Talk:Andrew S. Tanenbaum

Untitled
I was quite surprised when I found out it was him.
 * Who was him?
 * I followed the electoral-vote website for quite some time, I actually used to read the website before studying for my exam on distributed systems, in which I used his textbook. So on November 1st I was quite surprised :-) Wouter Lievens 10:47, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see. I too have used Tanenbaum's books (two of them, in fact) for my studies. The original comment was just so non-specific... =)


 * The comment that he revealed his identity just before the election is incorrect, I was aware the whole time I checked electoral-vote that it was him. My memory is that I found out through a "Who is the votemaster?" section (or something), perhaps with a link to "my other life". Perhaps he didn't advertise his identity until the day before the election, but I certainly was aware it was him --Phoxhat 16:05, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Is Andy Jewish? As the Tanenbaum family in Sydney Australia is.
 * ok after some searching Andrew Tannenbaum IS Jewish but he is not Andrew Tanenbaum (with 1 n)... so it is possible that they are both Jewish.

Linux
"Be thankful you are not my student. You would not get a high grade for such a design :-)" to Linus Torvalds - lol. What is his modern take on Linux? 66.75.49.213 10:10, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

And he also critized Torvalds for his monolithic kernel. And in a very poor and polemic style. I hope he publicly regretted or excused himself? We can all be thankful that Linus Torvalds did not listen to his pamphlet but created Linux. As a professor I would be so ashamed to have tried to discourage a genious student. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.212.172.99 (talk) 07:20, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

--88.130.10.141 (talk) 17:25, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

OS developing theories
Is it interesting that Tanenbaum was a great supporter of the microkernel idea against the "older" monolithic kernel (eg Linux)?

In fact Tanenbaum harshly fought against Torvalds at the time Torvalds was writing Linux (and using his newsgroup comp.os.minix, if I remember well) because of that kernel approach. Flame-emails about that are reported in the Torvald's book 'Just For Fun'

Any Book there which teaches step-by-step coding of OS (e.g. Minix/Minix-3)
Over time I have been looking for a book which can guide say a C/C++ programmer to write his own OS. Normally books only discuss the various modules(Memory Management, Process Management etc) and stop at that, in case of book on Minix by Andrew S. Tanenbaum it supplied the source code but didn't devote chapters on writing part of the souce code. Any such book available somewhere or is there a plan for the same on Wikibook/Wikiversity. Vjdchauhan 10:48, 4 January 2007 (UTC).

Political Bias
This man wrote this about himself in 2004 and it is now magically gone from his site. I think it is important that when people visit electoral vote.com they know where the author is coming from

Why Did You Do This? In a nutshell, because living abroad I know first hand what the world thinks of America and it is not a pretty picture at the moment. I want people to think of America as the land of freedom and democracy, not the land of arrogance and blind revenge. I want to be proud of America again. The U.S. media do a spectacularly bad job of informing Americans about what is going on in rest of the world. After Sept. 11, the U.S. could do no wrong. The entire world was on America's side. The invasion of Afghanistan was seen as completely justified. After all, the Al-Qaida leadership had to be decapitated. No one questioned that.

But Iraq was a completely different matter. Bush, Cheney, and Powell said they had conclusive proof that Saddam had WMD and could attack at any instant. The rest of the world wanted to see the proof. No proof was forthcoming. The answer was "trust us." We now know there were no WMD. There weren't even factories or labs to produce them. Saddam was an evil dictator with evil fantasies but he was no threat to America. Yet former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said that the planning to invade Iraq began the day Bush was inaugurated. The administration simply misused the horror of Sept. 11 as a convenient excuse for doing something that was already in the works.

Let me tell you a short story. When I was in elementary school, the school was plagued by a bully. He was the biggest, strongest kid around and would beat up anyone he didn't like. We were all exceedingly polite to his face, but hated his guts behind his back. One day he was chasing some poor kid and he tripped and skidded a considerable distance, scraping his face on the rough asphalt of the playground. He was bleeding and in pain, screaming for help. But nobody came to help him. We all just walked away. George Bush is the world's playground bully. The world sees him--and by inference, America--as arrogant, self-centered, and mean. I spoke to Americans from dozens of countries at the DA caucus. Everyone told the same story--the world hates America. When talking to foreigners, I can tell them about the Bill of Rights or freedom or World War II, or whatever I want, but all they see is this big, stupid, arrogant, playground bully and a stolen election in Florida last time. I think America deserves better. I want America to be respected in the world again, and John Kerry can restore the respect America deserves.

Don't believe me that the world hates us? The Guardian, one of Britain's most respected newspapers, ran a column by Charlie Brooker last week ending with this paragaph: "On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod's law dictates he'll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed ..." Then it gets so bad that I refuse to quote it. Maybe Brooker is a nut and maybe it was a joke, but the fact that a serious newspaper would publish this piece shows how deep the hatred of George Bush runs. And this comes from our closest ally. Imagine what people in Spain or Indonesia or the Arab world think.

Now you might be thinking: Who the hell cares if America is the world's pariah, along with, say, North Korea and Zimbabwe? Well, I care, for one, and I think most Americans want to be respected for being a democracy rather than simply being feared because we have more nuclear weapons than anybody else. You can't make the world love you by running commercials full of snarling wolves on worldwide TV.

But there are some practical matters to consider as well. If you look at British and Canadian publications, such as The BBC, The Guardian, The Economist, and The Globe and Mail, you get a picture not colored by partisan electoral considerations. You sometimes wonder if they are reporting the same war as the U.S. media. The situation in Iraq has deteriorated very badly. Over 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died in the war, mostly women and children. Well over 1000 American soldiers--many of them just kids who signed up for the National Guard and never expected to go to war--have been killed there and thousands more have been maimed for life. Americans are being killed daily in increasing numbers and unless there is a radical change, this will go on for years. Reenlistment rates are way down and manpower needs are way up. With a President Kerry, there is hope that other countries might contribute serious numbers of troops to help stabilize Iraq. With a second Bush administration they will just say: "You broke it, you fix it."

If other countries won't help out, Bush is going to be faced with an unpleasant choice: accept another Vietnam-type quagmire lasting for years or reinstitute the draft. There is no way we can win in Iraq with current troop levels. Something has to change. More of the same won't work. And it is an open secret that after the election, Bush is going to ask Congress for another $70 billion down payment on Iraq. Who is going to pay for it? We are.

In addition, the U.S. needs the help of other countries to gather intelligence about terrorists, cut off their funding, and track them down. Trouble is, when the playground bully comes asking for help, everyone just walks away. A new president who shows respect for the world instead of arrogance will get a lot more help. And we need help, believe me.

http://web.archive.org/web/20041102014915/www.electoral-vote.com/info/votemaster-faq.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.6.173.150 (talk) 08:11, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Andrew S. Tanenbaum quote on standards
How about adding this quote:

"The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from. -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum"

WoodenBooks (talk) 06:19, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Excellent idea. One thing though: This quote is often attributed to the similarly-named Andres S. Tannenbaum. Is Andrew also known as Andres? Also note the extra "n" in the surname. I couldn't find any documentation of such an alternative name. But if this alt name could be substantiated, it would be good to include on this page. SteveChervitzTrutane (talk) 23:46, 9 December 2008 (UTC)


 * This deserves entry here, but in the correct form:
 * "The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from. And if you do not like any of them, just wait a year or two." [Tanenbaum et al., 683] 64.43.159.68 (talk) 20:06, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Removing material
"He moved to the Netherlands to live with his wife, who is Dutch, but he retains his United States citizenship. He teaches courses about Computer Organization and Operating Systems and supervises the work of Ph.D. candidates at the VU University Amsterdam."

This certainly seems like a valid sentence to have in the article, unless there is a good WP policy rationale, please stop removing it.WikiManOne 03:13, 4 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Huh? I didn't remove that material. In fact, you twice removed sourced material that I added about being a Sierra Club lobbyist. Drrll (talk) 03:17, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I looked again, you removed the above material when you added material about the lobbyist, I in my zeal to stop vandalism saw your good faith edit to add the info about the lobbyist but only saw that you removed what seemed to be a valid mention without explanation and reverted. Perhaps add your mention of the lobbyist without removing the other information. WikiManOne 03:22, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

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