Actually, the real context is damning. His real reason for damning multitasking for MINIX is "no-one on a home PC will ever want to run more than one job at a time."
People who reason like that have no grounds for criticising other people's design decisions.
I think airplane's work due the fact that boundary layers and the trailing edges shed wing vortices. Bernoulli's principle (aka the "principle of equal transit times"), which holds only in inviscid fluids (and thus utterly invalid in the presence of a boundary layer), is a convenient lie, told to people who don't have enough maths to understand the real reason. Here is a pretty good explanation of the real reasons planes fly.
Nice Adair article. I like the fact his notional player plays for the Mammoths, presumably with Henry 'Author' Wiggen, 'Sad' Sam Yale, the late Bruce Pearson et al.
Try Robert Adair's seminal "The Physics Of Baseball". A really good read (and it got him appointed "Physicist to the National League") Oh and someone who can write that
Air pushed aside by the curve on top has to move fast to meet up with the air moving along the bottom
has no business teaching physics to anyone? Why would the air race to meet up with its previous neighbour at the other side. Do they have a hot date, or something.
Well, as Einstein aged he became more and more worried about uses of the bomb, and became quite a vociferous peace campaigner. I'm reminded more of this Tom Lehrer couplet:
'Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department,' says Werner von Braun.".
From the standpoint of teaching the stuff, I'd say that Tanenbaum's stand is very defensible
I agree, but to criticise Linux for not being designed as a teaching tool, when that was never one of its design criteria, is a little perverse, to say the least.
No, they're not. It would suffice to say "MINIX's design and Linux's design" are quite different.
Tanenbaum basically says "MINIX's design and Linux's design are quite different, and MINIX's is unarguably superior." Theres just no need for that second clause.
It's kinda interesting how one reason he derides the performance hack is that "you don't need them", because normal PCs only have one job running. Certainly nobody envisioned the kind of systems we'd be running today
But someone in that thread does say:
"But what if I want to run X, have a compile running in one terminal and read netnews in the other?"
(I'm paraphrasing, but thats the jist of it). And thats pretty much *exactly* what I'm doing now, so someone had some foresight, anyway.
he is simply stating what, in his opinion, is true.
Of course he is. But the merits of microkernels v. macrokernels are not really germane to the argument, so why does he feel the need to reopen the argument, unless he's bitter than no-one took any notice of him last time? IMHO, it spoils what is otherwise a superbly written article.
Because if you want any kind of decent performance out of a server system you need both those things. Otherwise you've got a couple of designed-in bottlenecks to throughput. Now *that's* a braindead design decision. Of course, its completely understandable in the context of MINIX's design as a teaching system, but to deride those features in other OS's as "a hack" is just pure prejudice.
Well, there are certainly benefits to a modular micro-kernel design. I wouldn't deny it (and haven't). But there are also drawbacks (message passing is terribly hard to make secure in a multi-tasking context, and is frequently slower than dirt. Add to that some of the braindead design decisions of the x386 w.r.t. privileged processes...) Yuck.
Treating the micro v. monolithic debate as a solved problem ("microkernels win!") is as idiotic as suggesting that object orientation is the ideal solution to all programming problems.
where, ten years after he first had this argument, he still feels obliged to rag on Linux's design as a monolithic kernel as a bad design decision. This from a man who describes true multitasking and multi-threaded I/O as "a performance hack."
The first season of TNG was particularly terrible. The most infamous example being "The Naked Now", where the crew (with their standard Star Fleet issue miniskirts) became 'drunk' from an anomaly and Data had sex with Tasha Yar.
That was pretty much my favourite episode. It was tongue in cheek, it was funny and it showed characters who actually resembled real people, as opposed to cardboard cut-out whiter-than-white federation gimps sleepwalking through the latest cliched Good triumphs over badly-made-up Evil battle....
Yes and no. Interannual trends are captured fairly well, seasonal forecasts tend to be off (worse, as you get down to the scale of weather) See here, for more information than you'd possibly want.
Foolish. Theres no way that computer simulations could possibly predict the motions of the planets. We can't even predict the quantum fluctuation of individual molecules!
A discussion in a newsgroup is not unlike a discussion on Slashdot, with an identical force of authority.
Well, maybe. But the regulars on alt.quotations take their hobby very seriously indeed.
show me proof he didn't say it.
Well, thats kind of tricky without showing you every recorded statement by Franklin. I can show you where it appears, unattributed to Franklin or anyone else, in a PJ O'Rourke book.
Alternatively, if you can find either (i) a constitutional scholar who believes that Franklin did say it or (ii) a citation from Franklins writings where it, or anything like it appears, I'll concede. Hell, find a reference for this Franklin quote that precedes 1985....
Notice how easy it is to find an attribution for genuine Franklin quotes: e.g.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -- Benjamin ranklin (1706-1790), Letter to Josiah Quincy, Sept. 11, 1773.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, the real context is damning. His real reason for damning multitasking for MINIX is "no-one on a home PC will ever want to run more than one job at a time."
People who reason like that have no grounds for criticising other people's design decisions.
I think airplane's work due the fact that boundary layers and the trailing edges shed wing vortices. Bernoulli's principle (aka the "principle of equal transit times"), which holds only in inviscid fluids (and thus utterly invalid in the presence of a boundary layer), is a convenient lie, told to people who don't have enough maths to understand the real reason.
Here is a pretty good explanation of the real reasons planes fly.
Nice Adair article. I like the fact his notional player plays for the Mammoths, presumably with Henry 'Author' Wiggen, 'Sad' Sam Yale, the late Bruce Pearson et al.
Tanenbaum basically says "MINIX's design and Linux's design are quite different, and MINIX's is unarguably superior." Theres just no need for that second clause.
IMHO, it spoils what is otherwise a superbly written article.
Well, there are certainly benefits to a modular micro-kernel design. I wouldn't deny it (and haven't). But there are also drawbacks (message passing is terribly hard to make secure in a multi-tasking context, and is frequently slower than dirt. Add to that some of the braindead design decisions of the x386 w.r.t. privileged processes...) Yuck.
Treating the micro v. monolithic debate as a solved problem ("microkernels win!") is as idiotic as suggesting that object orientation is the ideal solution to all programming problems.
where, ten years after he first had this argument, he still feels obliged to rag on Linux's design as a monolithic kernel as a bad design decision. This from a man who describes true multitasking and multi-threaded I/O as "a performance hack."
Bitter much?
But it was a good line, and I couldn't resist...
Linux hacker : Age 27 : lives with in parents house.
Who'd've thunk it, eh?
Answer : write down a figure, then add a lot of zeros. *rimshot*
Thank you. I'll be here all week; don't forget to tip your server. Why not try the tuna?
Yes and no. Interannual trends are captured fairly well, seasonal forecasts tend to be off (worse, as you get down to the scale of weather) See here, for more information than you'd possibly want.
Foolish. Theres no way that computer simulations could possibly predict the motions of the planets. We can't even predict the quantum fluctuation of individual molecules!
Nah, that was Nixon covering up the fact that he held cabinet meetings while bootlegging "Alice's Restaurant" by Arlo Guthrie.
Alternatively, if you can find either (i) a constitutional scholar who believes that Franklin did say it or (ii) a citation from Franklins writings where it, or anything like it appears, I'll concede. Hell, find a reference for this Franklin quote that precedes 1985....
Notice how easy it is to find an attribution for genuine Franklin quotes: e.g.for example...