Deadlock is a situation where two or more competing actions are waiting for the other to finish, and thus neither action finishes. Deadlocks are often seen in paradoxes like “the chicken or the egg.”
In computer science, deadlock is a specific condition where two or more processes are each waiting for the other process to release a resource. Deadlock is a common problem in multithreaded environments where many processes share a mutually exclusive resource known as a lock. (Adapted from Wikipedia)
Deadlocks can also occur in nature, as shown by this National Geographic photo, winner of the 2008 Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest. Aptly named “Deadlock,” the photo captured a rare Morelet’s tree frog doggedly refusing to become supper for a cat-eyed snake in a Belizean rain forest. U.K.-based David Maitland observed the battle from midnight to 3 a.m. and still didn’t see the conclusion. “I was exhausted,” the photographer said.
See more amazing photos and other stories at Net-Cool.
Related posts:
- Interesting Uses of Laptop Computers
- Helping to Prevent a Nuclear Iran
- Edison’s License Agreement
- 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors
- Embedded Image Resources