Now That Is a System Failure

July 26, 2010

The addled goose knows about floating in a pond filled with mine drainage. He does not know about oil leaks like the infamous BP Gulf “dead sea” play. I also don’t know if “Tech Worker Testifies of ‘Blue Screen of Death’ on Oil Rig’s Computer” is accurate. I know it is tagged as “testimony”, but there are some interesting swizzles with legal methods.

Heck. Let’s assume that the Computerworld story is rock solid. Here’s the key passage in my opinion:

A computer that monitored drilling operations on the Deepwater Horizon had been freezing with a “blue screen of death” prior to the explosion that sank the oil rig last April, the chief electronics technician aboard testified Friday at a federal hearing.

And the fix is pretty much what I do when XP and USB devices get wacky:

In his testimony Friday, Michael Williams, the chief electronics technician aboard the Transocean-owned Deepwater Horizon, said that the rig’s safety alarm had been habitually switched to a bypass mode to avoid waking up the crew with middle-of-the-night warnings.

If accurate, that is one heck of a crash. I wonder if Dot Net or SharePoint were involved. Probably not. Rock solid as I said.

Stephen E Arnold, July 26, 2010

Freebie

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