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BSOD Issues On Deepwater Horizon

Posted by Soulskill on from the blue-screen-of-literal-death dept.

ctdownunder passes along this excerpt from a NY Times article about a rig worker's testimony concerning the April 20 accident at the Deepwater Horizon well: "The emergency alarm on the Deepwater Horizon was not fully activated on the day the oil rig caught fire and exploded, triggering the massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a rig worker on Friday told a government panel investigating the accident. ... On Friday, Mr. Williams added several new details about the equipment on the vessel, testifying that another Transocean official turned a critical system for removing dangerous gas from the drilling shack to 'bypass mode.' When he questioned that decision, Mr. Williams said, he was reprimanded. ... Problems existed from the beginning of drilling the well, Mr. Williams said. For months, the computer system had been locking up, producing what the crew deemed the 'blue screen of death.' 'It would just turn blue,' he said. 'You’d have no data coming through.' Replacement hardware had been ordered but not yet installed by the time of the disaster, he said." The article doesn't mention whether it was specifically a Windows BSOD, or just an error screen that happened to be blue.

4 of 383 comments (clear)

  1. Re:They didn't fix a lot of things by mark72005 · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    You're right, if the government ran this, we'd have huge messes every year and gas would cost $16 a gallon.

  2. Even more corners cut? by dave562 · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Given that the entire disaster seems to have been the result of cost and corner cutting on a massive scale, it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't bother to buy hardware on the Windows HCL, or if they were using cheap hardware with unsigned drivers.

  3. Re:Don't throw Bill under the bus by Beelzebud · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    It might be fun, but you do lead a very sad, small life if you use something like this to stick it to Microsoft. People died, and an ecosystem was destroyed. I guess anything to score points for Linux or Mac or whatever sociopathic cause gives you great fun...

  4. Re:They didn't fix a lot of things by DaveV1.0 · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    The entire thread up to your comment talks about the BP spill and U.S. law, not laws in general. Your comment about a spill in the waters of another country under a completely independent set of regulations is irrelevant.

    They are discussing U.S. laws and regulation. You are making off-topic comments.

    Get it?

    --
    There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.