Computing Now: Two experts in the software systems used to control oil rigs examine the possibility, raised in a congressional hearing in June, that the faulty software either caused or failed to stop the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster. Don Shafer, the chief safety and technology officer of the Athens Group, and Phillip Laplante, a professor of software engineering at the Pennsylvania State University, don’t reach any conclusions, but their analysis of what could have gone wrong with the calibration and operation of software-controlled alarms is instructive and illuminating.
