SI
SI
discoversearch

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor.  We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community.  If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.
Technology Stocks : The *NEW* Frank Coluccio Technology Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: axial who wrote (33486)5/4/2010 1:12:23 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 46821
 
Thanks for the updates and additional links, Jim.

One can't help but wonder about the application of a five-nines approach to ensuring reliability and security of deep water wells, and whether such approaches can ever achieve what is called in software development terms, "eventual consistency" bit.ly . Moreover, with over 4000 wells already pumping earth juice in the Gulf of Mexico alone, are five nines enough, given that it only takes a momentary bursting of a pipe to result in what we have seen in this last incident? The effects of mishaps are not proportionate once past a certain threshold, they tend to be absolute. In the end, a five nines approach merely allows that one part in so many million will eventually result in an unspeakable disaster, signaling that it's time to start over and take a different approach.

FAC

------



To: axial who wrote (33486)5/4/2010 3:41:59 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 46821
 
A less restrained analysis, from Cryptogon.com:

Oil Slickonomics
May 3rd, 2010
Three scenarios lie ahead. They rank as bad, worse, and ugliest (the latter being catastrophic and unprecedented). There is no “good” here. The Bad... Cont.: cryptogon.com
--

FAC: I see a common thread emerging here with respect to all three: (1) my previous post concerning dependence on submarine cables; (2) the oil platforms, about which the article above speaks; and (3) natural disasters of the type we witnessed with Katrina.

I now hear rumblings from the talk-radio set that government should have stepped in here a lot sooner than it did (mainly recriminatory bashings from loud-mouths intended to take the heat off the last administration's handling of Katrina, even if there is some substance behind what they are saying), although as I think about these issues some more, I'm forced to wonder if, in fact, the gub has, or should have, any province in such matters that do not relate to mother nature's own doings, but are instead the result of industrial mishaps. Then again, one might think of the financial meltdown along these lines as well. And what are the semantics delineating where acts of terrorism leave off and where utter skulduggery in the servitude of greed, under the guise of innocence or incompetence picks up?

Of course government at some point has a role to play, especially when disasters become extreme (how's that for an anticlimactic, oxymoronic inversion?), but what are the criteria dictating where entry points or thresholds are to be set? Thoughts?

------