      1 comes from his mother.

      Priceless: having a non-Windows server that can handle the load...

    2. Re:2500 hits by Halfbaked+Plan · · Score: 1

      So you're hurting that http://bandicot.morpehus.net doesn't get much traffic, huh?

      --
      resigned
  30. Embargo? by 42forty-two42 · · Score: 1
    I got an advance copy of Ken Brown's book. I think it is still under embargo, so I won't comment on it. Although I am not an investigative reporter, even I know it is unethical to discuss publications still under embargo.
    What is meant by embargo here? I'd think free speech would let one comment on a book at any time.
    1. Re:Embargo? by radish · · Score: 4, Informative

      Before a book is published the publishers/authors usually send out copies for review & comments. Then, if errors are found (for example) they can be corrected before going to print. The idea of the embargo is essentially like an NDA - because the version being read is not the final version, it would be unfair to talk publically about it.

      As for free speech - this isn't a legal thing, it's purely done out of respect for the publishing process and basic good manners. Once the final version is available it's fair game for anyone.

      --

      ---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"

    2. Re:Embargo? by Em+Ellel · · Score: 1

      I think the meaning is similar to non-disclosure agreement - We'll let you look at the book before it is out on a condition that you cannot publicly discuss it untill a certain date. No free speech violations here, just simple business.... on the other hand I somehow doubt the first amendment to US constitution has anything to do with a guy reading a book in Europe. USA has not fully colonized all of the world (yet).

      --
      RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
    3. Re:Embargo? by dbc · · Score: 1

      It's pretty common when marketing something like a book or program or microprocessor or automobile to want to have the press publish reviews, etc, around about launch time. Now, given that some have *really* long lead times (think magazines), you have a problem. The common solution is to give reporters and reviewers advance information under an NDA that expires at product launch time. Commonly referred to as a "press embargo". Everyone plays nice because it is in everyone's interest to play nice. Reporters that break the embargo don't get invited back to the party next time, and therefore their rags don't get to report the next "scoop" in a timely fashion. Marketting folks play along because it gets them the "big bang" that they want.

      It's the dance you do if you come to this particular party.

    4. Re:Embargo? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're free to be stupid.

    5. Re:Embargo? by Rick+Zeman · · Score: 1

      Before a book is published the publishers/authors usually send out copies for review & comments. Then, if errors are found (for example) they can be corrected before going to print. The idea of the embargo is essentially like an NDA - because the version being read is not the final version, it would be unfair to talk publically about it.

      As for free speech - this isn't a legal thing, it's purely done out of respect for the publishing process and basic good manners. Once the final version is available it's fair game for anyone.

      A question I have on this is: what happens if the book changes radically between the versions? Is it okay to do (effectively) a diff between the two?

    6. Re:Embargo? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He's in The Netherlands...not the US.

    7. Re:Embargo? by radish · · Score: 1

      Well it really comes down to your personal feelings on the matter. As far as I'm concerned, it's not fair to comment on anything which wasn't actually published, except in certain circumstances (e.g. public interest). So if someone writes a book which is full of factual errors, but then after peer review revises it to fix the problems I don't think it serves anyone's interests to slag off the original version. They made the effort to get it right, so that's fine. Where "doing a diff" may be useful is if you write a commentary or review based on the original, then upon publication find that none of what you criticised was fixed. In that case you can save time by reusing what you orignally wrote, perhaps with the addendum that you pointed out these problems ahead of publication but were ignored.

      --

      ---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"

    8. Re:Embargo? by Rick+Zeman · · Score: 1

      Well it really comes down to your personal feelings on the matter. As far as I'm concerned, it's not fair to comment on anything which wasn't actually published, except in certain circumstances (e.g. public interest). So if someone writes a book which is full of factual errors, but then after peer review revises it to fix the problems I don't think it serves anyone's interests to slag off the original version.

      Where I was going with this is what if he totally rewrites the Linux/thief sections and changes his thesis? Does the world pretend that it never happened a la 1984 even though we know it's because his hand was caught in the cookie jar?

    9. Re:Embargo? by SEE · · Score: 1

      Legally, sure, he can comment on it, at least unless he signed an NDA, and even then he's only subject to civil penalties.

      It's simply considered somewhere between mildly unethical to moderately ill-mannered to do so before the book is formally released to the public. A gentleman (or a scoundrel who ever wants access to a future pre-release copy ever again) allows the publisher/author to officially release a book before he picks it apart, especially since the "embargo" period is, among other things, used as the last chance to catch and correct mistakes.

    10. Re:Embargo? by Kaemaril · · Score: 1

      Well, if this book is going to have its errors corrected, the page count will probably diminish a little. I look forward to reading the corrected "Brown Book"...

      Or the "Brown Pamphlet" as it will more accurately be known :)

    11. Re:Embargo? by TummyX · · Score: 1

      WTF?

      I suppose you think it's ok for your doctor to publish your medical records in the name of "free speech"?

      I'm sick of people not understanding the intended purpose of free speech.

    12. Re:Embargo? by edgedmurasame · · Score: 1

      You mean the Brown Card when it's final.

      --
      "Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.
  31. Soap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Soap, soap, soap and nothing but soap. This is great.

  32. Masochist by CaptainPinko · · Score: 1

    Thats my only explanation.

    --
    Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
  33. We should set up better Open Source Marketing by puntloos · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Trying not to troll here, but this document is not that news-worthy, is it? I mean -obviously- the whole Ken Brown thing is one big Microsoft Marketing Ploy (tm). If a manager 'falls for' (lets assume the Ken Brown book is purely Microsoft Marketing driven) the arguments of the book, he's probably not of the sort to go look for Andrew Tanenbaum's site. These people are the ones that fall for dicy logic (in this case, the "Argumentam ad Verecundiam", or argument from authority, fake or no, the institute sounds interesting)

    On the same note, I doubt that very many in the 'Slashdot-like' internet community need extra convincing to believe that the book is Microsoft-driven, not fact-driven.

    Therefore the only effect Tanenbaum (and Slashdot) gets from this document is self-defence and mutual knob-polishery. Not that Tanenbaum is entitled to have his say and defend his honor, but there you go.

    What the Slashdot/unix/GNU/whatever community really should consider is how they can truely counter the 'lets convince the stupid masses' policy of Microsoft. (yeah I know I sound elitist, thats because I am..)

    Seriously though, the more manager types that don't fall for Microsoft Marketing the better, IMHO. But how? I don't think slashdotting works, but perhaps we should set up a more Market-driven avocacy site for open source. Get The Facts! There are plenty of people out there who would have fun with doing some effective marketing here, and could do more for the community than program another random number generator ;)

    One of the things that strikes me most about Microsoft Marketing is that whatever Article (negative or no) I read online about Microsoft, 8 out of 10 times I see a big blinking Microsoft ad! I can't help but be impressed by that, even if I don't like it.

    1. Re:We should set up better Open Source Marketing by njcoder · · Score: 2, Insightful
      "What the Slashdot/unix/GNU/whatever community really should consider is how they can truely counter the 'lets convince the stupid masses' policy of Microsoft. (yeah I know I sound elitist, thats because I am..) "
      My opinion, the easiest way to do this is sugested in your statement. The key is unix, not linux. Meaning linux is in the unix family. Promoting unix as a whole as an alternative to microsoft, especially in the server areas is important.

      There are different types of unixes from proprietary to the bsd's to the linuxes. Promote the adoption of unix as an alternative and it gives linux more room to grow.

      While it's not always the case, a lot of places where linux is making in roads is in replacing commercial unix installations. This is a short sighted strategy. Unix right now is competing with Windows server platforms. If linux takes over all the unix servers, then it will be linux competing with Windows server platforms. Meaning it won't be in any better position than it is now.

      Though if we could foster support for greater unix deployments including bsd and linux in addition to the commercial unixes that have been there for years, windows servers would really have competition.

      --
      Open Source Java DAO Generator
    2. Re:We should set up better Open Source Marketing by Clover_Kicker · · Score: 4, Insightful

      >Therefore the only effect Tanenbaum (and Slashdot) gets from this
      >document is self-defence and mutual knob-polishery. Not that
      >Tanenbaum is entitled to have his say and defend his honor, but there
      >you go.

      I don't think Tanenbaum loses sleep worrying about the commercial sucess of Linux :)

      I think he was mostly trying to prevent looking like a dick for being associated with that book. Mission accomplished!

      Perhaps today he's preaching to the choir, but look at it this way: One of the world's most respected computer scientists just TRASHED the integrity of the guy who interviewed him. I'm sure the whatchamacallit institute will be a long time living this down. And Tanembaum provides lots of nice quotes for the profesional marketers from Red Hat/IBM/Novell/whatever, computer columnists, etc.

    3. Re:We should set up better Open Source Marketing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You are an idiot. Period. You believe that open source is the only quality software out there. You shouldn't be promoting open source, you should just be promoting alternatives.

    4. Re:We should set up better Open Source Marketing by Tony-A · · Score: 1

      One of the world's most respected computer scientists just TRASHED the integrity of the guy who interviewed him. I'm sure the whatchamacallit institute [Alexis de Tocqueville Institution] will be a long time living this down.

      This reflects on integrity and competence of the author of the "Brown book",
      The Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, and the lengths that Microsoft will go to obtain favorable "independent" results.

    5. Re:We should set up better Open Source Marketing by sharkey · · Score: 1

      Here's a Linux success story.

      --

      --
      "Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
    6. Re:We should set up better Open Source Marketing by M.+Baranczak · · Score: 1

      Trying not to troll here, but this document is not that news-worthy, is it?

      I don't think you're trolling, just wrong. The article is a direct rebuttal of the Brown Book by one of Brown's primary sources. I'd call that pretty newsworthy.

      If a manager 'falls for' (lets assume the Ken Brown book is purely Microsoft Marketing driven) the arguments of the book, he's probably not of the sort to go look for Andrew Tanenbaum's site.

      So what? If you know any people like that, send them a copy of the article. A lot of managers aren't up on all the technical details of modern kernel design, because they're too busy managing. It's up to the geeks to advise them.

    7. Re:We should set up better Open Source Marketing by 0x0d0a · · Score: 1

      And Tanembaum provides lots of nice quotes for the profesional marketers from Red Hat/IBM/Novell/whatever, computer columnists, etc.

      Yes -- despite the "Li'l ol' me? I'm just a naive ivory-tower academic!" spiel, Tanenbaum seemed to be throwing some awfully juicy tidbits out there.

      Seriously, if someone wrote a book and said "0x0d0a said that Bill Atkinson and Steve Wozniak stole all their work from Bill Gates!", I'd be more than a little angry.

      --
      May we never see th
    8. Re:We should set up better Open Source Marketing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      To amplify your point let me mention that maybe managers easily fall for things like "GPL is a virus" but there maybe a chance that some of them may note some kind of successful advocacy initiative, and conclude that Linux is finally on the right track to gain greater market share and may now be worth considering. Not just because Linux appeared on their radar but also because Linux is employing familiar strategies.

  34. That's An MS Server Log You've Described. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    An easy mistake to make.

  35. Re:That's the point the professor was trying to ma by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How about you just repeated what the original poster said?

  36. Mirror by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    http://slushdot.org/mirror/Tanenbaum/

    That one died quick!

  37. That's what you get for posting quickly.. by puntloos · · Score: 1

    Obviously I meant "Not that Tanenbaum isn't entitled to have his say.." up there.

  38. Planting the UD in FUD? by VValdo · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Sorry, I came to this discussion late. Is this the same Alexis de Tocqueville Institution that came out with that controversial "report" called Opening the Open Source Debate a few years back? Here's a quote from the press release...
    In a paper to be released next week, the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution outlines how open source might facilitate efforts to disrupt or sabotage electronic commerce, air traffic control or even sensitive surveillance systems.

    And who funded that Alexis de Tocqueville Institution report?

    Take a guess.

    W
    --
    -------------------
    This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
  39. Or maybe Google. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I suspect that there are really only about 2,500 people online. They just post a whole lot.

  40. Multiply small integers by Foolhardy · · Score: 3, Informative
    A small gem is where he disclosed that Ken Brown can't multiply simple positive integers.
    What, he doesn't have his times tables memorized? Neither do I, and it hasen't been a problem.
    1. Re:Multiply small integers by Jerf · · Score: 1

      Well, now I don't really respect you, either.

      Probably not your desired goal.

      Note that I now don't respect not because you don't have your multiplication tables memorized, but that you feel ignorance is something that needs to be defended, rather then corrected. One of my favorite aspects of the (true) hacker community is how little this "defense by appeal to mediocrity" is tolerated.

    2. Re:Multiply small integers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


      Stop talking out your ass. Any real mathematician will tell you that multiplying numbers in ones head is a worthless and irrelevant skill that his nothing to do with anything. That's what we invented the fucking algorithms for. Its just a fucking number man. It doesn't mean shit. Oh, but maybe i'm not a TRUE hacker? Arrogant prick.

    3. Re:Multiply small integers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      It's the same as when people snidely point out that a typo "obviously" means the guy is too stupid to know how to spell. Same deal. Universities, Usenet, and Slashdot, for example, are full of this kind of childishness. C++ programmers, BTW, love this kind of shit, which kinda makes sense when you think about it.

    4. Re:Multiply small integers by Doctor+Faustus · · Score: 1

      I don't think it constitutes ignorance when it's something you can derive in a few seconds.

    5. Re:Multiply small integers by ArekRashan · · Score: 1

      Wrong! Learning multiplication tables is a valuable technique to enhance rapid recall proficiency. If you can't multiply single-digit numbers in your head, I strongly recommend that you take the piddling few hours it would take to learn how. You took the time to post your angry post on Slashdot, so I can only assume that this is a sore point with you. If you learn your times tables you won't have to get defensive about not knowing them anymore, Mr. AC 'hacker'.

      Now, I'll agree that hackers can usually fall back on their computers, but other professionals don't always have that luxury. Accountants, financiers, and carpenters spring immediately to mind as people who benefit considerably from instant mind-math.

      I still don't know what the article submitter was talking about when he referred to this 'gem', however.

    6. Re:Multiply small integers by surprise_audit · · Score: 1

      In this particular case, Mr Brown was saying that 500 times $100 was "close to $1million" when referring to the losses that AST incurred due to potential loss of sales of his Operating Systems book, on the assumption that Linus "stole" Minix and gave it to the world as Linux.

    7. Re:Multiply small integers by Foolhardy · · Score: 1

      You're right, and I don't want to defend ignorance. Although, this isn't so much ignorance as lack of a skill. Mabye ignorance of how fast times tables can help me?

      I wanted to comment on the cheap shot in the article summary. The ability to multiply small integers quickly doesn't seem to be too useful for what I want to do, in my expierence.

      I guess I don't want to spend time on raw memorization (something I'm not very good at) when I don't see much benefit. If I don't live up to the standards of a 'true' hacker for that, I'm sorry.

    8. Re:Multiply small integers by Halfbaked+Plan · · Score: 1

      So you can't do simple arithmetic, and you can't spell worth a shit, either.

      Why be so defensive about the matter? Is your 'honor' at stake or something? That's a high UID you're using. You can throw it away and get another if necessary.

      --
      resigned
    9. Re:Multiply small integers by 36-bitter · · Score: 1

      Remind yourself of how worthless and irrelevant is the ability to do arithmetic in one's head the next time you're standing in a store calculating and comparing unit prices without external aids, seeking to get the most for your money.

      (You're going to tell me that the store posts unit prices on the shelves. Notice how often the units used for brand X are different from the units used for brand Y of the *same commodity*.)

    10. Re:Multiply small integers by 36-bitter · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Careless spelling and careless arithmetic are often indicators of sloppy thinking. They're also impolite -- the rest of us have to think harder than should be necessary in order to take your meaning. Don't be surprised to find that some readers will not put forth the extra effort, when they see that a writer does not put forth even the minimum effort.

    11. Re:Multiply small integers by mritunjai · · Score: 1

      Okay sparky, you mean to say you can't multiply 500 with 100 ?

      right they say, never underestimate Idiots!!

      --
      - mritunjai
    12. Re:Multiply small integers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So, umm, does this mean that you cannot even make change?

      You know, like how you have to figure out how much 3 quarters is, etc.?

      Sorry man, but I consider not being able to multiply on par with illiteracy--the sort of ignorance that people should strive to eliminate through education.

      Here's a times table. Assuming you know addition, you can do longhand multiplication and multiply any two numbers together with knowledge of only this table:

      0 x (anything) = 0

      Otherwise, look up the number in the row & column of the two numbers you want to multiply (e.g. 4 x 7 = 28)

      x 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
      1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
      2 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18
      3 3 6 9 12 15 18 21 24 27
      4 4 8 12 16 20 24 28 32 36
      5 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
      6 6 12 18 24 30 36 42 48 54
      7 7 14 21 28 35 42 49 56 63
      8 8 16 24 32 40 48 56 64 72
      9 9 18 27 36 45 54 63 72 81

      10 x anything = [anything]0 ... e.g. add a 0 to the end of it. 100 x anything, add two 0s, etc.

      Of course, I am biased here, having a degree in mathematics, but not being able to do very simple mathematics is NOT something you should allow to continue. You may think it's irrelevant, but it's the foundation of problem solving. There are a great number of problems you cannot solve without this knowledge.

      As for memorization, assuming you can add numbers (which, oddly enough, requires memorizing a table, just not a times table, and it's not usually taught via a table...), you can always turn A x B into add A to itself B times, so 2 x 3 = 2 + 2 + 2 (or equivalently, 3 + 3).

      Now start studying, before people IRL start calling you by your slashdot username... :P

    13. Re:Multiply small integers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sorry, forgot to post in a fixed-width font :(

      X 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
      1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
      2 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18
      3 3 6 9 12 15 18 21 24 27
      4 4 8 12 16 20 24 28 32 36
      5 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
      6 6 12 18 24 30 36 42 48 54
      7 7 14 21 28 35 42 49 56 63
      8 8 16 24 32 40 48 56 64 72
      9 9 18 27 36 45 54 63 72 81

    14. Re:Multiply small integers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You guys realize this is apparently a bad joke on Brown's failure to bother contacting Linus? (5 cents a minute * N minutes... and if the AdTI limits itself to a telco that takes no benefit from Linux, perhaps they do get a bum rate.)

      --Disclaimer: I'm a BSD fan.

    15. Re:Multiply small integers by Foolhardy · · Score: 1
      Oh I can do multiplication fine, I just don't have the entire matrix of answers memorized. There's a big difference between not being able to do it at all and not doing it quickly. I have some of the times tables memorized, and I can easily figure the rest out.
      As for memorization, assuming you can add numbers (which, oddly enough, requires memorizing a table, just not a times table, and it's not usually taught via a table...), you can always turn A x B into add A to itself B times, so 2 x 3 = 2 + 2 + 2 (or equivalently, 3 + 3).
      I use this kind of trick all the time. I agree that fast addition involves memorization too, and I have some of that memorized too.

      Sheesh. I never said I couldn't multiply at all.
    16. Re:Multiply small integers by Foolhardy · · Score: 1

      I don't know about you, but I can't store lists of temporary numbers mentally. I will forget them. To this end, when I compare prices I bring my HP48 or some paper with me. I can do multiplication in my head, I just don't have a memorized table.

      I'm not good at brute force memorization of data; I have to deal with that. Concepts on the other hand...

    17. Re:Multiply small integers by Foolhardy · · Score: 1
      Careless spelling and careless arithmetic are often indicators of sloppy thinking.
      So when you see a superficial spelling error, you think to yourself: This person is obviously an idiot; a sloppy thinker. I should ignore what they are saying.
      You would rather attack the delivery rather than the issue itself?
      They're also impolite -- the rest of us have to think harder than should be necessary in order to take your meaning.
      Impolite? Boo hoo! I can see if the entire statement has no structure, most of the words are grossly misspelled and the meaning is heavily obfuscated, but there is no need to be pedantic. Sometimes you have to do a little work to get at an insightful meaning. I would hate for you to have to think harder than necessary.
      Don't be surprised to find that some readers will not put forth the extra effort, when they see that a writer does not put forth even the minimum effort.
      So if 'some readers' are doing it, it must OK and minimum effort is equivalent to perfection?
    18. Re:Multiply small integers by Foolhardy · · Score: 1

      And where did I say that I couldn't multiply at all? I can do multiplication in my head fine, however I do not have the entire table of small integer results memorized. It is possible to multiply without memorizing the answer; brute force is not the only answer. Talk about a straw man.

    19. Re:Multiply small integers by Foolhardy · · Score: 1
      If you can't multiply single-digit numbers in your head, I strongly recommend that you take the piddling few hours it would take to learn how.
      First, I can multiply small integers in my head. I just don't have the entire table of results memorized. I have some of them and methods to get to the rest. Second, as a rule, I don't memorize data well. I should know: I have already spent maybe 60 hours over weeks in elementary school trying to learn them.
      Now, I'll agree that hackers can usually fall back on their computers, but other professionals don't always have that luxury. Accountants, financiers, and carpenters spring immediately to mind as people who benefit considerably from instant mind-math.
      Yes. If I actually needed them to be that fast for something like those other professions, I would spend the time to learn them (or pick it up on the job). I have memorized many powers of 2 while using them that wouldn't be so useful to a carpenter.
    20. Re:Multiply small integers by ArekRashan · · Score: 1

      It's sheer laziness that you don't have that table memorized well enough to do instant calculation of single digit multiplication, as it only actually has 36 unique and non-trivial entries. I'm assuming you know the method for multiplying by nine, which further reduces the entries you actually need to memorize to a mere 28.

      We are discussing an amount of data equivalent to a social security number, your date of birth, your street address, and five telephone numbers.

      You state that you have memorized 'many' powers of two. This hoses your claim to not memorize data well.

      You are going to have a hard time convincing anyone that given two hours, you can't remember that now and forever, 7 * 8 = 56.

      I will accept that you choose not to do so, but your assertion that that choice stems from anything other than stubborn and willful laziness does not hold water with me.

      I repeat my advice that you should step past the idea that you can't do this. Actually look at what's involved, DO IT, and you can stop thinking about it and making excuses for yourself.

      If this pisses you off, too fucking bad. I'm just a random internet asshole, and I'm sure as hell not going to humor your ridiculous little neurosis. Keep in mind that it wouldn't be an issue if you hadn't claimed this skill to be 'worthless' and 'irrelevant'.

      You are the least qualified judge of the worth or relevance of this skill, as you do not possess it.

      If it has no worth or relevance to you, it is because you do not possess it.

    21. Re:Multiply small integers by Foolhardy · · Score: 1
      It's sheer laziness that you don't have that table memorized well enough to do instant calculation of single digit multiplication, as it only actually has 36 unique and non-trivial entries. I'm assuming you know the method for multiplying by nine, which further reduces the entries you actually need to memorize to a mere 28.
      It's not just the result numbers, you also have to know the related factors. So that's 28 results, each associated with 2 factors or 28 * 3 = 84.
      We are discussing an amount of data equivalent to a social security number, your date of birth, your street address, and five telephone numbers.
      I don't have my SSN memorized and only one phone number (my own).
      You state that you have memorized 'many' powers of two. This hoses your claim to not memorize data well.
      I have those memorized because I actually use them.
      You are going to have a hard time convincing anyone that given two hours, you can't remember that now and forever, 7 * 8 = 56.
      I already know that one but sometimes I confuse it with the incorrect 5 * 6 = 78. If I try to spend 2 hours in a single day to brute force memorization, it will never work; my mind will flood itself with distractions.
      I will accept that you choose not to do so, but your assertion that that choice stems from anything other than stubborn and willful laziness does not hold water with me.
      Actually, it is my own negligence and lazyness that mainly prevents me from doing the work needed to memorize them. Yeah, I am not very qualified to judge the usefulness of a skill I don't posess. I have other memorized skills, including geometry formulas and third-world geography that I have never used outside of school. I don't need them to be memorized. I have resources available that I can use to look them up, if and when I actually need them.

      The few extra seconds it takes me to calculate those numbers that would be saved by memorizing them would not be worth the time it would take to cultivate that skill (to me).
      Keep in mind that it wouldn't be an issue if you hadn't claimed this skill to be 'worthless' and 'irrelevant'.
      I'm sure it is essential for some things. In my case, I have decided for myself that the small amount of overhead it would eliminate isn't worth it to me. You can't know what is good for me based on my posts in slashdot. Or do you think that directly memorized multiplication is an essential skill for everyone, regardless of how much they will use it?
  41. Linus had nothing to do with it. by Coram · · Score: 3, Funny

    Silly geeks. Al Gore wrote linux.

    --
    I say I ain't giving you no tree fiddy you goddamned Loch Ness monster, get yo own goddamned money!
    1. Re:Linus had nothing to do with it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Al Gore as Debian Leader!

    2. Re:Linus had nothing to do with it. by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      So Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy were just middle men?

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    3. Re:Linus had nothing to do with it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Jeez, four years later and you guys STILL can't get it right!!

      Al Gore didn't say he invented Linux-- he said he took the initiative in Congress in creating Linux. And that's true, he was the primary sponsor of the legislation that brought us Linux as we know it today.

      Even Linus says that Al Gore was essentially right! Get a clue. </smartaleck>

  42. Good show for the Professor by kendoka · · Score: 1

    I think he comported himself quite well, actually.

  43. With All Due Respect. by 13Echo · · Score: 0

    With all due respect to Andy for Minix, reading his writings is almost as bad as reading Fred Langa spout on and on to try to defend his (poorly supported) option. Mr. T calls that "jibber-jabber". It's annoying if you jibber-jabber and don't really get to the point, fool! Yes, we know you don't hate Linus. You don't need to keep defending your stance on microkernels because we've gotten your point for something like 14 years! Obviously, if you feel compelled to write about it after 14 yours, you must feel *some* sort of ill-feelings towards the whole Linux vs. Minix issue.

    Please don't write anymore if you are only going to jibber-jabber, fool.

    http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=j ib ber-jabber

    1. Re:With All Due Respect. by njcoder · · Score: 1

      According to his article, he keeps writing about it because he keeps getting emails about it. If people would stop thinking it was a "feud" and that he "hates Linus" and stopped writing him about it. He would most likely stop explaining it.

      --
      Open Source Java DAO Generator
    2. Re:With All Due Respect. by surprise_audit · · Score: 1

      And in this particular case, he's exposing Ron Brown as incompetent to write a book on the history of Unix.

    3. Re:With All Due Respect. by Tony-A · · Score: 1

      You don't need to keep defending your stance on microkernels because we've gotten your point for something like 14 years!

      Bah! More like nobody's gotten the point in 14 years.
      I'd guess that if you really need reliable and robust systems that Tanenbaum is right. With the possible exception of something by Knuth, all legitimate systems have bugs. Note, having a bug is not equivalent to being able to encounter a bug. A single bug in isolation can be incapable of doing any damage or even being noticable. It's when the bugs get together that you get undesirable behavior. Fix either and the problem goes away. (Fix both if you're smart;) Note that you often need the context of the complex interactions to be able to see that the bug is a bug.
      Me, I prefer to throw everything together at the beginning, then debug, design and write the system. At least I tend to early get rid of the ones whose impact is all out of proportion to the cause.

    4. Re:With All Due Respect. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You are the fool. Tecnically he is right ( The PROF). He keeps writting about the argument because people seem to think he lost the argument, and this is not true. He is right and linus is wrong.

      I guess the PROF flame did get linus thinking about design and linux now is a modularized monolithic kernel.

      Intelligent people don't become enemies over dumb shit like this. Linus respects Tanenbaum and Tanenbaum respects Linus.

    5. Re:With All Due Respect. by Halfbaked+Plan · · Score: 1

      Yes, but as a topic for discussion, having 'controversies' like this available for ready reference allows one to identify and filter out the idiot-fanboys who 'wave the banner of Linux' with ignorant gusto.

      --
      resigned
  44. Actually.. by puntloos · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    The URL is Here i.e. without the space.

    Checked though, Sharon with a Hitler moustache and a broken link. Though is it that inflammatory? It looks like a protest sign from a demonstrator.

  45. ego-riffic by pizza_milkshake · · Score: 0, Troll
    This attention resulted in over 150,000 requests to our server in less than a day, which is still standing despite yesterday being a national holiday with no one there to stand next to it saying "You can do it. You can do it." Kudos to Sun Microsystems and the folks who built Apache. My statement was mirrored all over the Internet, so the number of true hits to it is probably a substantial multiple of that. There were also quite a few comments at Slashdot, Groklaw, and other sites, many of them about me.

    this man's ego dwarfs many people's entire sets of matching luggage

    1. Re:ego-riffic by Frisky070802 · · Score: 1
      At least he's not bashful about it.

      Seriously, if you're a well-read author and a fellow of this, that, and the other thing, you can toot your horn too.

      --
      Mencken had it right. So glad that's old news.
    2. Re:ego-riffic by Halfbaked+Plan · · Score: 1

      Yes, but we're all just 'handles' on the Slashdot website.

      Some of us even 'high UID' handles because we use the handles like disposable shields to throw away when they get 'dirty' like soiled clothing.

      Now, if I still had any of my low-UID accounts on Slashdot, it might be different (and I might be the kind of prat who keeps-at-it in a 'member of the community' kind of way)

      But I'm not, and the new account is ready and waiting already.

      --
      resigned
  46. Alexis De Tocqueville Pronunciation by Chuck+Chunder · · Score: 1

    Is "Tocque" pronounced Toker?

    Seems like they smoke some pretty mean shit in toker-town.

    --
    Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
    1. Re:Alexis De Tocqueville Pronunciation by pyrrhonist · · Score: 1
      Is "Tocque" pronounced Toker?

      Only if it's 4:20!

      --
      Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
    2. Re:Alexis De Tocqueville Pronunciation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Toker is also the swedish name of the dwarf in Snow White that isn't exactly the brightest of the lot. (I can't remember the english name for him right now)

  47. Microkernel in linux? by menscher · · Score: 1

    I'm a sysadmin, not a kernel hacker, but this idea of having a microkernel sounds like a good one (from the standpoint of security/stability, which is all sysadmins care about). Which leads me to ask: why doesn't linux follow this design? What are the reasons against it?

    1. Re:Microkernel in linux? by Goo.cc · · Score: 1

      I suspect that given a choice between stability and speed, most people would rather have the speed. And what is better does not always win the day.

    2. Re:Microkernel in linux? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      1). The orignal 386 and 386sx hardware that linux ran on in the early day's was slow (16 to 20 MHz) and usually with very little memory (Memory was very expencive in those days, when I got my first 386 board, not cheap BTW, just the 4mb of memory cost more than the rest of the computer) so the slightly better performance of a monokernel counted.

      2). Writing a simple monolithic system is easier than writing a simple microkernel one (but a complex MK should be easier than a complex mono one, unless it's the original HURD of cource ;-)

      3). Reading Linuses original posts on the subject (at the time, I have not reread them since) it quickly came apparent that he had not done any OS/systems development on anything but an intel processor, intel x86 (and clones) context switch much slower than for instance a IBM PPC so a microkernel system takes a much higer performance hit on an intel based system than it does on most other processors. OS-9 for instance feels fairly sluggish on an PC compared to some of the other implenmentations. (IBM claims that a PPC performs context switches 10x times faster than an otherwise similarily powerful intel chip, that figure is probably marketspeak but even if only 5x it would mean a lot to a MK performance)

      4). Almost all advanced OS design and system programming books/coursewar available at the time dealt with monolithic systems and while most CS peopleetc. had heard the word microkernel they had no real idea what it meant, even today most people have no practical or even theoritical knowledge of a MK system as can be witnessed by those silly WinXP is microkernel" slogans that crop up here from time to time.

      5). Linus cannot admit being wrong ? Recent posts to AFC would indicate so, but doing pshycoanalysis based on usenet postings is probably not in the best of taste.

    3. Re:Microkernel in linux? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      The biggest practical reason is that there is very little distinction, algorithmically, between micro kernels and monolithic kernels. Message passing is just function calls waiting in a list to be called in a separate process, instead of immediately transferring to the kernel to process the function call (essentially). A monolithic kernel cuts out the message passing overhead. The other practical reason for a micro kernel is that it separates drivers from the kernel. But in some cases, it has no direct benefit. For closed source drivers, it is good, because a driver can't subvert the whole operating system. For open source, that's a lesser problem. In the case of buggy drivers, there's no *practical* reason to separate them, unless they are of no real importance. If your hard disk driver or DMA driver fails, it doesn't matter whether you have a monolithic kernel or a microkernel, you're screwed. Incorrect data will end up in the kernel or other drivers and crash the system, or it will hang. For very secure and reliable systems, a microkernel can provide assurance against even these kind of failures; but not general purpose operating systems at least without a *practical* difference between "Hard disk driver cannot execute, please restart" and "Kernel panic!" Another big argument for microkernels is their modularity, but modularity can be implemented in a monolithic kernel as well, as evidenced by linux kernel modules and the virtual file system that allow dynamic linking of objects into the kernel and operating system.

      The point is, what a micro kernel enforces automatically can be done manually in a monolithic kernel, but faster. The problem is that, not being automatic, more problems are possible, and more work has to be done. It's a tradeoff, and with the MHz and cost wars, tradeoffs generally favor speed.

    4. Re:Microkernel in linux? by Brandybuck · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Because a microkernel is damned hard to do! The reason UNIX is so successful is because it has an easy to understand kernel. The reason Linux is so successful is because it has an easy to understand kernel. The reason we still don't have Hurd after twenty years is because a microkernel is so difficult to write.

      The only successful true microkernel I know is QNX. And it seems to prove Andy's thesis that microkernels are more stable and secure, because QNX is neutronium-solid [sic]. There are Mach and L4, but they're not full production microkernels.

      --
      Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
    5. Re:Microkernel in linux? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      OS-9 is probably even more sucessful than QNX and longer running, marketing sucks however and has a declining userbase due to just that

    6. Re:Microkernel in linux? by 0x0d0a · · Score: 1

      Mac OS 9?

      It's not a microkernel.

      --
      May we never see th
    7. Re:Microkernel in linux? by klafhat · · Score: 1

      Where are my moderation points when I need them? Parent is both Informative and Insightful.

      --

      Tell me more, tell me more

    8. Re:Microkernel in linux? by che.kai-jei · · Score: 1

      the gnu hurd kernel is exactly this. a herd of gnus running on top of mach is what they have been aiming for . it still isnt finished or ready! can you imagine debugging a microkernel set? i can barely comprehend what successfully debugging it would entail. my uninformed guess is that complex states are the main problem. ie how do you know that just because the behaviour is gone? .. or that you ve trully debugged it completely? how do you know where the bug truly was? was it in that modul or micro kernel. was it a combination of both? etc?

      i would assume that you would need some sort of expert system built into your debugger that can do analyses heurisically as well as run probability checks after step executing the code hundreds of times in different ways.

    9. Re:Microkernel in linux? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      It's all about the interfaces. In a monolithic design, you don't have to specify any; you call kernel functions, set global variables, pass pointers and so on. It's all very permissive and "organic," from a developer's perspective... if something's broken halfway across the kernel, you can rewrite that instead of coding your subsystem to accept it.

      Microkernels demand interfaces of one sort or another, since the idea is that major components should be pushed out to userland. If the interface is permissive enough (the much-loved AmigaOS, for instance, was a 'microkernel' with no concept of memory protection), your system is modular, but your security/robustness gain is nil. (Stability may improve, to the extent that modularity helps write good code... we all know the arguments for it and agaisnt it.) If you start trying to design 'safe' interfaces, things can get complex, and you may take the performance hit.

      A worst case is, perhaps, when you do something insane like Apple Darwin's "xnu," and take a microkernel but implement an entire monolithic kernel beneath it as a 'service.' (I sincerely doubt they'll ever reap benefit from that decision, but you never know.)

      Meanwhile, QNX is a *very* fun system, but it's worth noting that running a nuclear plant or a medical monitoring device is a fairly different problem from supporting a massively-multiuser server. It works great, but some of the last of its five 9s or whatever (referring to the concept of 99.999% availability, or whatever's claimed) comes from the availability of a system watchdog to restart failed services... a microkernel concept, sure, but the rest of the stability is simply for good coding under relatively stress-free environments (nobody'd call QNX the most *secure* OS, and we all know how long a Netware server can survive forgotten in a closet), and the monolithic/Linux attitude is that the service should simply not fail in the first place.

      (What makes QNX a win for control systems is the modularity -- convenient for developers trying to fit a system on 'embedded' hardware; instead of recompiling a kernel, you just make a new filesystem image -- and the 'realtime' scheduling, which gives developers a hope of determinism that's hard to come by with Linux or Windows... the 'kernel' won't unexpectedly block for two seconds to conduct some disk I/O, while with a 'general purpose' solution like Linux, you'd have to do a lot of profiling and rewriting of the system to assure yourself of the same guarantee. (The 'realtime' Linux vendors have done said work, of course... but who'll actually be better-faster-cheaper for a particular implementation is something of a case-by-case issue.)

    10. Re:Microkernel in linux? by tverbeek · · Score: 1
      Mac OS 9? It's not a microkernel.

      No, he said "OS-9".

      --
      http://alternatives.rzero.com/
    11. Re:Microkernel in linux? by Brandybuck · · Score: 1

      And that's more successful than QNX?

      --
      Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
  48. I have the PDF of the first 92 pages of the book by ValourX · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ... you guys would absolutely not believe the stuff this guy says about Free Software philosophy. He takes every single aspect of FOSS and gives it a sinister anti-business anti-America anti-puppy connotation.

    I only read the first 20 pages or so, then I skipped to the bibliography. In over fifty listings, the only real books he listed were ESR's and they're available online. Every other reference he listed was someone's personal homepage or a newsgroup posting or something arbitrary like that.

    There will be an article, ladies and gentlemen. I just haven't decided if it should be a serious analytical debunking of this troll book or a humor piece that shows its rediculousness.

    -Jem

  49. See source BAD, Free source GOOD. by eddy · · Score: 1

    AdTI 2002:

    "In a paper to be released next week, the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution outlines how open source might facilitate efforts to disrupt or sabotage electronic commerce, air traffic control or even sensitive surveillance systems."

    AdTI 2004:

    "[Government should] work vigorously to create a true 'free source' code capability program at universities and colleges. This program should go to promote true open source projects [...] The federal government should support a $5 billion budget over ten years to produce a free source code project in partnership with the IT industry and [other governments]" -- linux-'insider'[sic]

    --
    Belief is the currency of delusion.
  50. Re:I have the PDF of the first 92 pages of the boo by prostoalex · · Score: 1

    mm, any possibility of getting that masterpiece?

  51. Comments on microkernels... by starseeker · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "What's the big deal about turning a 3.0 GHz PC into a 2.4 GHz PC due to a microkernel? Surely you once bought a machine appreciably slower than 2.4 GHz and were very happy with it. I would easily give up 20% in performance for a system that was robust, reliable, and wasn't susceptible to many of the ills we see in today's massive operating systems."

    Amen. I think whatever eventually becomes the Next Big Thing in open source operating systems will be microkernel based, or at least accept the idea that a performance hit like 20% is worth it for a robust setup. (I'm hoping it will be EROS or some variation thereof, but who knows.)

    --
    "I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
    1. Re:Comments on microkernels... by John+Hasler · · Score: 1

      So volunteer to help with the Hurd.

      --
      Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
    2. Re:Comments on microkernels... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think he was referring to a real operating system not an imaginary one

    3. Re:Comments on microkernels... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Meet Plan 9 and Inferno.

    4. Re:Comments on microkernels... by sparkeyjames · · Score: 1

      Try selling a 20% performance hit to someone running a web server that has been /.'ed.

  52. Battle of the Philosophies by puntloos · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You're right, and indeed I said 'unix' not 'linux'. The whole thing that is both the strenght and the weakness of the 'alternative to windows' is its very nature, the design Philosophy. Open Source most notably. The problem is, everyone has the right and the possibility to make their custom version of an application or even core structure, tweaked to their needs, and this is a Marketing disaster.

    Open Source fights itself

    If I promote Linux I would have no time to promote OpenBSD, even though in principle I have no reason to dislike openBSD, Im just more familiar with Linux.

    The key thing that makes these systems competition to Windows is the way they are designed. Open the source completely thereby both creating a greater likelyhood of dumb mistakes being caught but on the flipside removing the whole 'security by obscurity' concept.

    One thing Id like to re-emphasize is that there is Too Much Preaching to the Choir in our circles. I know why I like Linux (etc), Slashdot likes Linux but there are plenty of ignorant (not necessarily because of stupidity) middle-management types that need to be convinced by less formal and more 'shouty' methods.

    Linux has far too few scantily clad ladies at the booths in conventions, and too many people who look like Andrew Tanenbaum

    1. Re:Battle of the Philosophies by DShard · · Score: 1

      Speak for yourself. I participate almost not at all in circles, but point prove why my orginization, family, freinds would benefit from open source. I don't think you have to look very far to understand the disaster that is windows. The very act of showing the alternative and explaining it's benefits is all you need to do.

      You don't need to cheerleader. Just explain. Come on, what is so difficult about this?

  53. Re:I have the PDF of the first 92 pages of the boo by ValourX · · Score: 1

    Well you can email Ken Brown and he'll send it to you if you're going to write about it for somewhere. I'll likely be selling what I write about it to NewsForge.

    If you're not in a position to do that, I'll remind you of the Starfleet regulation that Admiral Kirk used to fool Khan in Star Trek II when estimating the time it would take to repair the engines.

    -Jem

  54. Multiply WHAT? by menscher · · Score: 1
    A small gem is where he disclosed that Ken Brown can't multiply simple positive integers.

    I can't seem to find this in the article. Is that just random crap thrown in to discredit Brown, or did I miss something?

    1. Re:Multiply WHAT? by BigFire · · Score: 2, Informative

      Ken Brown claimed that Tanenbaum's publisher lost about 500 books of sale per year due to the advent of Linux. And at $100 a pop, that comes to $1,000,000 (Ken Brown's figure)...

      Well, given that the number isn't exactly right (the book don't cost $100), here is the calculation:

      $100 x 500 x 14 (years) = $700,000. Lets round up that number.

    2. Re:Multiply WHAT? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      hwhat?
      Yeah!
      HWHAT?
      YEAH!

    3. Re:Multiply WHAT? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But where the hell is this information. I can't find it in AST's original post or his 1.2 version.

      What are we all smoking here?

    4. Re:Multiply WHAT? by Halfbaked+Plan · · Score: 1

      It's been more than a decade since anybody had to buy AST's book just to get Minix. You can download Minux from several FTP sites for free these days. There's even a Usenet group for Minix and people who actually use it and discuss it's development.

      It's pretty cool in some ways. Throw an old 386 box at it sometime.

      --
      resigned
  55. Great reading! by Brackney · · Score: 0

    Two days of excellent reading in a row from Professor Tanenbaum. I'm grateful that people like this are thoughtfully and carefully debunking so much of the FUD that certain nameless corporations would love to see propagated.

  56. Microkernal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If microkernals are so good, how long would it take to turn current Linux into a microkernal?

    Are they really that much better?

  57. Linux X-Files by Jagasian · · Score: 1

    Groklaw, Slashdot, Tanenbaum, and others involved should get together and write a book titled "Linux X-Files", which covers conspiracies against Linux. With the popularity of SCO, Microsoft, and Brown articles... I bet you could sell thousands of copies of said book.

    1. Re:Linux X-Files by Halfbaked+Plan · · Score: 1

      The people behind Groklaw are already doing a pretty good job of cashing in. Old whats-her-name has done a pretty good job of expanding and cashing in on her 15 minutes of fame. Not as good a job as Robert Malda has, of course.

      --
      resigned
  58. Re:That's the point the professor was trying to ma by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    You sigged:
    Often the only difference between +1 Funny and -1 Troll is whether the moderator was smart enough to get the joke.
    Nah. Often the only difference between '+1 Funny' and '-1 Troll' is whether the moderator was juvinile enough to think the so-called joke was funny.
  59. Please spend some money on a good dictionary. by Jagasian · · Score: 1

    Please spend some money on a good dictionary. Your friend's and family will really appreciate it.

    1. Re:Please spend some money on a good dictionary. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Please spend some money on a backspace key. Your misplaced apostrophes will really appreciate it.

    2. Re:Please spend some money on a good dictionary. by Halfbaked+Plan · · Score: 2, Funny

      He was referring to his friend's and family. Don't be insensitive to the plight of and families like that.

      His friend, for instance is quite insensitive and brutal to his family of ands. He inflicts dictonaries of dubious quality on them regularly, and with unkind, hurtful results.

      --
      resigned
  60. Fear and Loathing in Amsterdam by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny
    Why did Brown fly all the way to Europe to interview me and (and according to an email I got from his seat-mate on the plane) one other person in Scandinavia, at considerable expense, and not at least call Linus? Even if he made a really bad choice of phone company, how much could that cost?


    Hmmm. Lets see.

    • The author of a book of fiction presented in a non-fiction, documentary format...
    • ...financed by some deep pockets...
    • ...flies from puritanical Virginia/DC, USA to free-love/drugs (well, not entirely free) Amsterdam on someone else's dime...
    • ...on the pretense of interviewing a professor...
    • ...but is seen buttonholing college students in the hall on the way out...
    • ...claiming to be sponsored by the
      "Alexis de Toqueville" Institute.


    Did Mssr. Brown, by any chance, bear a striking resemblance to
    this man?

  61. Re: microkernels the best approach by crazyharry · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    >He simply strongly believes that microkernels are the best approach.

    If microkernels are the best approach why is gnu/HURD taking so long?

  62. yeah by ph43thon · · Score: 1

    I don't see it either. I think that was thrown in there to make some people (ie me) go bonkers looking for the reference.

    p

  63. Microkernel by hey · · Score: 1

    I am inclined to agree with Tanenbaum on micro-kernels. Especially when you have lots of contributors (like for Linux) its make sense to go for robustness over speed and put solid walls between the services. Now if somebody makes a new filesytem they have to beg Linus to get it in and it takes years before its in a mainstream distro. Things should be more plugin-able.

    1. Re:Microkernel by Halfbaked+Plan · · Score: 1

      Some arguement could be made, however, that Linux wouldn't have succeeded in the way that it has if it were a microkernel project. If it were more modular, there wouldn't be a big obese tarball (the linux kernel source) binding the community together. There could and would be significant code forking, and Linux wouldn't be the strong centralized project that GNU rides on to get prominence. (and, pointedly, vise-versa)

      --
      resigned
    2. Re:Microkernel by Theatetus · · Score: 1
      the strong centralized project that GNU rides on to get prominence

      What can I say but, "Ouch"? The truth hurts.

      --
      All's true that is mistrusted
  64. Confident, arrogant, maybe just annoying by bender647 · · Score: 1

    While writing MINIX was fun, I don't really regard it as the most important thing I have ever done.
    "And I'm modest too -- that's what makes me so great" :)

    1. Re:Confident, arrogant, maybe just annoying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not as annoying as people that constanly post useless whines on slashdot

    2. Re:Confident, arrogant, maybe just annoying by Flyboy+Connor · · Score: 2, Insightful
      You seem to suggest Tanenbaum didn't really mean what he said. So you think Tanenbaum actually thinks MINIX is the most important thing he has ever done.

      Think of it, what is more important: a toy-OS that nobody has used in decades, or a row of computer textbooks which are considered the top of their field since decades.

      Shouldn't be too tough...

  65. sour grapes by ahdeoz · · Score: 0, Troll

    it sounds to me like Tannenbaum meant whatever disparagement he could, both to Linus directly and Linux as a system. He refused to comment, except under pressure, about "the Brown Book" even though he knew what was said in it and gave his implicit approval, because the book was still under "embargo" -- meaning it wasn't on the shelves in the Netherlands yet, not that there was any legal holdup or non-disclosure, or possibility that he would leak material that could potentially be banned.

    1. Re:sour grapes by kakos · · Score: 1

      Did you read what he had to say? Well, of course not. This is ./, where no one actually reads anything. He said that there are a lot of things wrong with the book and that when it comes out, he would probably help criticize it to the fullest. He, however, is waiting for it to come out to the public out of respect for the publishing process.

    2. Re:sour grapes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Exactly what part of "I am not angry with Linus" did you not quite get?

      Jesus, he's an academian, not an OS author. He wrote Minix that so his students could PLAY. He wrote a book that was CUTTING EDGE when it was released. I have a copy. I learned a lot. The argument was not over commercial-ability but on philosophy.

      Go back and read both the argument (I have) and Tanenbaum's linked page.

    3. Re:sour grapes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Read the article, you dumb fuck!

  66. I didn't find it. by Bombcar · · Score: 1

    Unless the text has changed, I don't see it either.

    --
    Fellowship 9/11
    1. Re:I didn't find it. by biehl · · Score: 1

      It must have - I remember that part also (but it is clearly not there now)

      A pity, you gotta love a comment like "how can you trust a man who cannot multiply small positive integers"

  67. Re: microkernels the best approach by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Actually, his argument is that a microkernel would make a better early-90s graduate-level compsci project than a conventional monolithic kernel.

    He's basically bashing Linus for doing an academically uninteresting project. (Keep in mind that as a professor, he's got the complete UNIX source code at his fingertips - he didn't need a free unix.)

    And he was right, but that hasn't stopped damp pantied fanboys from tarring-n-feathering him over the years for arguing with the Great Linus.

  68. I'm with Tannebaum about microkernels by beforewisdom · · Score: 0

    I have to say I am with tannebaum about microkernels.

    I came to gnu/linux after being a windows refugee.

    When I used windows, if I need a driver for changed hardware it was no big deal. I would download the thing and install it, spending maybe 10 min of my time.

    Now that I use gnu/linux all decisions about the hardware I can support are carved in stone, correctable only by recompiling the entire kernel.

    If you hobby is not your operating system it is a pain in the ass.

    Yes, I know there is a movement to loadable device drivers.....its not moving fast enough IMHO.

    Lastly, I have to give Tannebaum credit. To my knowledge he is the only person approaced by Brown who has stood up to speak out against this person.

    Steve

    1. Re:I'm with Tannebaum about microkernels by be-fan · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Hello? 1992 called, they want your version of Linux back. Fast-forward to 2004, and my SuSE 9.1 install has a 1.4MB kernel with its 53MB of driver modules sitting in a seperate directory.

      --
      A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
    2. Re:I'm with Tannebaum about microkernels by Wumpus · · Score: 3, Informative

      What are you talking about? Windows isn't a microkernel, loadable modules have nothing to do with microkernels, almost all device drivers in a modern Linux distributions are loadable modules, and while Tannenbaum may be right, it's not for any of the reasons you mention.

    3. Re:I'm with Tannebaum about microkernels by beforewisdom · · Score: 0, Redundant

      Never said windows had a microkernel

    4. Re:I'm with Tannebaum about microkernels by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's what kernel modules are for.

    5. Re:I'm with Tannebaum about microkernels by beforewisdom · · Score: 1

      Well, I have a year old installation of knoppix.

      I wanted alsa so I could turn the bass down on my speakers and I wanted power management so I could turn off my computer from linux.

      I had to sacrafice a few weekends to learn about kernels, compile the things, and get it all working to do that.

      It was educational, some of it was even fun, but I wouldn't have had to do that elsewhere.

      Steve

    6. Re:I'm with Tannebaum about microkernels by sloanster · · Score: 1

      I wanted alsa so I could turn the bass down on my speakers and I wanted power management so I could turn off my computer from linux.

      (shrug) any modern linux distro already comes with sound drivers and utilities, and power management.

      It was educational, some of it was even fun, but I wouldn't have had to do that elsewhere.

      Again, you didn't have to do any of that - but you chose to futz around with knoppix, rather than just installing a normal linux distro - and that's great since that's what you wanted to do, and you did it. but more to the point, with microsoft windows, you could not have done any of that even if you wanted to.

    7. Re:I'm with Tannebaum about microkernels by Maserati · · Score: 2, Interesting

      So is Apple. Mach itself, as well as BSD were mature when OS X came out. By 10.3 they have a very nice integration accomplished. I like the feature set in the Finder/Aqua combination now, I could use Panther for a few years.

      If you can spring for boutique hardware it's a really nice system. If you can't, try Darwin. Its claim to fame is being a microkernel-based BSD.

      --
      Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
    8. Re:I'm with Tannebaum about microkernels by Foolhardy · · Score: 1

      Loadable modules? A module is only loadable when the module build exactly matches the kernel build. The only thing they accomplish is code memory savings.

      No, Windows(NT) isn't a 'true' microkernel; it's more like a layered client/server model. However, NT has much better shared (DLL) library support; you can use drivers from NT 3.1 in WS2k3 (NT 5.2). You can use the same binary WDM driver on both Win98 (v4.1) and Win2k+(NT 5.0), two very different OSs.
      Many basic parts of NT are loadable modules, things that cannot be .ko in Linux, like the Hardware Abstraction Layer (hal.dll), or the entire system call interface (ntdll.dll). Let's see you use a binary kernel module from the earliest Linux version that supported loadable modules (2.0?) in a 2.6 kernel.

      Since Linux was designed to have its source files available, this isn't much of a problem. Windows has to have lots of binary compatibilty, just becuase it is designed to be closed.

      Here is a good statement of what Linux kernel modules were designed to do.

    9. Re:I'm with Tannebaum about microkernels by Wumpus · · Score: 1

      Everything you mentioned has to do with system interfaces, not with microkernel vs. monolithic design. NT's interfaces tend to remain stable, while Linux's evolve.

      Microkernel based operating systems can also evolve their interfaces. Try mixing QNX servers from different releases and see how far you get. I saw QNX drivers that required specific OS versions - 4.23 vs. 4.25, for example. QNX4 had a Linux like tendency to evolve its internal interfaces, and in my experience, at least QNX4 was less stable than the then current Linux version.

      I was pointing out that the grandfather post made a statement about the merits of microkernels, and then went off on to rant about things that either had nothing to do with microkernels, or are just plain wrong, in an apparent attempt to prove said statement.

    10. Re:I'm with Tannebaum about microkernels by Wumpus · · Score: 1

      Bad example. It's like running Windows 3.1 and wanting DirectX to run some games. You have to upgrade - there's no way you can just drop DirectX on that old kernel.

      You had the same situation with Linux - you had a kernel that didn't support certain features, and you had to upgrade, rather than modprove a driver. This should be a relatively rare situation.

      And I have to disagree with you - recompiling kernels stopped being fun for me in 1993. Maybe because I was compiling them on a 386. What I end up doing today is wait for the distribution maintainers to fix things, and then do a yum update, or something like that. Takes about 10 minutes, and less messing than with Windows. When fixes are available and do what I want, that is...

    11. Re:I'm with Tannebaum about microkernels by sloanster · · Score: 1

      Yes, I know there is a movement to loadable device drivers.....its not moving fast enough IMHO.

      erm, that "movement" happened about 10 years ago. SLS first shipped with loadable kernel modules in 1995, and the other vendors quickly adopted the technology.

      Gotta love the way these shills always want to compare the linux of 1994 with the microsoft windows of tomorrow -

    12. Re:I'm with Tannebaum about microkernels by 0x0d0a · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The only thing they accomplish is code memory savings.

      Ironically enough, this is not really the case for Windows due to a pretty poor (in retrospect) design decision.

      Windows supports pageable kernel memory, unlike Linux. This leads to vastly more complexity than Linux (since you *really* don't want kernel code like your paging code, say, to accidently cause a page fault). You also don't want anything that might be involved with paging (want to support a remote pagefile? Hope network support doesn't page! A pagefile on a USB keydrive? You'll need USB code and thus probably power-saving code and so forth to never cause pagefaults). Any *data* touched by any code that can be invoked by a page fault cannot ever be paged out, or else the risk of a hang again appears. Windows maintains different lists of "pageable" and "unpageable" memory.

      Linux took a much simpler approach -- kernel memory isn't pageable, but kernel modules can be unloaded -- that increases the simplicity and reliability of kernel code.

      --
      May we never see th
    13. Re:I'm with Tannebaum about microkernels by TheRaven64 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Windows is not a microkernel, as other have pointed out. The nicest (actually only, now I think about it) microkernel OS I've used on a desktop is BeOS, an operating system where you can replace the entire TCP/IP stack without a reboot. I haven't used Windows for about a year, but I seem to recall the loading drivers required a reboot. With BeOS, you could replace the entire sound subsystem and not reboot. The same with the graphics subsystem (there were a couple of different drivers available for my graphics card, and I could swap between them on the fly to see which was better. No reboot involved). The nicest thing, however, was the little dialog box that sometimes popped up saying `The sound subsystem has crashed. Restarting...' Ideally, the dialog would not exist at all, and this would all happen without telling the user unless it failed to restart correctly the second or third time. It's a lot better than the alternatives on Window (blue screen) or Linux (kernel panic) when confronted with buggy sound drivers. I agree with Tanenbaum here.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    14. Re:I'm with Tannebaum about microkernels by Ender+Ryan · · Score: 1
      A microkernel isn't required to load/unload subsystems on the fly. In Linux there are two separate sound subsystems(as of kernel 2.6), OSS and Alsa. They are completely separate. You can unload one and load the other on a running system without a reboot.

      The fact that this doesn't apply to Windows is a design problem with Windows, not with monolithic kernels in general.

      But of course you are correct about drivers crashing, you are much safer with a microkernel. OTOH, even with a microkernel if a driver crashes, it can still bring down the system, since the driver is accessing the hardware, but that is far less likely.

      I expect Linux will be replaced by the HURD in 2195 or so, so expect to see microkernels take over the desktop then :D

      --
      Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
    15. Re:I'm with Tannebaum about microkernels by be-fan · · Score: 1

      You tried to replace the sound subsystem of your kernel. You would have had to do the same thing to replace the sound subsystem in Windows, but you wouldn't be able to, because you don't have the source code. Instead, you would have had to wait a couple of years for Microsoft to release their next version. Installing a driver for either system (assuming binary compatibility), is as simple as dropping a module into a module directory.

      Of course, none of this has anything to do with monolithic vs microkernels --- both XP and Linux are monolithic kernels. Its simply a matter of release frequency (every month or two for Linux, once every few years for Windows), and availability of pre-compiled drivers.

      --
      A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
  69. The title... by Rick+Zeman · · Score: 1

    ...I bet he called it "The Brown Book" not because it's the guy's name, but because the book is shit!

  70. Class Act by geomon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The more I read of Tanenbaum and his work the more I admire him. The fact that he is a Fellow of two prestigious societies says alot about his contributions.
    Tanenbaum is a classic academic; he knows where to pick his fights - on the science. He attempts to stay above personalities, but doesn't flinch when it comes to calling bullshit on some dickhead (my words) who is out to smear someone for money.

    --
    "Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
  71. OT: SoCal vs. Amsterdam by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    While you can't beat the shear variety that Amsterdam has to offer, if you think SoCal pot doesn't have an entire class of its own, you clearly haven't smoked the home-grown sensi that makes life in Los Angeles tolerable for millions of Mexican-transplant workers ... man, thats still the best smoke I've found, and I visit Amsterdam on a regular basis ... my advice is don't crap on SoCal weed unless you've really gone to an effort to find the good stuff, just like you would do in Amsterdam (land of bubble gum grass grown just for the tourists...)

  72. Andy's just trying to... by Slime-dogg · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Check it out: " I decided to write a UNIX-like system for my students to play with. Since I had already written two books at this point, one on computer architecture and one on computer networks, it seemed reasonable to describe the system in a new book on operating systems, "

    There are three links to books that he's written. Dude, if there's any better publicity machine than "Access Bollywood!," it is slashdot. He is totally pimpin his books.

    Clever man. I might disagree with him about his whole micro kernel w/ massive messaging view, but I have to admire his pimpin abilities.

    --
    You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
    1. Re:Andy's just trying to... by prostoalex · · Score: 2, Insightful

      His books are an integral part of Computer Science curriculum at any good university, so it's not like he's pimping some poorly-written fresh-out-of-the-press novels.

  73. Amusements by Frisky070802 · · Score: 1

    I don't know about teaching class, though I suspect the answer's yes. However, I do recollect a panel at an operating systems conference way back in 1991 or so where Andy thought he was being funny predicting that one could get high bandwidth through sewer pipes ... only to have this seriously discussed in recent years :)

    --
    Mencken had it right. So glad that's old news.
  74. K42 by IBM by Szplug · · Score: 2, Informative
    Is a NUMA OS (eg think 256 processors with their own memory) but is meant to work on a uniprocessor as well. I mention it because it's microkernel-ish and being developed by IBM.

    K42 link

    --
    Someday we'll all be negroes
  75. Re: microkernels the best approach by damiam · · Score: 1
    Because no one's working on it, and no one cares about it.

    If you want successful microkernels, look at NT and Darwin.

    --
    It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
  76. A Professor with words to spare by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Professor Tanenbaum writes great material. Brown has bit off way more than he can chew, because when the professor's words surface on the post-release side of Brown's book, they will be challenging details Brown himself missed within his own words -- watch out! This is going to be quite entertaining!

    I'd like to mention his books briefly. We use Dr. Tanenbaum's books at our college, and they are excellent. There is no sliding by, chancing on the answers. You are challenged to read and to think, not just read and remember.

  77. King? by SlayerofGods · · Score: 1, Funny

    I never really applied for the position of King of the Hackers and didn't want the job when it was offered.
    The fool.... that would be like the coolest job ever.

    --

    Technology, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems.
  78. Microkernel reality by Animats · · Score: 5, Informative
    For starters, I'm reading this discussion on a computer running a microkernel. This machine is running QNX 6.2 on a Shuttle 1.5GHz AMD desktop box. The browser is Mozilla 1.6, running under the QNX Photon GUI. It runs about as well as the same version of Mozilla on a comparable Windows machine. Even the same Mozilla bugs show up.

    The file systems and networking are user programs. You can add new file systems; there's one that mounts .zip files, there's NFS, and there's Samba. In Linux terms, visualize a system where there's the /proc file system for inter-program communication, and everything works through that mechanism.

    The drivers really are outside the OS. I've written a FireWire camera driver for QNX, and it's a user program. It's privileged in that it does map some real memory shared by the device, and it can talk to the device directly, so it could potentially cause a crash by making the device write someplace it shouldn't. (That's really a weakness in the PC's I/O architecture; there's no MMU between devices and memory, for historical reasons dating back to the original IBM PC.)

    Debugging a driver is like debugging a normal program. You can even run a driver under a debugger. You can kill a driver while it's running, and it's no big deal. (If you have real memory mapped, it's not recovered until the next boot, so I had to restart my machine about once a week while doing driver development.) Mainframe people have been doing this since the 1960s, but it's rare on PCs.

    The basic penalty for using a microkernel is one extra copy and context switch for every file system operation. If your system is doing anything besides I/O, you'll probably never notice. If you're running a web server that serves mostly plain pages (little Perl, Java, PHP, etc.), you'd probably notice the overhead.

    So why are microkernels so rare? They're hard to write well. You can't just hack them together like a UNIX clone. There are some tough design problems to be solved. If those are botched, message passing performance will be terrible. Message passing and CPU scheduling need to work together. This forces certain design decisions in the scheduler. It's also why adding message passing to an existing system tends not to work well. The Hurd crowd has been thrashing on this issue for a decade. I would have loved to see something as good as QNX from the Hurd people. But it didn't happen.

    Mach didn't really work out as a microkernel. Mach started from 4.3BSD (considered bloated in its day), and versions of Mach below 3 had 4.3BSD in the kernel. MacOS X is not a microkernel system; the BSD stuff is in the kernel. Basically, retrofitting a microkernel architecture to an existing UNIX kernel didn't work.

    What you do get from a microkernel like QNX is predictablity. The kernel changes very little and is very reliable. Good microkernels, like QNX and IBM's VM, settle down into versions that almost never change and have very long MTBFs. This brings down total cost of ownership.

    1. Re:Microkernel reality by 0x0d0a · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The basic penalty for using a microkernel is one extra copy and context switch for every file system operation. If your system is doing anything besides I/O, you'll probably never notice. If you're running a web server that serves mostly plain pages (little Perl, Java, PHP, etc.), you'd probably notice the overhead.

      The bus multiplier on processors and the cycles-for-a-main-memory-access have steadily increased over the past decade or so. This has steadily increased the cost of a page table cache flush, and thus steadily increased the cost of a context switch.

      --
      May we never see th
    2. Re:Microkernel reality by oolon · · Score: 1

      Personally, I think with HyperThreading and multiprocessor cores becomming the norm, microkernels will start to see their day, as they lend themselves well to multiprocessing/threaded environment. While your comment about requiring an extra context switch is correct, in a hyperthreading environment there is a much lower overhead on the context switches, annother complaint is latancy, modern processors can have up to 20 stages in a pipe, so keeping that "full" for it to run flat out is pretty hard, so latancy is becomming an issue for mono-kernels too, but as clock speed has increased, latancy is far less visiable, disks and (most) networking work a many times slower than the computer so latancy of the instruction cycle really isn't an issue there.

      James

    3. Re:Microkernel reality by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Interesting point. You've got me interested in microkernels now. I think I need to mess around with a microkernel OS. Do you happen to know one that supports SMP on x86, is reasonably mature and fully supports POSIX? The more open source involved the better.

      And do you know of one that supports ARMv6 processors?

  79. Re: microkernels the best approach by niew · · Score: 5, Informative
    If you want successful microkernels, look at NT and Darwin

    Hmmm, No...

    It's a widely perpetuated myth that NT is a microkernel. It may have started out that way, but has long since grown through millikernel, centikernel, decikernel to full blown kernel... (and beyond if you count browser, media player and kitchen sink OS embedding)

    The linked letter from Prof Tanenbaum touches on this point too... He says:

    Microsoft claimed that Windows NT 3.51 was a microkernel. It wasn't. It wasn't even close. Even they dropped the claim with NT 4.0.
  80. about your sig: by Halfbaked+Plan · · Score: 1

    Afraid to ask for?

    Naw. Unwilling to be vendor-locked into.

    --
    resigned
  81. Didn't you see the "Hit by a Bus" study ? by JimmytheGeek · · Score: 1

    It was on segfault. "What if Linus got hit by a bus: an empirical study"

    Abstract: greivous bodily injury.

  82. I've had him as a professor by tmgtmgtmg · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I think I like this guy. Has anyone here ever had him as a professor? Is he this amusing when he's teaching class? :)

    I've had him as a professor and he co-advised my Master's thesis.

    Indeed, he is as amusing when teaching class. I took one or two classes he taught. However, his lectures are useless because his books speak for themselves. The only real reason to go to his lectures is because he is very funny.

    In addition to the lectures, we had to modify the MINIX kernel to do memory fragmentation and modify the file system to support ACLs. Both not very hard, but a good learning experience.

    I know he's always on the lookout for graduate students to work with him. Having had him co-advise my Master's thesis, I can wholeheartedly encourage you to work with Prof. Tanenbaum.

    1. Re:I've had him as a professor by tmgtmgtmg · · Score: 1
      we had to modify the MINIX kernel to do memory fragmentation

      To be a little more precise: we had to modify the memory manager (that lives outside of the kernel) to do memory fragmentation.

  83. You don't want it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...While wonderful in its day, SunOS 4.1.3 is unsupported and would be a total security nightmare on the network. I'm sure someone here will offer you an install image -- and play with it if you must -- but you'd be better off running a recent copy of NetBSD in production.

    1. Re:You don't want it... by Halfbaked+Plan · · Score: 2, Interesting

      who would run it on a public network?

      I'm the kind of person who has run Minix, ya know. Because it's there. I used to have an Altos box that ran Microsoft Xenix (the System III port, from before SCO) Ancient Unixes are cool. I have an AIX box with Power 1 processor (back when POWER was a bunch of chips.) I have old Sparc boxes. I don't have a PDP-11 yet, tho. I ordered the CSRG Archives CD set direct from Kirk McKusick, though, for if and when I do.

      And yes, I use NetBSD on anything that has a public face on the Net.

      --
      resigned
  84. Re: microkernels the best approach by KrispyKringle · · Score: 1
    To back you up, according to AST's book Modern Operating Systems, at least some versions of Windows had GUI API functions running in kernel space (he touches on the Windows API, in contrast to POSIX syscalls, in Chapter 1--I just started reading, so I don't know if he goes any farther). He didn't mention in the book that Windows ever claimed to be a microkernel, though perhaps he'll get to that later, when he gets more in-depth, but such a claim would be completely lunatic if even parts of the GUI are running in kernel space.

    However, I don't believe the browser or media player ever ran in kernel space; for one thing, it's probably possible to replace the browser without a reboot. The things that ran in kernel space were presumably Win32 API calls, but the important point is that many of them--like graphics calls--had no need for being in the kernel, but were simply because.

  85. Let's not split hairs... by Ayanami+Rei · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If the API for a certain kernel module becomes so complete that it amounts to message passing, then the kernel module might as well be outside the kernel. I understand the VFS implementation layer is pretty clean in this respect. (That is the well-behaved FS modules which don't reach into the kernel and do weird things)

    Just having them in the same address space is a convienence to not have to actually handle details about passing messages.

    --
    THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
    1. Re:Let's not split hairs... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      You are absolutely right and nathanh just has a stick up his ass.

      The fully abstracted interface that a ukernel requires is right up there with the seperate address spaces as cited benefits of going with a ukernel. However, while seperate address spaces can easily have a minimum 20% perf hit, a well-designed interface can and often is, the most efficient way to get the job done. So, linux has the good, "free" parts of a ukernel while skipping the "good" and expensive parts.

      If you didn't want to split hares, why does your rabbit have a weapon?

      And furthermore, if you skip the anime reference and pronounce your username like a Jamaican would, you would be very rasta. I-an-I-me! Lion in Zion. Hail Salesea! No I'm not smoking the weed right now either.

    2. Re:Let's not split hairs... by Minna+Kirai · · Score: 1

      If the API for a certain kernel module becomes so complete that it amounts to message passing, then the kernel module might as well be outside the kernel.

      Yes, if that were true. But there's nothing in Linux which approaches that point. Or at least, I don't see anything in the VFS area resembling message-passing.

      (That is the well-behaved FS modules which don't reach into the kernel and do weird things)

      The fact that the FS code doesn't reach into the kernel is irrelevant. What matters is that it could, if it made some kind of error (buffer overflow exploit or something)

      The theoretical stability benefit of microkernel design is that even if an individual module becomes evil (through accident or sabotage), the damage it can inflict on the rest of the system is formally limited to the assigned responsibilities for that code.

      With a microkernel, I could load up a binary-only driver/module that came with some weird hardware and be perfectly assured that it won't scan my TCP/IP traffic and send duplicates off to it's home base.

  86. Re:I have the PDF of the first 92 pages of the boo by Halfbaked+Plan · · Score: 1

    He takes every single aspect of FOSS and gives it a sinister anti-business anti-America anti-puppy connotation.

    Sounds like the treatment in reverse that Microsoft gets in FOSS circles.

    --
    resigned
  87. The "Linux is obsolete" flamewar by James+Lewis · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I think the Linux is obsolete flamewar is good reading for anyone trying to understand the history behind all of this. It certainly is funny to see Tanenbaum making predictions like "5 years from now everyone will be running free GNU on their 200 MIPS, 64M SPARCstation-5". Of course, hindsight is 20/20, but it does make one wonder what the history of free operating systems would look like had Linux been controlled/produced by someone with Tanenbaum's outlook rather than Linus's.

    1. Re:The "Linux is obsolete" flamewar by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bill powz j00, don't your forget th4t.

      Linus vs. Tanenbaum is a very, very, very tiny piece of teh tech history.

    2. Re:The "Linux is obsolete" flamewar by 0x0d0a · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Read more closely in Linus' old writings -- Linus originally intended Linux to be a stopgap solution, and expected that HURD would end up taking over the position of flagbearer.

      As it happened, HURD ended up sucking, and so Linux remained the default.

      I think the thing that set Linus off was more the fact that Linux was being insulted (probably Prof. Tanenbaum was feeling a bit cranky that day or something, and Linus was in a fighting mood...)

      It's funny how emails waaay back then, from when Linus was still a pretty small fry guy, can come back to haunt the people involved.

      It's something to think about before posting to a mailing list: If I get really famous ten years from now, is this going to cause me or someone I respect hurt?

      --
      May we never see th
  88. Re: microkernels the best approach by KrispyKringle · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Incidentally--not to reply to my own post--Amit Singh has a great bit on kernelthreat about XNU, the kernel in OS X. Read it here. Basically, XNU does inherit a microkernel design from Mach, but it isn't used as such.

  89. Re:A bit different by 36-bitter · · Score: 2, Funny

    "Why people deify Diana is a mystery of the ages."

    Meditate on that sentence until you see why it is so funny. :-)

  90. Where's your A Game, Microsoft? by mec · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This is some lame FUD ... not evil, but lame.

    (1) Since when does "Alexis de Tocqueville Institute" sound like an IT consulting group that anyone would want to pay attention to? Check out their website; it's a political think tank (which is what I would expect from the de Tocqueville moniker).
    (2) "Linus didn't write Linux" ... sounds like a dorky meme. Besides looking stupid on a shallow marketing level (why do you think it's called Linux?) and being factually stupid (he sure did write it), it's one of those big yawner don't-care issues. Joe CIO isn't gonna go "oooh! better not deploy Linux after all! Linus didn't actually write it!"
    (3) If you're gonna write an attack book, how about reading the existing books first, so that the people you talk to don't point your ignorance in public.

    Can you imagine us Penguinistas trying this kind of weak shit on Microsoft? "Hey, Boss! I've got a study from the Henry David Thoreau Institute! Bill Gates didn't actually write MS-DOS, he bought it from Tim Paterson, so we better not run anything from Microsoft. Besides, Windows crashes all the time ... errr okay I haven't actually RUN Windows since Windows 95 ... anyways we should run Linux on everything!"

    Microsoft says that Linux is their #1 or #2 competitor. I expect a helluva lot stronger attack from Microsoft than this!

    My theory is that Microsoft uses AdTI to float many different trial balloons. They'll keep the ones that look good and dump the stinkers. This one's a stinker.

    1. Re:Where's your A Game, Microsoft? by 0x0d0a · · Score: 1

      (2) "Linus didn't write Linux" ... sounds like a dorky meme. Besides looking stupid on a shallow marketing level (why do you think it's called Linux?) and being factually stupid (he sure did write it), it's one of those big yawner don't-care issues. Joe CIO isn't gonna go "oooh! better not deploy Linux after all! Linus didn't actually write it!"

      Yes, but I think that the "Linus Didn't Write Linux" bit is more present on Slashdot and friends because it looks so ridiculous to us. The actual exerpts, if you read them, are very misleading, and strongly imply that Linus misappropriated IP in writing Linux. This is particularly entertaining due to the fact that all the parties involved, *including* Tanenbaum (whom you can be quite certain would be crying foul if someone was stealing his work) have pointed out that Linus certainly *is* responsible.

      My theory is that Microsoft uses AdTI to float many different trial balloons.

      My theory is that AdTI is a trial balloon for Microsoft, the same as SCO was. They need to find third parties that can bash Linux without appearing to be associated with Microsoft.

      --
      May we never see th
    2. Re:Where's your A Game, Microsoft? by atcurtis · · Score: 1

      Can you imagine us Penguinistas trying this kind of weak shit on Microsoft? "Hey, Boss! I've got a study from the Henry David Thoreau Institute! Bill Gates didn't actually write MS-DOS, he bought it from Tim Paterson, so we better not run anything from Microsoft. Besides, Windows crashes all the time

      The fault in your argument is that your assertion above is largely true whereas Brown's assertions are largely false...

      --
      -- The universe began. Life started on a billion worlds...
      -- Except on one where stupidity was there first.
  91. just an european guy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    sheesh!

    tanenbaum is not just another european guy. he is a scholar, an academic and an outstanding educator indeed. his books should be rated among the best by all standards and a must for anyone who's serious about the subject.

    though i read about OSes and programming in college (it was tanenbaum's book that stands out, of course), i left programming and am a network/security specialist.

    again, tanenbaum's book is one of the best ever in that area. not only that, he should be number two to mark twain with that dadfetchedest style.

    now don't ask me who mark twain is.. he not just another yankee who wrote childrens books.

  92. Re: microkernels the best approach by AJWM · · Score: 2, Informative

    If you want successful microkernels, look at NT and Darwin.

    No.

    Others have already explained why those are not examples of microkernels. If you want a real example of a successful microkernel, look at QNX (which is very successful in its target market).

    --
    -- Alastair
  93. Re: microkernels the best approach by DunbarTheInept · · Score: 2, Informative

    What the hell kind of microkernel has graphical interfaces in ring zero? NT is certainly NOT a microkernel.

    --

    Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.

  94. Linux is not an improvement on Minux by AHumbleOpinion · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And, even if the OS itself was not so good, it doesn't matter, because people often learn the subject from the mistakes, shortcomings.

    You may be suffering from the misconception that Minix tried to be, or should have been, a commercial grade Unix workalike. If so you are wrong. When you write software in an academic environment where the goal is to teach students the code should be written with clarity and easy of understanding being paramount. If efficiency or more advanced techniques conflicts with clarity or ease of understanding you should choose the later. The job of the University is to teach core concepts that are long lived and transcend the OS, language, or architecture of the day.

    After all, Linus wrote the Linux to improve Minix on Minix.

    No. Linux and Minix have different missions. Minix was a teaching tool, it's mission was not to become a full featured Unix workalike. Its goal was to remain small and comprehensible to further its teaching mission. Linux had a very different mission. It is silly to compare the two. Linux is no more of an improvement on Minix than a wrench is an improvement on a screwdriver. Different tools for different jobs, or missions in this case.

    1. Re:Linux is not an improvement on Minux by Abreu · · Score: 1

      After all, Linus wrote the Linux to improve Minix on Minix.

      No. Linux and Minix have different missions. Minix was a teaching tool, it's mission was not to become a full featured Unix workalike. Its goal was to remain small and comprehensible to further its teaching mission. Linux had a very different mission. It is silly to compare the two. Linux is no more of an improvement on Minix than a wrench is an improvement on a screwdriver. Different tools for different jobs, or missions in this case.

      I think what the original poster meant was that Linus was running Minix when he was coding Linux, and he first announced Linux on the Minix newsgroups, inviting Minix users to try it out and comment on it.

      --
      No sig for the moment.
  95. Why is ADTI's (and MS's) FUD so obvious? by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It strikes me that all of microsoft's "covert" attacks against Linux and Free software in general have terribly transparent. Literally all it takes is about 10 minutes of "follow the money" to find microsoft behind almost any over-the-top criticism of Linux.

    Why is this FUD so easy to debunk while similar FUD in other domains, particularly politics, is so much harder to really get a firm handle on? Is it because the people who care about politics are a much broader cross-section of society and thus the average level of domain-knowledge and general intelligence is significantly lower? Or is it because there are more players all with their own sets of agendas and (self)interests? Or maybe I'm just been brainwashed by the slashdot collective group-think into seeing MS behind every corner when they really aren't (although the trail seems sooo absurdly blatant most of the time that I just can't believe that I'm brainwashed like that).

    I dunno, it just struck me how easy life would be if the rest of the FUD in the world were as transparent as MS's.

    --
    When information is power, privacy is freedom.
    1. Re:Why is ADTI's (and MS's) FUD so obvious? by platypus · · Score: 1

      Because in other domains, every FUD target has much more enemies, and thus parties who might be the hidden originator of the FUD. Therefore it's harder to track down the "covert" attacker.

      When it comes to FUD against linux, there's really mostly MS as someone who can profit from this. Who else? One could quickly check if SUN is behind an attack, but then?

      This is partly created by Microsoft, by destroying all direct competitors and by creating an atmosphere in the industry where nearly everyone profits if Microsofts looses, thus they have no natural allies. Even MS-only application providers are very aware of their weak position.

      And partly it's because of the GPL, because everyone of the competing entities in the Linux game profits if Linux profits, therefore making fights about/against the codebase itself pointless.

  96. Success and antiquated technology go together by AHumbleOpinion · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Tanenbaum is hardly seen as a "hero" in the Linux community, of those who know him at all, most only remember the infamous "Linux is obsolete" flameware on Usenet.

    I would characterize Tanenbaum's opinion as Linux is using antiquated technology and that performance benefits do not warrant the additional complexity. Tanenbaum may very well be correct. The fact that Linux is successful and likely to become the defacto Unix implementation is not evidence that Tanenbaum was wrong. Antiquated technology and market success are not mutually exclusive. I offer ix86 and Alpha as an example. If Tanenbaum is correct all this meant was that Linus and other developers had to work a little longer and a littler harder to achieve reliability and security. Tanenbaum didn't think the performance gain was worth the time, Linus did.

  97. Re: microkernels the best approach by Dwonis · · Score: 1
    However, I don't believe the browser or media player ever ran in kernel space; for one thing, it's probably possible to replace the browser without a reboot.

    Actually, it's possible to replace a kernel without a reboot. This is already done, to some extent, with Linux's kernel modules.

    On Windows, if the browser/media player can't be replaced without a reboot, it's because on Windows, open files can't be unlinked like they can be on Unix-like systems. This means that if you want to replace a file that's memory-mapped (like a DLL for a program that's running), you have to copy it to a temporary space, and replace the file at boot-time.

    If you're on a Win9x machine (or maybe even NT/2000/XP, but I haven't checked), have a look at C:\WINDOWS\WININIT.INI sometime after you install something that says it requires a reboot.

  98. Re: microkernels the best approach by KrispyKringle · · Score: 1

    Er, I totally replied to the wrong one of my own posts. Ignore that.

  99. OS X is NOT a microkernel by KrispyKringle · · Score: 2, Interesting
    At least according to AST, ``If the file system runs inside the kernel, it is NOT a microkernel.''.

    According to your link, the filesystem, networking, and complete I/O all run within the kernel. In a true microkernel, the filesystem and networking, as well as, concievably (but not necessarily) a portion of the I/O code, would each run as a user-space server process, handling calls for each service through the microkernel. The only thing the microkernel really has to do in such a system is arbitrate calls between client processes and server processes and handle the actual mechanics of I/O.

    Someone correct me if I'm wrong. But I've also got AST's book Modern Operating Systems in front of me (just started reading it, though). ``The picture painted above of a kernel that handles only the transport of messages from clients to servers and back is not completely realistic. Some operating system functions (such as loading commands into the physical I/O device registers) are difficult, if not impossible, to do from user-space programs.'' Nonetheless, the kernel should do little more than this; while OS X may indeed take a microkernel approach to design--this I don't know--it has not followed through in implementation.

    OS X might be called a hybrid; it has the microkernel messaging, but doesn't really use it. Check out kernelthread for some neat info.

  100. Re:I have the PDF of the first 92 pages of the boo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Before you publish your article, make sure you spellcheck it first. But somehow I doubt you lack the necessary articulation for such endeavour. Or the motivation, for that matter: you got your +5 - the day in the Sun of the typical Slashdot poster, that'll suffice for you. I doubt there will be an article from your pen.

  101. Re:I have the PDF of the first 92 pages of the boo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah, redicule him.

  102. How about exokernels? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Check out the MIT exokernel project. It is a bit dated.

    http://www.pdos.lcs.mit.edu/exo.html

  103. Hello. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's "I'd have" not "I'd of". Please get it right.

    1. Re:Hello. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Give it up. In 50 years 'of' will be widely accepted as a verb in the English language.

    2. Re:Hello. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      It's "I'd have" not "I'd of". Please get it right.

      Get a life, looser.

  104. Re: microkernels the best approach by mbanck · · Score: 2, Informative
    If microkernels are the best approach why is gnu/HURD taking so long?

    Dunno, what does the one have to do with the other? It's like saying 'If macrokernels are the best approeach, why does Windows suck do much?'

    The Hurd is a set of user-space server running on top of a microkernel (currently Mach), together providing the old Unix experience besides other more interesting things.

    Really, it's not taking so long because it was a microkernel (it is NOT!), it's just that there's nobody working on it.

    Michael

  105. Re: microkernels the best approach by Alsee · · Score: 1

    Wait till you get a look at Longhorn. Compared to that even XP is a microkernel.

    -

    --
    - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
  106. Re: microkernels the best approach by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You didn't even read the fucking article. Go read it, he said something about your mother. :P

  107. One point has come out in this debacle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    There is one huge fact that came out of this and I don't see anyone touching on it.

    It just isn't that hard to write an Operating System. In his original notes about the "Brown Book" Professor Tanenbaum gave several examples of single people or small groups who had done just that. Several of those examples went on to become commercial successes. Note that the thrust of Brown's original questions to Professor Tanenbaum were on the order of "one man couldn't possibly write an OS, so Linus must have stolen code to do so himself" (my paraphrase). Part of Professor Tanenbaum's rebuttal was the examples that he mentioned plus his own experience repeated in this article: It took me three years to write MINIX, but I was only working at it only in the evenings, and I also wrote 400 pages of text describing the code in that time period (also in the evenings).

    Now compare this to SCO's original suit against IBM (or maybe it was one of the never-ending changes to their suit after it went to court, I've lost track) where they claimed that IBM must have contributed code to Linux because it was just inconceivable that Linux could have grown to enterprise computing power class (SMP et al) without code written by a large company, in this case, SCO code stolen by IBM.

    We are being set up to believe that only large companies with armies of programmers can write quality code that can be used in business. Bullcrap!

  108. You're not stupid, you're just not bright. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Last I checked, he didn't post the article on Slashdot.

  109. Re:I have the PDF of the first 92 pages of the boo by 0x0d0a · · Score: 1

    The difference is that even Stallman, the most extreme of the extreme, is hardly anti-business, though he does have issues with IP, which affect some businesses.

    Microsoft is very frequently "anti-puppy". Perhaps one day, SuSE, Red Hat, and IBM will be pulling orchestrated FUD campaigns, trying to lock people in to their products, and foist off technically inferior products that enhance their business positioning. Until then, though, Microsoft gets the "anti-puppy" award.

    --
    May we never see th
  110. You are the advocate and marketeer. by jotaeleemeese · · Score: 1

    But you need to persevere.

    After several years trying to convince my brother to embrace Linux ( he provides technical support for many small companies ) this last time he was truly shocked at how good Linux has got.

    And he got it: save money and hassle to his clients.

    The Freedom of our IT infrastructure will be gained one person at the time presenting the cold facts, not using the same bullshiting marketing tactics, that are so descredited now adays anyway (and as this saga shows, for very good reasons)...

    --
    IANAL but write like a drunk one.
  111. Oh the irony by Carl+T · · Score: 1
    You don't care much for copyright, do you, Anonymous Coward? You forgot to remove this incriminating part:

    Permission is hereby granted to mirror this web page provided that the original, unmodified version is used

    (I'm assuming that by 'web page' Tanenbaum means the HTML file and not just the text on it. Otherwise that notice doesn't make much sense.)

    And anyway, why post the whole thing here when the first paragraph of the article states that the server it's hosted on has already withstood Slashdotting? If there'd been a risk of the server not coping with the load, you could've respected the license and posted a link to a mirror instead.

    --

    This signature is not in the public domain.
    1. Re:Oh the irony by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you read the other comments you'd know that the although the web server withstood the slashdotting, it was very slow.

  112. Hey! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why do you think Europe is like America? Sorry to sya this but he's workiing at a DUTCH university! European! Pah! Long live the Lion!

    1. Re:Hey! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What? Your words form valid sentences but the concepts expressed make no sense. When did the poster you're replying to say Europe is like America? Since when was the Netherlands not in Europe?

  113. Debunking Ken Brown by boots@work · · Score: 2, Insightful
    I've read Ken Brown's essay, and I debunk it here. Here is the executive summary:
    • The paper is poorly written, full of contradictions and gramatical errors. If their essay were a program, it would not even compile, let alone work.
    • Nearly every paragraph makes an unsubstantiated assertion. Brown seems to feel that just inserting "it is clear that", "ironically", "clearly", or "it is widely known" is an adequate substitute for cited evidence. Ironically, it clearly is not.
    • Brown clearly does not understand the terms he uses, such as "copyright", "public domain" or "open source". He does not seem to understand that copyright protects representations, not ideas. In several places he seems to think that open source is in the public domain.
    • Quotes such as "sometimes theft is necessary" as are attributed to the open source community without any evidence they were ever uttered by anyone.
    • Experts are asked misleading or hypothetical questions to elicit quotes that are used out of context. I think AdTI is not honest enough to ask straight questions because the answers would not suit them.
    • Brown says he can't believe that Linus wrote Linux, because... welll, he just can't believe it. Nothing more. He does not cite even a single line of Linux source that was copied from any other system, despite that all the data needed to check this is available to him. If he found even one line, his paper might be credible. But he does not.
    • When sources are cited, Brown grossly misinterprets the data: diagrams that do not show code descent are interpreted as showing code descent.
    • If Microsoft paid AdTI to write this, they didn't get much for their money.
    • AdTI would like universities to release their work under something like the MIT licence, rather than the GPL or proprietary licences. At least this is not obviously silly, though as usual they just state it without making a meaningful case.
    • Perhaps worst of all, the authors did not even speak to Linus before publishing these fabulous \ allegations against him.
    1. Re:Debunking Ken Brown by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Who the hell is Ken Brown? He most certainly is not a writer!

      Leaving all technical merits to others, the snippets that you quote from a supposedly "final" document are atrocious. I wrote technical manuals under tight deadlines for a number of years and I would have hung my head in shame if I left some of the grammatical errors in my text that Brown left in his. There are spelling errors that even the most primitive spell-checker would have corrected. I have to agree with your comment: Were it a university paper, every page would have red ink... at least until halfway through, when I think any marker would give up and just write FAIL.

      [Lest I be accused of Ken Brown's tactics in citing no examples, try it yourself: just take the excerpts published in the link referenced in the parent post and run them through Microsoft Word's spelling and grammar checker.]

      I would think that Microsoft, with all their billions, could have afforded a better flack than this to write their FUD.

  114. depressing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    by the way, the only depressing thing about tanenbaum seems to be that he is an american. but one can't help it. except for this little uncomfortable detail, he's okay.

    http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/home/faq.html

  115. You insensitive clod! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    ...inherantly (sic) simpler, and simpler == stabler (sic).

    So you're saying I'm simple? I'm a stabler you insensitive clod!

  116. all I know is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This Tannebaum's name is on the operating systems book I have an exam on in 2 fucking hours!

  117. Re: microkernels the best approach by tverbeek · · Score: 1
    It's a widely perpetuated myth that NT is a microkernel. It may have started out that way, but has long since grown through millikernel, centikernel, decikernel to full blown kernel... (and beyond if you count browser, media player and kitchen sink OS embedding)

    I think we're up to "megakernel" by now. Longhorn should cross the "gigakernel" threshold, and when Office is finally integrated into Windows, we'll have the world's first "terakernel" OS.

    --
    http://alternatives.rzero.com/
  118. Re:I have the PDF of the first 92 pages of the boo by Afty0r · · Score: 1
    you guys would absolutely not believe the stuff this guy says about Free Software philosophy. He takes every single aspect of FOSS and gives it a sinister anti-business anti-America anti-puppy connotation.

    That's exactly what it is. It empowers the individual to work for either his own benefit, or to work directly for the benefit of others without being tied into a proprietary system or organisation.
    It's a tool of the little man by philosophy, and as such AUTOMATICALLY it is anti-(big)-business and anti-(money)-American.
    American business leaders and investors live in a culture designed to extract work and wealth from everyone else in the country, while giving back *just* enough to ensure that the majority never question the status quo, or why a few people can "earn" more than a few million people.

    Anything which empowers each person equally is obviously an "enemy" to anyone in this clique.
  119. The flamefest is clearly over..... by tiger99 · · Score: 3, Insightful
    ..... which must be a good thing for FOSS, Linux and the world at large. Brown may have, by accident, done everyone a big favour here, by forcing Prof. Tannenbaum to say what might otherwise have been left unsaid. We might otherwise imagine that animosity existed when in point of fact it did not.

    All due respect to Linus and the Prof, none at all to Brown.

  120. Re:I have the PDF of the first 92 pages of the boo by Some+Bitch · · Score: 1
    Before you publish your article, make sure you spellcheck it first. But somehow I doubt you lack the necessary articulation for such endeavour.

    Before you trash the guy I suggest you check both his listed homepage and his accepted article summary. He's already had reviews of BSD and Star Office on Slashdot.

  121. Re: microkernels the best approach by LittleBigLui · · Score: 1
    I think we're up to "megakernel" by now. Longhorn should cross the "gigakernel" threshold, and when Office is finally integrated into Windows, we'll have the world's first "terakernel" OS.
    And they'll stick that onto all the marketing brochures because we all know "mega", "giga" and "tera" are good.
    --
    Free as in mason.
  122. Re: microkernels the best approach by tiger99 · · Score: 1
    No, the browser is all-pervasive and bits of it are everywhere. It is illegally commingled.....

    But, NT up to 3.51 was more like a microkernel, the device drivers and GUI were not in kernel space, and guess what, it was slow and stable.

    It was said at the time that His Billness personally was unimpressed by the speed, so His Incompetence ordered that the GUI and drivers (including third-party drivers) were moved into kernel space, to avoid all the overhead of ring 0 to ring 3 transistions all the time. It then immediately became buggy and unstable. There is no denying that NT4 was much faster than 3.51, it just crashes 1000 times as often.

    Yet another blatantly incompetent decision by the Guiding Light of the Criminal Monopoly.

    Of course, in the most prolific versions of Windoze, 9X, everything runs in kernel space, an inexcusable situation since they were written for the 386 architecture.

    IMHO the microkernel has much to commend it, but would be best if CPU architectures were optimised for it, giving attention primarily to how system calls work at machine level. It would be very handy to be able to lock the kernel into a portion of the cache, maybe a separate level 1 cache specifically for that purpose? After all, a microkernel would not be all that big, you could maybe on the top of the range CPUs have dedicated caches for other things too.

  123. Re:Kudo's to Professor Tanenbaum by jkinz · · Score: 0

    Professor Tanenbaum Is clearly a dedicated educator who places the creation of new knowledge and truth far above the day to day "wants" (Money, fame etc..) which drive so much human activity.

    Kudos to Dr. Tanenbaum for his integrity and perspective.

  124. This *is* better free software marketing! by Per+Abrahamsen · · Score: 1

    At the end of the article, Tanenbaum write

    > When The Brown Book comes out, there will no doubt
    > be a lot of publicity in the mainstream media. Any
    > of you with contacts in the media are actively
    > encouraged to point reporters to this page and my
    > original statement to provide some balance.

    Believe it or not, some of us on /. has contacts in the mainstream media. Some of us even *is* in mainstream media. While the core segment of /. readers are probably already true believers, we need better arguments than "this is so" when we tell the media Brown as a fluke. One argument that any journalist can understand is "look at what Brown's own sources have to say on the matter". Because /. and Groklaw linked to Tanenbaums statement, we will be in a much better position to combat the fud once Browns books is send to the media.

  125. Tenenbaum vs Linux vs Bill.G vs /. by GuyFawkes · · Score: 1

    OK, let me start by stating quite clearly and for the record, I do not know these people personally, I am not any sort of coder or VLSI electronic engineer, I couldn't write a device driver or design an astable timer chip if I had 10 years to do it in.

    What I am is an Engineer who was always interested in technology in general and the microcomputers that eventually evolved into the box I am typing this on today. I am old enough to have owned a portable radio that featured "14 transistors" with enough importance that this was written on the case just under the name Hitachi, above the model number and which wavelengths it was good for.

    When I was learning my trade as an Engineer it was the sort of apprenticeship where you would literally get a slap if you fucked up or didn't pay sufficient attenton, making a perfect inch cube from a lump of soft copper using nothing more than a file and a vice taught you things you didn't know you had learned until 20 years pass and you meet a University type Engineer who is qualified up the wazoo and yet doesn't know if his own asshole is punched or bored, who will design something that requires the use of a custom bearing that will cost US$ 500.00 per unit to make, and will be an untested design, and he will prefer this to using an off the shelf SKF bearing that is within a few thou of his specs and retails for US$ 5.00 and making a few thou adjustment to his bespoke equipment.

    My first computer was based around a Zilog processor and I've owned and run most of the "micro" stuff since, including webservers, and have "designed" (fancy term for sourcing suitable base components and then integrating them into a working whole by designing and building whatever else was required) bespoke industrial computers "done" e-commerce websites since 95 when you had to submit your (perl/cgi) code to the bank for scrutiny before your client's (pron) website could make 1 penny.

    I am not any kind of shining or leading light or famous name, sure, I've had my moments but then again it was easier to do something noteworthy way back when when nobody was online, I'm just one of those people who has been around the scene since (pretty much) the early days, and it is those years of experience that makes joe public think I am a computer genius, not any actual noteworthy skills or expertise.

    I'm saying all this about me because you have to know what I am to see where I am coming from here, and I do not wish to be misunderstood or misinterpreted.

    To quote from the original Tenenbaun vs Linux thread at http://tinyurl.com/2pdn4

    Tenenbaum says;-

    "My real job is a professor and researcher in the area of operating systems.

    As a result of my occupation, I think I know a bit about where operating are going in the next decade or so. Two aspects stand out:"

    "1. MICROKERNEL VS MONOLITHIC SYSTEM.... .....While I could go into a long story here about the relative merits of the two designs, suffice it to say that among the people who actually design operating systems, the debate is essentially over. Microkernels have won."

    "In the meantime, RISC chips happened, and some of them are running at over 100 MIPS. Speeds of 200 MIPS and more are likely in the coming years.
    These things are not going to suddenly vanish. What is going to happen is that they will gradually take over from the 80x86 line. "

    To summarise, Tenebaum says microkernel is best so it will win, Intel can't design a decent CPU, RISC will make CISC obsolete, and Linux and indeed anything that does not share this viewpoint is somehow flawed.

    This takes us back to the university "Engineer" who will design a 500 dollar custom bearing instead of using a 5 dollar one from SKF, those sorts of attitudes might fly in the classroom in academia where you work assignments for February 2006 and known and finite and where there is absolutely zero input from areas such as cost accounting / profit / MTBF / marketability / manufacturing / distribution

    --
    http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
  126. Why talk to Brown at all? by beforewisdom · · Score: 1

    If Tannenbaum sensed that Ken Brown was full of it why did he bother talking to him at all after Brown refused to answer where he got his funding from?

    Steve

  127. Re:I have the PDF of the first 92 pages of the boo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No uncoded transmissions over unsecured frequencies? Oh I get it.

  128. Re: microkernels the best approach by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you're on a Win9x machine (or maybe even NT/2000/XP, but I haven't checked), have a look at C:\WINDOWS\WININIT.INI sometime after you install something that says it requires a reboot.

    I think it's in the registry on NT. As one might guess. ^^

  129. Re: microkernels the best approach by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    he touches on the Windows API, in contrast to POSIX syscalls, in Chapter 1--I just started reading, so I don't know if he goes any farther

    He does. There are two quite large apendices where he compares the Linux and Windows 2000 designs. It's really very interesting (Especially the Windows stuff, simply because I know less about Windows internals than Linux)

  130. If you don't know who Tanenbaum is ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... I hope you didn't get a CS degree. If you did get a CS degree, please send it back and ask for your money.

  131. Re: microkernels the best approach by EddWo · · Score: 1

    They call it a microkernel in the sense that its internal design is very modular. The core kernel ntoskrnl.exe is the microkernel part, which concentrates entirely on process scheduling, memory management, interrupts and interprocess communication.

    The other componants ntfs.sys, win32k.sys, etc all run in kernel space but are not part of the kernel image itself.

    This design does not have the stability benifits as a "pure" microkernel where only the core kernel runs in kernel space, but it has provided good performance on a wide range of hardware for over a decade and been very adaptable to changes in hardware design over the years, now moving to 64bit, PCI Express, and EFI.

    ntoskrnl itself has its own api, which other api systems call for kernel services. There is the Win32 API subsystem and the POSIX,now Interix/SFU subsystem, and previously there was an OS/2 subystem as well.

    The browser is not and never has been part of the kernel nor does it run in kernel space, the portions of the media player that run in kernel space are to ensure the security of the DRM, called the Secure Audio Path, (drmk.sys drmkaud.sys)

    Before NT 4.0 the windowing system and graphics drawing ran in a seperate user mode process, but the graphics drivers had always been run in kernel space. They had problems with the slowness of the interprocess communication and the memory overhead when trying to run the Windows95 shell on NT so they moved GDI and USER into kernel space as well.

    See This whitepaper for a more detailed explanation of the change in design for NT4 and the kernel design.

    Note: for Longhorn GDI is being removed from the kernel and the graphics subsystem is being redesigned to concentrate entirely on 3D acceleration and improve robustness.

    --
    "Taligent is still pure vapor. Maybe they'll be the last who jumps up on Openstep... "
  132. Re: microkernels the best approach by EddWo · · Score: 1

    Thats not strictly true either. You can replace the a file while a process is running, and the next time a process starts up it will use the new file. The existing processes that are using the file will go on using the old version until they are restarted. Because process creation on NT is slow processes tend to be few and long lived and use multiple threads, not like apache on linux where each request spawns a new worker process.

    If you wanted to just patch a web server or something you could replace the files then stop and restart the service and all would be well.

    However there are some services that windows heavily relies on, such as winlogon and lsass that will cause the operating system to restart if they fail, (hence the rebooting systems from the recent Blaster and Sasser worms)

    If you want to replace a file that is used by one of these services, the only way to get it to start using the new version is to reboot the machine.
    Most of the time reboots are not really required, its simply an easy way to make sure that the services and programs in question are restarted so they are using the patched versions of the files.

    See here for more detailed information on this issue.

    --
    "Taligent is still pure vapor. Maybe they'll be the last who jumps up on Openstep... "
  133. Simple enough by mcc · · Score: 1

    Because in other domains, "FUD" is generally being targetted at individuals with at least some baground with and capacity to understand the facts at hand. And by "target", I don't mean the intended victim of the FUD. I mean the person the FUD is designed to impact: its reader.

    Let's say we're discussing politics. Hypothetically, let's say that George W. Bush goes on television and says we need to invade France because France is sheltering Al-Qaeda. In this case, this is somewhat transparent. The persons seeing GWB say this on television might not be following the news *too* closely, but they have a basic grasp of the situation. They know who Al-Qaeda is. They know who and roughly where France is. They know who George W. Bush is, and have the reasons to know why he might be a biased source of information. They have a basic understanding of how terrorism and international relations work. They probably have an awareness that Al-Qaeda is an organization with tendrils all over the place, including America, thus possibly leading to the suspicion "Al-Qaeda operatives being in France may not be meaningful information, as they're in all these other countries as well", and might even be aware of things like Al Qaeda's more direct connections to, say, Saudi Arabia. They might not have the background to authoritatively agree with or dispute "Al Qaeda is being sheltered by France" but they would certainly know where to check to find these things out.

    Now let's say that the ADTI goes public in a number of mainstream news publications and says "Linus stole Linux from somewhere". First off, the person reading this FUD lacks the background. They might have heard of UNIX and Linux, but they probably don't know what they are. They don't know who Linux Tourvalds is. They don't know of the existence of other potentially relevant entities such as Minix or BSD. And crucially, they don't know who the ADTI is, so they won't be going in with the assumption that this person might be trying to mislead them; and they don't know about sites such as (say) slashdot, so they wouldn't know where to go for a second opinion. Second off, the person reading this FUD lacks the capacity to reason about the concepts at hand. Even if one had read some sort of article and knew what Linux, UNIX, BSD, etc are, they wouldn't be able to really see where the flaws in ADTI's statements are. Doing so would require such bits of knowlege as what an operating system is, what "source code" is, what goes into writing a computer program, how difficult it is, what level of expertise you need to do so and how many persons it takes, the legal and copyright implications behind writing computer code "inspired" by other computer code, how one goes about "stealing" computer code, and the history and culture of information sharing. Without having a basic grasp of these things, one cannot make informed decisions about things like what the ADTI is saying, and thus is probably forced to just take it at face value despite it being outright deception.

    Because we here at slashdot tend to be a technical crowd, we have the background to generally see promptly through this sort of deception. However, the problem is that we are not the intended target of this FUD. With the persons it's intended for, it is far more successful and this transparency that we are experiencing is simply not the case.

    --
    Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
    1. Re:Simple enough by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 1

      Because we here at slashdot tend to be a technical crowd, we have the background to generally see promptly through this sort of deception.

      So, are you saying that there is an equivalent crowd of people for whom politics is equally transparent? Is that group's number larger or smaller than the membership of slashdot? I'm not sure there is such a group, maybe a couple of savants, but nothing resembling the size of the slashdot crowd because there seems to be a whole lot more factors involved. Thus fewer people are able to keep them all in their head enough to have as close to complete a picture as we have of the MS vs Linux war.

      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
  134. Re: microkernels the best approach by Dwonis · · Score: 1
    Thats not strictly true either. You can replace the a file while a process is running, and the next time a process starts up it will use the new file. The existing processes that are using the file will go on using the old version until they are restarted.

    I'm very skeptical that this is the case. At least, it's not on FAT filesystems. I distinctly remember not being able to delete in-use DLLs on Windows. (Or can you just open and do the equivalent of truncate() and re-write the existing file?"

  135. Re: microkernels the best approach by Minna+Kirai · · Score: 1

    Actually, his argument is that a microkernel would make a better early-90s graduate-level compsci project

    Wrong. Just read the last paragraph of the webpage he posted 2 days ago: it flat-out says that the security problems rampant in today's computer systems would've been partly prevented by microkernel design.

  136. Re: microkernels the best approach by Minna+Kirai · · Score: 1

    Yet another blatantly incompetent decision

    Wrong. Bill Gate's goal was to make money. Forsaking stability to boost speed helped Microsoft increase sales (and later cut costs by merging the separate Win9x and NT products into one codebase). A decision which produced the desired result cannot be called incompetent.

  137. Re: microkernels the best approach by Minna+Kirai · · Score: 1

    They call it a microkernel in the sense that its internal design is very modular.

    By that argument, Linux could be a microkernel too, if you compiled everything as modules.

    The other componants ntfs.sys, win32k.sys, etc all run in kernel space but are not part of the kernel image itself.

    That is not the definition of "microkernel" as used in academic computer science. The fact that something was designed as separate components means nothing- only if there is master code active at runtime to ensure cooperation between those components is the "microkernel" name warranted. If they're in the same kernel space, then an error in ntfs.sys could crash win32k.sys, which would be impossible with real microkernels.

    That's why Tanenbaum just admitted that a microkernel will always be slower than a monolithic design, because that active code requires some overhead. But he says the additional safety is worth it.

  138. Blouse and skirt! by Ayanami+Rei · · Score: 1


    Braa, dis rabbit a go SKEWER them hares wif dis macca, not splitten 'dem! Sweet...

    --
    THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
  139. Re: microkernels the best approach by EddWo · · Score: 1

    You can't delete a dll if it is in use, as the memory manager uses the file based copy for backup if it needs to page out the library. You can however rename the old file and replace it with a new one. The next process to start up will use the new version and the old version can be deleted when the process holding it ends.

    --
    "Taligent is still pure vapor. Maybe they'll be the last who jumps up on Openstep... "
  140. Re: microkernels the best approach by niew · · Score: 1
    They call it a microkernel in the sense that its internal design is very modular. The core kernel ntoskrnl.exe is the microkernel part, which concentrates entirely on process scheduling, memory management, interrupts and interprocess communication.

    If I call my '76 Volkswagon Bug a Porche in the sense that some of the engine parts are interchangable it doesn't make it so, no matter how many whitepapers Bill writes! ;)

    The definition of a microkernel is that what runs in kernel space is kept to a minimum. It doesn't matter how the other functions are distributed into different files if they execute in kernel space...

    W.r.t. the Browser etc..., I meant it more humourously than anything else... I *may* have missed the mark. ;)

  141. java/perl has a 20 *times* performance hit? by doom · · Score: 1
    I'm suprised that there isn't more commentary on this point:
    I can't for the life of me see why people object to the 20% performance hit a microkernel might give you when they program in languages like Java and Perl where you often get a factor 20x performance hit.
    A 20x (that's *times*, not *percent*) performance hit? Compared to what? I can't speak for Java, but I would be blown away if you saw even a 20 percent performance hit for perl compared to C.

    As to why someone would care more about kernel performance than language performance... let's think about that for a minute... because if you need more performance it's easier to switch to a different language than to change operating systems?

    In any case, I'm agnostic on the micro-kernel vs monolithic kernel business. It could be that when a typical machine has a hundered processors running at a gigahertz each, mico-kernels will make a lot of sense.

    The book which launched me to new heights was Operating Systems: Design and Implementation, by Andrew S. Tanenbaum.
    -- Just for Fun, by Linus Torvalds and David Diamond.
  142. Re: microkernels the best approach by leandrod · · Score: 1
    > The Hurd is a set of user-space server running on top of a microkernel (currently Mach)

    So it includes a microkernel... and because it needs the microkernel, it is a microkernel-based system.

    > it's not taking so long because it was a microkernel (it is NOT!)

    It is.

    > it's just that there's nobody working on it

    There are some quite smart people working on it. Now it does not help that the FSF could use some popularity, but the Hurd is not helped either by the current focus on Linux with its more familiar monolithic architecture.

    --
    Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
    DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
    GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
  143. Re: microkernels the best approach by tiger99 · · Score: 1

    Yes, it is incompetent, because he ended up with two kinds of trash instead of what might have been one good OS. And, merging diverse codebases is impossible, and/or results in lots and lots of bugs, which is why XP is so utterly useless. The high points of Wn=indoze development were NT 3.51 (before Bill's meddling), and maybe 2000, everything on teh 9x tres was buggy, unstable, incecure trash. XP is the ultimate in bloatware, and simply as a consequence of the bloat has more bugs than all the others combined. Bill's expertise in the development of proper software is zero.