[ECE PhiBar] [ece-phi] The Problem (and Solution) of the Drinking ECEs

[Boris Lipchin]

As I sit here in Operating Systems lecture, I have started to question 
some inner-workings of the Universe.  Here are some examples of the 
fruits of a single OS lecture.

Does sleep truly exist? Do the OS TAs have souls? How long has Eckerd 
been growing his beard? Will my kernel ever trully attain Zen?

The most fundamental question however, is that of the Drinking ECE 
Majors. How do a bunch of ECE majors manage hotly demanded resources 
such as beer and cups in the highly preemptable environment that is phi 
bar? Although you may not know it, we have been drinking at Phi Bar 
completely unaware of race conditions running rampant at the table. 
Problems such as deadlock (oh ... you're going to finish it?), livelock 
(no no, after you), lack of beer/resources (crap!) , and worst of all 
starvation (where's my beer?!!) have made our beer drinking woefully 
inefficient.

No more.

 From now on we will implement cutting edge synchronization algorithms 
to optimize consumption of Phi Bar's precious resources. Today at Phi 
Bar we will experiment with several synchronization and scheduling 
methodologies, so please come prepared to drink triple portions while 
taking careful timing measurements of beer consumption.

Feel free to email the list with any ideas of how we can improve our system.

Boris