Posted on 07/24/2010 10:30:38 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Testifying at a federal hearing on Friday, the chief electronics technician told of numerous instances of a "Blue Screen of Death" on the computer system responsible for monitoring and controlling drilling. The largest oil spill in American history may be due to a simple computer glitch.
The machine had been locking up for months, Williams said, producing what he and others on the crew called a "blue screen of death." "It would just turn blue. You'd have no data coming through," Williams said today, according to the New York Times' story. With the computer frozen, the driller would not have access to crucial data about what was going on in the well.
(Excerpt) Read more at hardocp.com ...
I am a Noob in that area.
So Bill Gates really is the root of all evil?
I’ve been programming and designing industrial controls for 25 years. The way most FReepers are latching on to this “Windows blew up the oil rig” story is ridiculous. Sure, Windows has problems, but they have to realize that the people that design this equipment don’t want to see ships explode and people die, so we tend to be over-conservative when we design control systems.
From time to time, a bean-counter will look at the quote for hardware and go to Google and find some $500 “solution” that does “everything that the $20,000 system does”. That’s when I use the scenario described in the original post to make him realize that he doesn’t want some Windows PC directly controlling his machinery.
Also, the vertical water movements are are getting very strong.
Good grief, it sounds like NOMAD from Star Trek ... error ... errrrroor.
Cheers!
If you need a damn computer to tell you what to do when there is water and mud flowing over the rotary table you don’t need to be on the rig.
Geeesh, a damn computer glitch nor a gas alarm was the cause of the blowout. Stupidity and negligence are.
Lock down the OS from ANY change after extensive testing with the application suite.
Never update. Never patch. Never connect to the standard administrative network.
Anyone in this business worth their salt KNOWS the Process Control networks are teat very, very differently than administrative networks. It's a completely different ball-game.
That anyone would run NT as a process control OS shows amateur ignorance and/or criminal negligence.
Total negligence. No other way to look at it.
I saw plenty of those on one computer here at home for few months. It’s stopped of late, though I’ve not really done anything to the computer.
Don’t forget the open fire doors on the generator room.
Williams, when I watched him testify, said this event was not caused by the freezes.
sfl
no ... it was management’s “faster, cheaper, better” philosophy ... /sarcasm-off
Quad Cams....wow... going modern on us.
ROFL!
So BP was negligent in not having a fail-over system?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.