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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.

6 of 383 comments (clear)

  1. BSOD by DWMorse · · Score: 4, Funny

    A Blue Screen of Death by a computer yields a Black Screen of Death on an ocean. Interesting. Kill all humans, anyone?

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    There's a spot in User Info for World of Warcraft account names? Really?
    1. Re:BSOD by pitchpipe · · Score: 4, Funny

      So in this case BSOD is not a metaphor!

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      Look where all this talking got us, baby.
  2. Re:Safety List by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yes; steaks cost massive amounts of money, but what does that have to do with what's at stake?

  3. Re:Safety List by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    life and limb [...] at steak

    Hannibal, is that you?

  4. Re:Don't throw Bill under the bus by ch-chuck · · Score: 3, Funny

    Not only that, but buried somewhere deep in the multi page EULA that nobody reads is the clause, "company shall not be held in indemnity for losses to person or environmental damage from deepwater oilwells bursting into flame due to defects in software, other than the cost of replacing defective media".

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    try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
  5. Re:They didn't fix a lot of things by spun · · Score: 4, Funny

    GOVERNMENT R BAD, CORPORATIONS R GOOD
    However:
    BP screwed up bad
    BP is a corporation
    Therefore, the initial statement must be false, even if governments R BAD also.

    Proof by Reductio ad absurdum. No fallacy. Thanks for playing, and here's a copy of our home game, 'Logic for Dummies.'

    --
    - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton