Amazing similarity b/w Computer Software and Political Deadlocks.... I was struck by the similarities between what is transpiring in our political arena and what happens in software engineering (in particular Operating System Software design) Wikepedia defines a deadlock as <<...a situation wherein two or more competing actions are waiting for the other to finish, and thus neither ever does. It is often seen in a paradox like 'the chicken or the egg'>>. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadlocks. The same wikipedia page goes on to say that in Operating Systems, a deadlock occurs only when all of the following four conditions prevail: 1. Mutual Exclusion condition: a resource is either assigned to one process or it is available 2. Hold and Wait condition: processes already holding resources may request new resources 3. No Pre-emption condition: only a process holding a resource may release it 4. Circular Wait condition: two or more processes form a circular chain where each process waits for a resource that the next process in the chain holds. This transposes perfectly onto our political deadlock as described below (I just replaced the items 'Resource' with Ministry and 'Process' with Politician to understand prevailing conditions within the political context). So rephrasing the above:- Political deadlocks will occur when all of the following four conditions prevail: 1. Mutual Exclusion:-a Ministry can only be occupied by one Politician. The occupant automatically excludes the others. 2. Hold and Wait: -a Politician/Party holding some ministries may want to request for more. 3. No Preemption:-only the Politician holding the ministry can release it. (No external force can pre-empt or release that ministry). 4. Circular Wait: Politician-1 may release a Ministry 'A' - BUT only after recieving a Ministry 'B' from the other Politician-2. Unfortunately Politician-2 cannot realease Ministry 'B' because (s)he is awaiting for Politician-1 to release his Ministry 'A' first. So how do computers or Operating systems deal or resolve deadlocks? Three approaches have existed since 1960s and are described on the same wikipedia page. Basically they include: Option1: Deadlock Prevention, Option 2: Deadlock Avoidance and Option 3: Deadlock Detection. In more simplistic terms, Deadlock Prevention simply aims at ensuring that one or more of the above four conditions for deadlocks DO NOT hold. E.g most Operating Systems would therefore be pre-emptive (thus addressing condition 3) by retaining and exercising the right to terminate the offending processes (Politicians?). Operating Systems are careful not to allow one process to hoard resources at the expense of the other Processes. In the Deadlock Avoidance approach, Operating Systems try to make sure that they do not enter into a state that can lead to deadlocks. Basically, the competing processes are expected to declare in advance their maximum request levels for resources. Thereafter the Operating System polices their subsequent request granting or denying them accordingly. (All cards must be on the table in advance?) Finally, in Deadlock Detection, the Operating System may opt for the lazier but more expensive option- institute mechanisms that inform it that a deadlock has occured e.g. when the computer freezes (or the country?). Thereafter, it would need a manual reboot. Switch off and restart the machine, losing all your data (life?) in the process. I just hope we are not headed for Option 3. walu. --- Michuki Mwangi <michuki@swiftkenya.com> wrote:
Willem de Groot wrote:
* Remove some of the URLs in the footer * Run the mailinglist on another server to see whether
my.co.ke IPs
are somehow blacklisted/penalized
The my.co.ke mx IP is clean and not blacklisted unless someone wants to verify that with other spots.
Am monitoring the emails still and so far i dont seem to any landing into the spam folder since the very first one.
I have no problem with my normal mail and using a mail client which has flags to read spamassassain spam counts and flag as spam. No problems with that so far. Considering that it goes through spamassassin and a barracuda box :)
Regards,
Michuki _______________________________________________ skunkworks mailing list skunkworks@my.co.ke http://ole.kenic.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/skunkworks Blog http://skunkworks-ke.blogspot.com Beta Blog http://blog.my.co.ke
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