Calculated Spontaneity Makes a Tiny Mistake

Interesting enough to deserve its own post: In a completely harmless event, some careless web design engineer somewhere in the world modified a script improperly, leaving out a single period. Unfortunately, tiny mistakes can cause huge problems, and this one did too, removing global access to every single .se (Swedish) website for a night.

Minor mistakes and tiny errors have caused many major catastrophes. The Three Mile Island accident is an example, where several simultaneous minor issues stacked up to cause a near-meltdown. The blackout in 2003, caused by a simple storm-felled tree according to the investigation, is another example of an apparently minor incident going vastly wrong. Though this one wasn't necessarily life-threatening, it still shows how small actions can have major effects, and likely was a major blip in the Swedish economy.