The Smoking Gnu has cracked my computer!

[tealin]

Error message on my computer:

The semaphore timeout period has expired.

Never seen that one before ...



BBC Quote of the Day:
Money can't buy you love, nor can you purchase happiness, but you can buy ecstasy.

This journal does not condone the drug trade or recreational stupidity ... it was just funny.

Comments

Pedantic mode: semaphores

[disassembly_rsn]

:) Y'all make semaphores sound so much more interesting than they are (or at least, than they can be when one is struggling through learning to use them correctly).

Metaphorically, you *can* think of them as little signal flags. :)

It's been years since I learned to work with them, so the following explanation will only try to provide a general idea of what they are.

Basically, if you've got something that has to be shared by two or more processes on a computer, such that they have to take turns with it and can't use it at the same time, a semaphore is a way of keeping them from getting in each other's way. Whenever the resource is in use by a process, the semaphore flag is set so that if another process comes along and wants the resource, it "sees" the semaphore and waits its turn rather than trying to grab the resource. Once the current process finishes with the resource, it resets the semaphore so that anybody else who comes along will know that the resource is free.

All that said, I don't recall seeing that error message either.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Fascinating... that's actually kind of what I was doing.

[sparrowofjack.livejournal.com]

What? Directing data-traffic with flags? XD