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The top tech story of 2010.
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Written by Dennis
Sunday, 06 March 2011 17:36

What was the top tech story of 2010? The release of the iPad in January? The growth of 4G networks? The explosion of government transparency caused by WikiLeaks? The rise of the online citizen vigilante group Anonymous? The growing number of Android phones? Or the nearly unstoppable growth of Facebook?

All of these were significant events, but there was another story that trumped them all. And the worst part is that you probably haven't heard it.

In July 2010, Michael Williams, the chief electronics technician aboard the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico, testified before a federal panel that was investigating the BP Oil Spill that a computer that monitored drilling operations had been freezing with a “blue screen of death” prior to the explosion that sank the oil rig in April 2010. Michael Williams also testified that the oil rig's safety alarm had been habitually switched to a bypass mode to avoid waking up the crew with the audible warning.

Williams did not give the name of the operating system that was on the PC, but it is well known in the computer industry that “Blue Screen of Death” refers to the blue screen that appears when a Windows based PC has crashed and is unable to recover.

And while this computer crash was certainly not the only cause of the oil rig fire and resulting oil spill, this crashed PC combined with other factors such as power losses, leaking emergency equipment, and cutting corners to save money, combined to cause the largest oil spill in American history.

Source: Computerworld article written by Gregg Kelzer

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