美国气象局总部的一台电子计算机在84年的圣诞夜发生了故障,使得气象资料浮标网的23个浮标站连续五天的测报数据被漏记。这些浮标站分别设在大西洋太平洋、墨西哥湾沿岸和五大湖,为船舶提供航海气象资料。故障发生的原因,是由于计算机上的四个磁盘驱动装置中的一个停止了工作,随后其它三个也相继停止运行。问题发生时适逢圣诞佳节,按惯例,节日放假期间,维修部门都关门休息,停止服务,故障无法及时排除,致使连续五天的气象资料漏失。美国国家气象局总部的这台电子计算机已经用了十年多,比较陈旧,这种计 An electronic computer at the headquarters of the U.S. Meteorological Service crashed on Christmas Eve of 1984, leaving missing data for five consecutive days at 23 buoy stations in the meteorological data buoy network. These buoy stations are located on the Pacific Ocean, the Gulf Coast and the Great Lakes, providing navigational weather information to ships. The reason for the failure is that one of the four disk drives on the computer stopped working and the other three stopped operating one after the other. When the problem happened, it coincided with the Christmas festival. As usual, during the holiday season, the maintenance departments closed and stopped their services. The failure could not be ruled out in time, resulting in the loss of weather data for five consecutive days. This electronic computer at the headquarters of the National Weather Service has been in use for more than a decade,