Crashing an In-Flight Entertainment System

rabblerouzer writes "Hugh Thompson, who was interviewed by Slashdot on the dangers of e-voting, now has a cool blog entry on how he was able to bring down the gaming/movie console on an airplane. He calls it one of the most interesting examples of a software 'abuse case' he has ever seen." Fortunately the IFE system is totally disjoint from the avionics.

Comments

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[OverlordQ]

Fortunately the IFE system is totally disjoint from the avionics.

No offense, but I don't think avionics are your run of the mill programmers.

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[Stewie241]

hmmmm... really 'cool'... I bet the other passengers on the plane didn't find it so... Ian

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[iluvcapra]

Well, gee. I hope that that little map of the Atlantic Ocean with my plane superimposed on it only has read privileges on /dev/autopilot :).

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[Anonymous Coward]

It has read privs on /dev/movingmap and /dev/gps, and no access to /dev/autopilot. And if they had a clue, they'd be chrooting it all.

Screw all that, though. I want execute privs on /dev/pizza. Now that would be an in-flight meal...

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[Harmonious Botch]

Well, gee. I hope that that little map of the Atlantic Ocean with my plane superimposed on it only has read privileges on /dev/autopilot :). Load a copy of flight simulator, and find out for sure.

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[dxlts]

No offense, but I don't think avionics are your run of the mill programmers

I assume you meant "avionics programmers" aren't run of the mill. I hate to burst your bubble, but for the most part that's not true. I've been a programmer in the aerospace industry for 10 years. Seven of those years were at Boeing, doing (among other things) avionics programming. Unfortunately, from what I saw, avionics programmers for the most part are no smarter than your average programmer. There are a handful of really smart guys who do all the really hard (and high risk) parts of the code, and the remaining 99% of the programmers do the kind of simple, tedious code that you could (almost) train monkeys to do. Not surprisingly, most of them really aren't all that smart. I understand how you might have that misconception though. I used to have that misconception too. I remember when I got my first aerospace job, and I was really intimidated by the fact that I was going to be working with the "big dogs", the hardcore programmers who all had 180 IQ's, etc. I also remember the total shock and disappointment when it turned out to be just the opposite.

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[colfer]

SwissAir 111 went down because the in-flight entertainment & gambling system had been rushed into service, and due to its design overheated and burned down the plane in-flight. This was its design: a separate computer for each seat. The computers (presumably single cards) were located in the ceiling near the front of the passenger compartment. So were the avionics wires. The entertainment/gambling devices overheated, caught fire and the plane crashed near Nova Scotia. Greed. SwissAir is no more.

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[colfer]

Come to think of it, I think each computer may have had its own power supply, but I'm not sure.

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[notoriousfcp]

Unfortunately, even if the IFE isn't connected to the avionics, bad things can still happen. *Very* bad things. I managed a project a few years back to design and build the front end to an existing IFE hardware system. The front end was really cool - multiplayer games, gambling, the usual movies and music, in-flight commerce, and much more, wrapped in a gorgeous and highly usable UI. Almost 10 years later, the IFE systems deployed today aren't much better, and in many cases are a lot worse, which surprises me. If I recall correctly, though, the hardware folks (a completely separate company) installed the hardware into the aircraft in a less-than-ideal way, and it ended up causing a fire that brought down the aircraft. D'oh.

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[inviolet]

Interesting. I went to swissair111.org and read up on the incident. They are now reporting that "MICHAIL ITKIS, CEO OF INTERACTIVE FLIGHT TECHNOLOGY CHANGES NAME TO MIKE SNOW". So apparently we need an extra step in the old cliche:

1. Create fly-by-night company to produce in-flight entertainment systems.
2. Rush the product to market prematurely.
3. Organize an IPO.
4. Profit !!
5. Observe the product causing airplanes to crash and burn.
6. Change name and move away.

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[Anonymous Coward]

TFA

One of the most interesting examples of a software "abuse case" came to me rather abruptly on an airplane flight from Las Vegas to Orlando in mid 2005.

Each seat in the airplane had a small touch screen monitor built into the head rest of the chair in front, and on this particular airline, passengers could watch a variety of television channels and play a few simple games. One such game looked remarkably similar to the classic strategy game Tetris, where players use their skills to manipulate falling blocks on a screen to try and form horizontal lines. I'm a big fan of Tetris; for a few months in 1998 I was borderline obsessed with it. I would start looking at everyday objects and start mentally fitting them together with other tings in the room to form weird line configurations. One of the options on this particular airborne version of Tetris was to alter the number of blocks one could see in advance on the screen before they started falling.

To give myself the biggest advantage in the game, I pressed the + control as many times as it would allow and got to the maximum value of 4. I then put on my "bad guy" hat on and asked: How *else* can I change the value in this field? Near my armrest was a small phone console; you know, the one where you can make very important calls for a mere $22 per minute. I noticed that the phone had a numeric keypad and that it also controlled this television monitor embedded in the seat in front of me.

I then touched the screen in front of me to highlight the number "4" in the options configuration shown in Figure 1. I tried to enter the number 10 into that field through the phone keypad with no luck: it first changed to the number "1" followed by the number "0". Frustrated, I then made the assumption that it would only accept single digit values. My next test case was the number "8"; no luck there either, the number didn't change at all. I then tried the number 5: success! '5' is an interesting test case, it's a "boundary value" just beyond the maximum allowed value of the field which was '4'. A classic programming mistake is to be off by 1 when coding constraints. For example, the programmer may have intended to code the statements:

0 value 5

When what actually got coded was

0 value = 5

I now had the software exactly where I wanted it, in an unintended state; the illegal value 5 was now in my target field. I then turn my attention back to the screen and hit the + button which, to my complete surprise, incremented the value to 6! Again, an implementation problem, the increment constrain probably said something like "if value = 4 do not increment." In this case, the value wasn't 4 but 5 so it happily incremented it to 6! I then continue to increment the value by pressing the + button until I get to 127 and then I pause for a moment of reflection. 127 is a very special number; it is the upper bound of a 1 byte signed integer. Strange things can happen when we add 1 to this value, namely that 127 + 1 = -128! I considered this for a moment as I kicked back a small bag of peanuts and in the interest of science I boldly pressed the + button once more. Suddenly, the display now flashes -128 just for an instant and then poof...screen goes black.

Poof...screen of the person next to me goes black.

Screens in front of me and behind me go black.

The entire plane entertainment system goes down (and thankfully the cascading system failure didn't spill over to the plane navigation system)!

After a few minutes of mumbling from some of the passengers, a fairly emotionless flight attendant reset the system and all was well. I landed with a new-found respect for the game of Tetris and consider this to be the most entertaining version of it I have ever played.

.

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[Hektor_Troy]

I was going to be working with the "big dogs", the hardcore programmers who all had 180 IQ's, etc. I also remember the total shock and disappointment when it turned out to be just the opposite.

What's the oposite of a 180 IQ? An 018 QI?

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[Bronster]

Well, in your case it's obviously not even an 081 IQ or you would have mastered simple string reversal...

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[ikkonoishi]

20.

Since 100 is an average IQ then the opposite of a number 80 points above average would be a number 80 points below average.

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[iocat]

It sounds good. Too good in fact. In fact, it sounds like BS. It basically reads like an urban myth. Also, given that the max value was 4, its unlikely the field size onscreen would have been big enough to display a 3 digit number. I also can't think of any domestic carrier in 2005 that had a combo touch screen / telephone thingee in the back of every seat. The only one I can think of now is Thai in their Royal Thai section.

Can anyone intuit the airline? Because without an airline name, I call bullshit on this story. I would guess it had to be business class, and probably a foriegn carrier, if the story is to be believed.

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[evilviper]

I assume you meant "avionics programmers" aren't run of the mill. I hate to burst your bubble, but for the most part that's not true. I've been a programmer in the aerospace industry for 10 years.

Ergo, true, ipso facto. Q.E.D.

Well done.

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[iocat]

Sorry to reply to my own post, but someone down below suggested it may have been a Delta 767. The Song (Delta's low cost brand) airline has the Panasonic eFX IFE which offers what he describes I think in every seat (my bad for not flying Song I guess!). Link here . The story still seems way to slick to me (as a former tester, I would have tried that sequence of events pretty quick), but evidence of an IFE that fits the description makes it inherently more believable.

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[reezle]

Wouldn't IQ 200 be Twice as smart as average, IQ 50 be half as smart as average?
Then the opposite of 180 would be appx 55-60...?

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[Anonymous Coward]

If this was true, then it's not only a good thing the entertainment was separate from the avionics system, but also that they weren't coded by the same programmers.

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[Mycroft_VIII]

Nope, IQ is not a linear measurement (usually).
There are quite a few IQ tests and they are usually structured so that the majority of people fall right around 100 with a max possible score of 200.
    IIRC, over 80% of all people fall in the 10 point range around 100 (or maybe it was with 10 points of 100).
      A 150+ on most tests is in the upper 2% of the population.

Mycroft

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[Dhalka226]

IQ scores are a standard distribution with a standard deviation of 10 and a mean of 100. Therefore,

IQs +/- 1 standard deviation from the mean, that is, 90-110, account for approximately 68% of all scores.

The 80-120 range will account for roughly 95% of the scores.

And 70-130 will include over 99%.

Obviously, an IQ of 180 is astoundingly high. An IQ of 55-60 is, I believe, in the mentally retarded range. Since there's not really a good way to quantify "half as smart" and "twice as smart," you could consider that accurate if you wanted, I suppose. Personally, when I think of somebody who is "half as smart as average," I don't think it's that bad.

From Wikipedia:

* mild mental disability: IQ 50-55 to 70; children require mild support; formally called "Educable Mentally Retarded".

* moderate disability: IQ 35-40 to 50-55; children require moderate supervision and assistance; formally called "Trainable Mentally Retarded".

* severe mental disability: IQ 20-25 to 35-40; can be taught basic life skills and simple tasks with supervision.

* profound mental disability: IQ below 20-25; usually caused by a neurological condition; require constant care.

There are also a bunch of debates as to bias and whether IQs really measure anything worthwhile which I'm sure you can find on the same Wikipedia page if you're interested.

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[Ours]

SwissAir is no more but not because of that crash.
It's no more because it was manages by a bunch of greedy, prentencious bastards that are currently in court to answer for their doings. At least one guy is going to jail for a couple of years.

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[tezbobobo]

Except the IQ test is not an even distribution. I know it's meant to be but in real life test it is skewed. Take for example the number of people who can master 20, and then the number who can master 180.

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[nexuspal]

I believe you... The programmer had a if statement saying, if the number is at 4, and the user press's +, do not incriment the integer. By bypassing the screen input, and using the phone, you were able to get the value 5 in (= 5 instead of 5). Once you got the 5 in, the plus button never got caught by the value =ing 4 because it was already at 5, therefore allowing you to incriment to your hearts content. Thats my take on it anyway...

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[Anonymous Coward]

Air France has had touchscreen LCDs in the back of each seat for since at least June 2005, when I last used them. I can't remember if there was a phone, though.

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[iamacat]

movingmap is not a device, at most it would be a UNIX domain socket if it's implemented as a daemon.

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[bigwave111]

Actually, no, it takes more inside information than that. My dad worked for Swissair for 30 years and its downfall was actually the acquisition of Sabena and the contractual agreement created in the acquisition. At the time, it was a solid investment, but as the overall financial state of Sabena fell apart, Swissair was legally obligated to have to try and save them, draining their resources. The in-flight entertainment was simply a last can of gasoline tossed on an intensely burning flame.

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[Anonymous Coward]

in the U.S., no foriegn carrier is allowed to make any flight that starts and ends in this country.

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[Danny Rathjens]

Almost. The standard deviation of most IQ tests is 15 (16 is used "occasionally" according to your link, but none use 10). So:

• one standard deviation from the mean is 85 to 115 (68%)
• two standard deviations 70 to 130 (95%) (which explains why 130 was the cut-off point for the gifted program, only 2.5% are 130+)
• three standard deviations 55 to 145 (99.7%).

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[kklein]

August of 2005 I used the system described on an American Airlines flight.

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[skoaldipper]

Maybe his was a philosophical or metaphysical question, not mathematical.

> What's the oposite of a 180 IQ? An 018 QI?

QI (or "chee") means balanced life force energy. Notice the 0 and the 8 on either side of the 1; one circle (0) separated from the two smaller stacked circles (8) (or more precisely, the figure eight circle). Therefore, since 1 represents ("one" or "self"), we can infer from this QI degree quotient "018" that "My intelligence has already come full circle in life and will most assuredly half in my next unless my karma improves".

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[kicken18]

I've used on JAL going from Heathrow (London) to Tokyo

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[nogginthenog]

Emirates had touch screen thingies on the back of every seat the last time I flew with them.

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[Carewolf]

Almost. The standard deviation of most IQ tests is 24 (15 in the US).

Most quoted IQs use the 24 scale because it sounds better.

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[martindp]

I think its a good comment. What if you thought it was cool that you could hack the entertainment system. But your hacks caused the system to overheat and set the plane on fire. Scary, you are better of just keeping you fingers away or wait until the plane has landed if you must must hack it. You can read more details of the crash on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissair_Flight_111

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[Registered Coward v2]

SwissAir 111 went down because the in-flight entertainment & gambling system had been rushed into service, and due to its design overheated and burned down the plane in-flight. This was its design: a separate computer for each seat. The computers (presumably single cards) were located in the ceiling near the front of the passenger compartment. So were the avionics wires. The entertainment/gambling devices overheated, caught fire and the plane crashed near Nova Scotia.

Yes, the wiring insulation burned and brought down the plane. A friend's wife was on that plane, so I have an interest beyond the technical.

Another interesting event was the crash of an Airbus flight control system, resulting in an inflight rebooting message; the pilots flew on in manual.

Greed. SwissAir is no more.

Yes, but it was due to them overpaying their employees and not controlling other expenses as well - a problem many European state run airlines have. Look at Alitalia for example - they could lease planes with crews for less than it costs to fly their own. Europe's carriers are heading towards teh same consolidation and liquidation taht US ones have expereineced and only a handful will survive. I think BA Lufthansa and Air France will probably be the last standing.

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[leenks]

If this guy can do it, then any other user or, more likely, kids can do it which means it is more likely to do it again when in flight. If it's likely to overheat (after that Swiss disaster I doubt it would be designed in a way that it could) then this guy finding it and bringing it to the publics attention has to be a good thing.

As an aside, I've had the whole plane entertainment system on Emirates crash on me twice (two different planes on the way to Australia) - and I didn't do anything other than try and watch a film.

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[ArieKremen]

A few years ago I flew on Swiss (used to be Swiss Air) from Zurich to Newark. They also have an inseat flight entertainment system. On our flight the system repeatedly crashed, and from the boot sequence it became clear that the underlying computer system was using a Linux-based OS (Big prominent penguin image). I do not remember the distro or anything else. sorry.

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[Eternauta3k]

Unless you want to do what the article said when you're travelling, why do you care if it's real? It's a cool story regardless of its authenticity (sp?)

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[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot one more category

IQ 70-85 - idiot that will buy what advertisers tell them to buy. #1 buyer of 4WD SUV's because they believe they will be safer. Believe that they really are the center of the universe. Prime candidates for Middle managenent, Sales and Marketing departments.

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[mikael]

What happens if the plane has to make an emergency landing? Do the authorities shoot it down?

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[Anonymous Coward]

If anyone crashes the in-flight entertainment during one of my long-haul flights (especially if my laptop battery has died) make sure you are sitting nowhere near me and hope that the coffee isn't as hot as McDonalds coffee.

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[Anonymous Coward]

"Same awful bad experience, never again"

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[jackbird]

In that case, the landing has definitely caused an emergency.

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[Is0m0rph]

Air Singapore does. You can play Mario and such with a phone/gamepad/remote control combo unit. I'd be pissed if some jerkoff crashed the IFE and I had to sit there for 16 hours doing nothing.

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[Chacham]

the hardcore programmers who all had 180 IQ's, etc.

180 IQs?

Gee, i only have one. Where do i get more? Can they be combined?

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[paeanblack]

Except the IQ test is not an even distribution. I know it's meant to be but in real life test it is skewed. Take for example the number of people who can master 20, and then the number who can master 180.

Your sample population is self-selecting.

Those who score 180 are more likely to be found taking IQ tests than those who can score 20.

From a different perspective, would you average the individual finish times of all American marathons to find the expected marathon finish time of an average American individual?

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[superflippy]

I flew cross-country on a Song airplane last year. Song went out of business, so Delta re-absorbed its planes into its own fleet. I can vouch for the little entertainment console on the back of every seat. Some stuff was free, some you had to pay to access.

One free thing was a trivia game you could play against the other passengers. It kept track of who answered the most questions correctly in the least time and announced a winner each round. Another interesting feature was a map showing approximately where the plane was at any given time. That program sometimes didn't work.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Song. I believe they are now part of delta. I flew on them a few times, and there was a multimedia lcd on the back of every seat. It was beautiful. You could choose TV stations, watch the planes progress/status on a map, choose music stations, etc.

Flying would be so much nicer if every carrier was like that...

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[dr_canak]

Actually,

per the WAIS-III manual sitting in front of me, the std. dev is 15, not 10. Therefore, 85-115 is +/- 1 s.d. from the mean of 100. But your point is still accurate that a an IQ of 185 is astoundingly high. Mental retardation is -2 s.d.'s below average, which puts that at an I.Q. of =70. You also need significant adaptive impairment in at least two domains (e.g. communication, self care, interpersonal skills, etc...)

just my .02
jeff

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[Anonymous Coward]

I would look forward to watching the air marshal mash your face into the floor and put you in zip ties. That's entertainment!!!!

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[youthoftoday]

.aero ? How many domain extensions to you people need? It'll be .sex next...

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[Anonymous Coward]

Come on guys, get a life!

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[drinkypoo]

Those who score 180 are more likely to be found taking IQ tests than those who can score 20.

Negative. Over half of everyone considers themselves to be "above average" in spite of well over 50% of people falling within five points of a 100 I.Q. (meaning they are not significantly above or below average.)

Keep in mind also that more than half of all drivers consider themselves to be above average...

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[Anonymous Coward]

Actually no, Swissair drained money from Sabena first and forced Sabena to take mega orders in Airbus instead of Boeing (which Sabena historically used) to the benefice of SAirTechnics (the maintenance arm of Swissair). This was sweetened for the executive staff of Sabena with illegal tax free bonuses paid through the Bahama's, effectively blackmailing these executives when the decisions had to be made. When these mega orders needed actually to be paid Sabena fell apart (off course, it had only 1 year of profitability in its 70 years or so existence). Swissair counted on the fact that the Belgian government would pay for the losses and help out the "National icon". Not so this time, and Sabena went bankrupt, putting more than 6000 people out of work. In its fall the whole Swissair house of cards tumbled and fell. From the ashes Swiss and SN Brussels Airlines rose and it looks as if -almost- nothing is different. Except that several Swissair CEO's and executives are currently on trial and facing criminal charges for fraud and other of these nice things.

I am sorry, but the Swiss are the bad guys in this story. The Belgians -as usual- let themselves run over.

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[ultramk]

An urban myth would have the plane crashing and everyone dying. "The system crashed and then it restarted and everything was ok" is kind of weak for an urban myth. I think your call of "bullshit" is a bit premature. Virgin had similar systems in 2005, with the touch-screen, telephone/game pad unit. So did British Air.

And having seen more than my share of buggy interfaces, I'll say that it's not uncommon to have a field capable of displaying more digits than it needs to, even negative numbers. Coders are terribly sloppy interface designers.

As buggy as most of these systems are, frankly I am not surprised at this story.

M-

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[avdp]

And a bit more information than that (from my Belgian's eyes perspective). This whole happened after 9/11 when pretty much all airlines were struggling including Swissair (Europe suffered of a bad case of Too Many Airlines). So while Sabena's financials were poor, so were Swissair's. So the whole thing self-imploded. Sabena failed because Swissair was basically in the same lot as Sabena.

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[edxwelch]

No, Sabena was already in trouble when Swissair bought them. That was before the dot.com bubble burst when companies were habitaully paying billions to aquire worthless enterprises

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[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry to throw you off your high horse, but the system described is in use on various airlines around the world. I flew executive class on Air France from Sâo Paulo (Brazil) to Paris (France) last November, and they had a system exactly like the one described. Yes, they even had Tetris, but I didn't get to play it (I had my Nintendo DS and lots of games with me). The plane was an Airbus. I took some pictures inside the plane that show the IFE described.

http://www.caetano.eng.br/rigues/galerias/Seoul/sl ides/DSC03202.html - These are the back-seat screens. Touch sensitive, probably passive LCD (terrible viewing angle).

http://www.caetano.eng.br/rigues/galerias/Seoul/sl ides/DSC03206.html - This is the controller on the armrest. Note the directional and four action buttons on a SNES-like configuration (plus L & R on the back, not visible). And surely there is a fone (with a tiny LCD screen and keypad) on the back of the controller.

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[Unnngh!]

Once the number in the Tetris game rolls over to -128, the plane is supposed to go down by itself. If the authorities can guide the falling plane to land perfectly between the high rise and the parking garage, they will clear the row and move on to the next level...

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[dxlts]

haha. good one. =)

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[bigwave111]

It was a silly acquisition, but in the travel industry, I think it was a different situation. With all the airlines forming alliances (The Star Alliance, Air Alliance...etc) the perceived strength of the industry was going to be through size and affiliation, drawing people to specific airlines that could cover all their needs via shared incentives. Airlines bought up and merged to not be left out to struggle on their own. What the industry failed to realize was that their traditional practices were crap compared to forward-thinking, new-technology airlines such as Southwest, RyanAir, and a few years later, JetBlue. Compounded with the issues facing Swiss pensions and the downfall of Sabena, Alliances and mergers is what really caught Swissair unready for the fallout. No doubt Swissair had problems, but they were problems that could be subsidized by the government to cover. What it couldn't afford was paying for another airline's follies.

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[kthejoker]

The standard deviation of IQ is 15, but otherwise your ranges are generally correct.

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[Anonymous Coward]

You must be an American who rarely left the country. If you have flown most Asian airlines, you'd know that Emirates, Malaysian Airlines, Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific and some others have this in economy class.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh, and all this time I was under the impression that an IQ 40 is about the mineral range.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks. Not sure why I remembered 10 then. Guess I lost a few IQ points somewhere along the way!

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[rdoger6424]

Swissair Flight 111 was the flight I believe.

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[Alchemar]

That sounds like you are describing an IQ of exactly 100. An IQ of 100 is by definition the average person.

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[Anonymous Coward]

No. Now fuck off, idiot.

Slashdotted already?

[JaySSSS]

Unable to connect to database server

This either means that the username and password information in your settings.php file is incorrect or we can't contact the MySQL database server. This could mean your hosting provider's database server is down.

The MySQL error was: Too many connections.

Currently, the username is blogscio and the database server is localhost.

Are you sure you have the correct username and password?
Are you sure that you have typed the correct hostname?
Are you sure that the database server is running?
For more help, see the Installation and upgrading handbook. If you are unsure what these terms mean you should probably contact your hosting provider.

Re:Slashdotted already?

[icepick72]

Okay, I followed these instructions. Now what?

Re:Slashdotted already?

[f_raze13]

The real title: How to crash a personal blog Summary: Post a link to it on /.

Re:Slashdotted already?

[linuxmop]

So an article about hacking into insecure software is hosted on a site that displays information about its internals whenever there's high load... Fantastic.

Re:Slashdotted already?

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, look down at your keyboard. Just to the right of the key labeled ' and " if you're using US QWERTY, the - and _ key if you're using Dvorak, and some other key if you're elsewhere there is a abnormally large key. It probably has the letters "Enter" on it, along with an arrow that points left. If you press that key, it inserts blank lines. To wit, I will press "Enter" twice now:

See? The text is now further down than it was before, and there is empty space. If you insert these spaces every so often, it breaks the text into regions known as "paragraphs" that make it easier to read.

Re:Slashdotted already?

[Bob54321]

This was the case about 1 hour before it actually appeared on Slashdot. I was voting in the Firehose section and could not read the article.

Re:Slashdotted already?

[logicnazi]

It was on digg.

Looks like the airline got their own back.

[LighterShadeOfBlack]

TFA:

Unable to connect to database server

Re:Looks like the airline got their own back.

[h2g2bob]

Not coralized, but Google cache is avaliable.

Slashdotted....

[Anonymous Coward]

after 1 comment.

Slashdotted Already

[quanticle]

No replies and its already Slashdotted. And I thought nobody RTFAs.

Re:Slashdotted Already

[Anonymous Coward]

Ooh... so close. There are people that read slashdot articles. There are also people that post to slashdot discussions. I'll simply leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out what the intersection of those two groups is.

But seriously, those who generally read the article have less of a chance of getting a post higher up in the discussion that those who just jump in (Whether they jump in due to a high level of comfort in the subject, or sheer bravado.) This means that people who post early are more likely to have their post read. They are also much more likely to get a response, as there are people who want to use advantage of the nested system and get their post to show up higher on the page. Also, early posts are generally highly moderated, which I guess can be sort of a thrill to some people. So, the system is self reinforcing. Bringing trolls into the mix greatly amplifies the situation, especially FP! trolls.

Re:Slashdotted Already

[tendays]

People don't RTFA, they *LTFA* - Load TFA (and then close the window without reading).

It's the only way to have the slashdot effect work.

Profit?

[delirium of disorder]

0. Install wireless NIC to In-Flight Entertainment System
1. Connect to wireless WAN and Internet
2. Install web server and post link to slashdot
3. Short sell airline stock
4. ???
5. Profit!

Re:Profit?

[Burning1]

Holy crapshit. I think you've found the missing "???."

1. Steal underpants.
2. Short sell fruit of the loom stock.
3. Profit!

Re:Profit?

[c_forq]

Wouldn't it be the opposite? I think that the correct choice would be to buy stock, at least I hope people would buy new underwear instead of abandoning the idea.

Re:Profit?

[Anonymous Coward]

The market tends to be crazy, but I fail to see why increasing demand of a product would result in a decline in its stock price, which is what you seem to be implying by calling it 'short selling,' that is, the practice of trying to profit by betting on a stock's declining future value. A step 0. Buy Berkshire Hathaway (the holding corporation for Fruit of the Loom) is required to trade long, i.e., the way most people buy low and sell high. Gnomes better have some up front capital, that stock be pricey.

Re:Profit?

[cynvision]

more like

1. airline bomb scare involving small bottles of gel-like items
2. massive amounts of carry on toiletries thrown away across nations
3. buy Palmolive stock
4. profit!

I've done this

[mastercylender]

About 4 years ago I was on a flight from London to Shanghai on Virgin Atlantic. They had the super cool, million chanels of stuff, pause, rewind, play games with people in other seats, send SMS and e-mail system in the plane. I did something that caused it to crash and eventually it rebooted. When it rebooted it was obvously some sort of Linux system. So, it happens... just FYI

Re:I've done this

[stupid_is]

I think the entire Virgin fleet run on that system - but it's been upgraded to hide Tux on reboot nowadays (unfortunately it still needs to reboot with disturbing regularity). Still, a very good system when it works (which is most of the time). My main gripe with it is that I don't use the hand-out headphones, and when an announcement is made I get deafened as it cuts in at high volume.

Re:I've done this

[Cheesey]

Here is another picture of an in-flight entertainment system running Linux, seemingly booting up:

http://www.shelleytherepublican.com/2006/12/01/lin ux-the-reliability-myth-debunked.aspx

Re:I've done this

[Skater]

I love it - "Linux reliability - a liberal myth!"

Re:I've done this

[solevita]

As a European, let me be the first to say that this has never happened to me:

"Quick, Call the Cops - it's an Emergency"... "Oh no... this Linux based telephone has crashed, and I'm going to be beaten up by terrorists". Unfortunately this is an every day occurence in Europe thanks to their unreliable choice of operating system.

I for one welcome our new cop calling, Linux FUD'ing, terrorist fearing, overlords.

Last time I checked

[Anonymous Coward]

Avionics aren't programmers at all. Or even people. Or living things.

Re:Last time I checked

[Bastard of Subhumani]

Or plural.

Tooth-paste.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hugh Thompson, who was interviewed by Slashdot on the dangers of e-voting, now has a cool blog entry on how he was able to bring down the gaming/movie console on an airplane. He calls it one of the most interesting examples of a software 'abuse case' he has ever seen."

It was also one of the most violent episodes to happen on a plane when angry, tired (and trapped) passengers beat a hacker senseless.

Re:Tooth-paste.

[McFadden]

Good for them if they did. Annoying little prick.

Re:Tooth-paste.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, asshole much?

Re:Tooth-paste.

[Anonymous Coward]

you suck

Re:Tooth-paste.

[McFadden]

Yeah, mod me troll, and then admit you thought the same thing.

Re:Tooth-paste.

[AndroidCat]

But it was all open system, a team of passengers would call up a development environment, find and patch the bug... ("Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your captain speaking, is there a hacker on board?")

I once crashed a bowling alley....

[eggoeater]

No kidding... It was in the late 80s on a new electronic scoring system they had just installed.
I made a trivial and totally unintentional mistake in the set-up (punching in
number of players, their names, etc) and it brought down the whole system.

Re:I once crashed a bowling alley....

[innocent_white_lamb]

The bowling alley here runs their scoring systems on Amigas. No kidding. The guy who runs the place has a stack of them in the back room for spare parts. I have no idea what he will do when he runs out of spares...

Re:I once crashed a bowling alley....

[TheLink]

Use amiga emulators?

Re:I once crashed a bowling alley....

[MichaelSmith]

Use amiga emulators?

Don't laugh. The traffic signals in my city use PDP/11 emulators.

Re:I once crashed a bowling alley....

[zCyl]

The bowling alley here runs their scoring systems on Amigas. No kidding. The guy who runs the place has a stack of them in the back room for spare parts. I have no idea what he will do when he runs out of spares...

Go on strike?

Re:I once crashed a bowling alley....

[hoggoth]

> The bowling alley...
> ...runs out of spares

+1 unintentionally funny

Re:I once crashed a bowling alley....

[deroby]

I think the reason they use Amiga's is because of the hardware, not the software.
(easy to connect to TV-set, smooth 'real-time' images without the need of a xxGHz cpu, etc...)

Probably redundant by now, but...

[EvanED]

Hugh Thompson, who was interviewed by Slashdot on the dangers of e-voting, now has a cool blog entry on how he was able to bring down the gaming/movie console on an airplane

What, did they link /. to it?

Re:Probably redundant by now, but...

[elrous0]

Looks like the airline got its revenge.

-Eric

can you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

interfering with a flight = crime? ONE WAY TRIP TO GITMO

Re:can you say?

[AndroidCat]

Crashing the in-flight games?

That's a paddling.

Re:can you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about "chains and handcuffs" and the flight hostess?

Go look up "fortune" or something

[Dun Malg]

Fortunately the IFE system is totally disjoint from the avionics "Fortunately"? Hardly has anything to do with fortune. See, they made it separate on purpose. Might as well have said "fortunately the IFE system isn't connected to the pilot's brain" or "fortunately the IFE system isn't connected to the oxygen in the cabin", for all the fucking sense it makes.

Re:Go look up "fortune" or something

[honkycat]

Umm, I'm as big a fan of linguistic pedantry as anyone, but according to the OED:

fortunately, adv., In a fortunate manner; by or with good fortune, happily, luckily, successfully.

It certainly was good fortune for the passengers that it was separate. It's not that way by happenstance, but it's still fortunate. I think the word you want to get all huffy about is fortuitous.

fortuitous, a., That happens or is produced by fortune or chance; accidental, casual.

Re:Go look up "fortune" or something

[Dun Malg]

Umm, I'm as big a fan of linguistic pedantry as anyone, but according to the OED:

fortunately, adv., In a fortunate manner; by or with good fortune, happily, luckily, successfully.

It certainly was good fortune for the passengers that it was separate. Sorry, I have to disagree. "Fortune" strongly implies luck, even according to the OED. Luck or fortune have nothing to do with it. But even that is largely secondary to my primary point. There is no reasonable scenario which would ever put the IFE system in a position to affect the avionics, so mentioning the "fortune" of them being separate is utterly ridiculous.

Re:Go look up "fortune" or something

[SirTalon42]

As a previous poster higher up in the article mentioned, the entertainment system on a flight DID cause it to catch on fire, apparently each seat had its own system and it overheated and caused some issue with critical wires. It is still fortunate for the passengers that the system on their plane didn't have any flaws like that which COULD take down the flight.

Face it, you failed as a grammar nazi (but now you get a second chance to redeem yourself by correcting my mistakes in grammar ;-)

Re:Go look up "fortune" or something

[idonthack]

Obviously you've never worked with people that write software.

Re:Go look up "fortune" or something

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you have some strong opinion about what "ought not" be connected on an airplane and use such compelling language like "for all the fucking sense it makes" then proceed to use to use some half-assed *adverb* argument to debunk a *technical* issue, still doesn't mean there isn't a potential hazard in the system your limited imagination or lack of expertise can't grasp. I you are an avionics engineer, it probably should make me feel better (don't bother -- being slashdot, I wouldn't believe you if you said you were anyway) -- but, based on your lack of a meaningful argument on this technical issue, that possibility actually worries me more.

Re:Go look up "fortune" or something

[Eivind]

I crashed IIS the other day with a long-running memory-consuming script. Fortunately the crash didn't affect any of the nuclear warheads on the planet. :-)

Re:Go look up "fortune" or something

[Anonymous Coward]

if the airplane was fitted with MS Windows Airplane Edition, then obviously the IFE would be connected to the cabin air, so external air temperature could be updated to the IFE via an Active-X plugin that, if crashed, kills the artificial horizon gauge.

Re:Go look up "fortune" or something

[kv9]

There is no reasonable scenario which would ever put the IFE system in a position to affect the avionics, so mentioning the "fortune" of them being separate is utterly ridiculous.

and fortunately, they didn't.

Re:Go look up "fortune" or something

[Elkboy]

Unfortunately the electronic voting systems are not totally disjointed from the election system in the same way.

Re:Go look up "fortune" or something

[scopius]

Fortunately, the IFE system isn't connected to the button in the White House that starts a full-scale nuclear war.

Re:Go look up "fortune" or something

[radtea]

There is no reasonable scenario which would ever put the IFE system in a position to affect the avionics

You are committing the logical fallacy of "Argumentum ad Stultum": argument from stupidity.

Arguments that commit this fallacy have the form:

It would be stupid to do X
No one would ever do anything stupid
------------
Therefore no one would ever do X

The second premise is so obviously false it hardly needs mention.

So, simply because there is no reasonable scenario that would put the IFE system in a position of affecting the avionics does not mean there is no probable scenario in which this could occur. It requires good engineering, good management and yes, good luck, to ensure independence. Every engineer knows that we must try to eliminate luck from the process and must never, ever rely on it, but also that it will always be a factor.

One obvious way in which the IFE could affect the avionics is via coupled grounds. Grounding in aircraft is never simple, and maintaining fully independent power supplies has been a challenge for IFE and avionics engineers. IIRC the 777 was delayed for a while due to the need to do some redesign on the power systems to ensure independence was retained. In any system so complex there will always be an element of luck, despite the engineer's best efforts.

Re:Go look up "fortune" or something

[Chops]

Considering that the entire point of the article is the discovery that the airplane's computer system is poorly designed, I'd say it was less "fortunately" as in "by random luck, it turns out the systems are separate" and more "fortunately" as in "well, as luck would have it, they're not total idiots, and they made the systems separate."

It's not unheard-of, after all, for software failures to cascade from trivial areas to more vital areas in passenger craft.

Re:Go look up "fortune" or something

[Intron]

"There is no reasonable scenario which would ever put the IFE system in a position to affect the avionics"

You're right. That would be as stupid as running electrical wires through a fuel tank.

Re:Go look up "fortune" or something

[Anonymous Coward]

Seeing as the author had nothing to do with designing or building the software or the avionics, and the word "fortunately" is not being used to describe how the software or avionics were designed or built, it was an entirely appropriate use of the word.

Old news

[basslineshift]

I read this somewhere over a week ago it seems.

Re:Old news

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to slashdot. You must be new around here.

Re:Old news

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, welcome our new-around-here, dupe-remembering overlords.

Re:Old news

[JazzLad]

Newer than the stories, anyway ;)

Not a big surprise

[alshithead]

This is a system someone thought would not be attacked. Someone was obviously wrong. All systems need to be considered as targets and protected as best they can. There is always a trade off of security versus accessibility but I don't see that as the problem in this case. They went cheap, quick, and dirty and put a system into place where security was a minor concern at best.

Re:Not a big surprise

[Detritus]

It doesn't have to be an "attack", it can be something as simple as a stuck switch or a book placed on top of a keyboard. On an airplane, you have to consider the two-year-old who wants to play with the pretty buttons.

Re:Not a big surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

There is always a trade off of security versus accessibility.

No there isn't. The system minus this bug is just as accessible as the system with this bug.

Re:Not a big surprise

[1u3hr]

All systems need to be considered as targets and protected as best they can.

Why bother spending time and money protecting a Tetris system? In TFA, it failed, they reboot, it works. Sorry if you lose your high-score.

Re:Not a big surprise

[alan.briolat]

I've recently come across a similar situation of "nobody will attack this anyway" being good enough for production software. At one of the bus stops on the road that runs through the university I go to, there is an public information terminal. It has an admin panel. Firstly, to get to this admin panel, all you have to to is tap the top-right of the touchscreen - yup, the same top-right you repeatedly hit to back out of screens. Secondly, only a username is required, not a password. And finally, they didn't escape input values at all, so entering

' or '1

results in a successful login. Usually when I'm bored and waiting for a bus I submit bogus maintenance call-out requests. Pointless, I know, but I figure some day they will find it annoying enough to fix it.

Re:Not a big surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously this will lead to the TSA declaring two-year-olds as dangerous as shampoo, and forcing people to dump them in the trash before boarding their flights.

Re:The blog post

[Gothic_Walrus]

Shit. Beaten to it multiple times in the space of the two minutes it took me to put my post together. So much for noble intentions... >_

TFA?

[Pikoro]

Wow, 5 entire copies of TFA in the comments so far... Do you people not browse the comments before you post?

Carefull, this may encourage people to actually RTFA...

Re:TFA?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called karma whoring. They're all fishing to try and be the one whose copy of the TFA gets modded up, ignoring the fact that by doing so they're violating copyright.

Re:TFA?

[Barny]

If their post of the article is modded up funny it would be considered parody though :P

Re:TFA?

[JonathanR]

Frist Post!

Hm.

[JoshJ]

I'm not so sure I'd want to put my name out there as "the guy who brought down the computers on a plane". He'll be lucky not to land on the no-fly list, I think.

Re:Hm.

[f00Dave]

I'm not so sure I'd want to put my name out there as "the guy who brought down the computers on a plane". He'll be lucky not to land on the no-fly list, I think.

Not anymore ... thank you, Slashdot, for the alt-press exposure! -grin-

Re:Hm.

[evilviper]

I'm not so sure I'd want to put my name out there as "the guy who brought down the computers on a plane"

A sad commentary on the state of freedom in this country.

Re:Hm.

[springbox]

Well, I think that's a really sad idea. I noticed people in the article's comments were basically saying the same thing, as if he reached into the system and altered the code to do something bad. He crashed a non-critical system that was either poorly written or poorly tested using the expected input devices. Just goes to show how paranoid some people have become.

Re:Hm.

[cheezedawg]

A sad commentary on the state of freedom in this country.

It is absurd to treat the parent's post as anything other than the anonymous and hyperbolic ramblings that they are. The post is not a commentary on anything (well, a meaningful commentary at least).

Re:Hm.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is absurd to treat the parent's post as anything other than the anonymous and hyperbolic ramblings that they are.

Unless, of course, they come true. History shows us that people who discover vulnerabilities and report widely on them tend to get in trouble, especially when its an exploit in a system whose operator is unaccustomed to dealing with vulnerability reports.

Re:Hm.

[StikyPad]

Hardly. The guy who gets arrested for carrying a bottle of water? Sure, that's sad. The old woman who has to lay on the ground while her wheelchair is disassembled and inspected for explosives? Absolutely. Deplorable.

But the guy who intentionally crashes the IFE system? Not a chance. That the IFE is unrelated to vital systems is completely beside the point -- he had wanton disregard for equipment that was not his, and then he bragged about it. That's grounds for puntitive action right there, and I wouldn't fault the airline from barring him from future flights indefinately if they chose to.

Re:Hm.

[evilviper]

But the guy who intentionally crashes the IFE system?

He was playing around with options of a tetris game. He wasn't TRYING to crash the system.

and then he bragged about it.

Illustrating bad programming != bragging

You've got a very very strange view of the world.

Re:Hm.

[StikyPad]

He was playing around with options of a tetris game. He wasn't TRYING to crash the system.

He was demonstrating wantonly reckless behavior i.e., a malicious lack of concern for the well-being or property of others. He knew, or should have known, that his actions would have a deleterious effect, and admitted as much.

I now had the software exactly where I wanted it, in an unintended state; the illegal value 5 was now in my target field. I then continue to increment the value by pressing the + button until I get to 127 and then I pause for a moment of reflection. I kicked back a small bag of peanuts and in the interest of science I boldly pressed the + button once more.

That he didn't anticipate crashing the entire system is irrelevant. He knew what he was doing, and he knew that it constituted intentional abuse and/or misuse of other's property.

Illustrating bad programming != bragging

No, posting about it in a blog == bragging.

You don't illustrate bad construction by kicking in a flimsy door in a house you don't own.

You've got a very, very strange sense of ethics.

Re:Hm.

[evilviper]

a malicious lack of concern for the well-being or property

The fact that an entertainment system was offline for a few seconds isn't exactly destruction of property.

With the ridiculous slant you're putting on property rights, you could have someone shot for standing on the public sidewalk in-front of your house, potentially making it more difficult for someone to pass by...

That he didn't anticipate crashing the entire system is irrelevant.

Quite the opposite. There isn't even the slightest claim of "abuse" if he hadn't crashed the system. If he just figured out a way to cheat at tetris, even your exaggerated bullshit claims wouldn't have the slightest of basis.

No, posting about it in a blog == bragging.

I see. So political blogs == bragging. News Blogs == Bragging. Katrina survivor blogs == bragging.

You don't illustrate bad construction by kicking in a flimsy door in a house you don't own.

The analog couldn't be further off the mark if you tried.

Re:Hm.

[StikyPad]

He wasn't trying to cheat, else he would have simply started the game rather than running up the counter, but even if he was trying to cheat, that argument is weak. Cheating == abusing the system.

You are correct that if it had not crashed there would be no damage, but crash it did. I might not intend to hit someone while swinging my arms wildly, and if I don't, no harm no foul, but if I DO, then I'm liable. Sure, it was minor damage with no lasting effects on the system, but it degraded the experience for 400 other paying customers, and THAT is actual damage, just like peeing in the soup. I'm not saying the guy should be locked up, or even prosecuted, and I certainly never advocated that he be shot. Your straw man arguments and resorts to profanity do you more discredit than I possibly could. I simply said that the airline banning him from further flights would be a reasonable response given the circumstances. The airline has the right to refuse service, and his actions seem like reasonable grounds to refuse service.

Good day.

There is a NAME for the bug...

[UnknownSoldier]

It's called a 'fencepost' bug, or 'off-by-one' bug.

Dam lazy programmers not using Assert() these days... :)

(And yes, I am one, programmer that is, not lazy :)

Re:There is a NAME for the bug...

[AndroidCat]

And when you compile the code in release, where is your friend now?

Re:There is a NAME for the bug...

[RAMMS EIN]

``Dam lazy programmers not using Assert() these days... :)''

Because we all know that the constraint that you got wrong in the actual code will be correct in the assert. Right? Right?!

Re:There is a NAME for the bug...

[ArsenneLupin]

``Dam lazy programmers not using Assert() these days... :)''

Because we all know that the constraint that you got wrong in the actual code will be correct in the assert. Right? Right?! Moreover, an assert would not have fixed this particular problem. The purpose of an assert is to highlight errors by making the code crash right away as soon as an unexpected condition arises, rather than dragging the error condition along, and only crash much later. In our case, this would have made the screens blank as soon as he pressed 5...

Re:There is a NAME for the bug...

[Danny Rathjens]

Right there with him if he is a game developer apparently. :) I boot out of linux into windows once in a blue moon to play a game and have been quite surprised to see code that millions of dollars went into developing like WoW or FFXI throwing assertion errors. Apparently they compile release builds with assertions enabled nowadays!

Re:There is a NAME for the bug...

[UnknownSoldier]

And we all know you tested the _boundary_ conditions. Right? Right!?

Re:There is a NAME for the bug...

[WNight]

But if the code died as soon as the value was out of range testing would be more likely to find the root problem.

I don't know why people take asserts out of "production" code. I'd always rather something failed the instant there was a problem rather than dying ten minutes later when I try to save my data. Of course, an assert in a user application could trigger a dump of their data to a recovery file or something.

Re:There is a NAME for the bug...

[burnttoy]

Probably wouldn't fire anyway. How often have you seen...

#ifdef DEBUG
#define ASSERT(x)
#else
#define ASSERT(x) ... a real definition goes here.
#endif ...but the release builds do not define DEBUG... From what I've seen (and, good god, I've seen some code) that's fairly typical programming.

ASSERTS are all well and good but not as useful as they seem for 2 reasons. Firstly the assert would never have been fired in the IFE software as, clearly, nobody tested this code path anyway and secondly if an assert _does_ fire in a release build what exactly is the code supposed to do!? Chances are the code is stiffed at that point so there's little point in continuing, in fact that would defeat the purpose of the assert as it is known that the program contains an invalid state.

Maybe a far better solution would've been code reuse e.g. the reusing of a "range" object/class/prototype/contract/template (whatever is fashionable this week) with a specified _AND TESTED_ min and max range.

Anyway... I was just having my 10:39AM thoughts & coffee.

Re:There is a NAME for the bug...

[s31523]

It is not due to lazy, it is due to cost/schedule. As other posts point out the levels of safety that software is classified to ranges from "bring the plane down" to "who gives a shit". The later software doesn't get the thorough verification, i.e. exhaustive testing with robust test cases along with structural coverage analysis and what not, that higher levels get. The engineers would love to put more love into the these lower safety level software elements, but the issue is cost and management usually prevents the work. Risk = probability of event x severity of event, and when the risk is low and the severity of the event is low, not much work is done to reduce the probability of the event (i.e. software verification), its just economics.

Re:There is a NAME for the bug...

[Old Wolf]

Probably wouldn't fire anyway. How often have you seen...

#ifdef DEBUG
#define ASSERT(x)
#else
#define ASSERT(x) ... a real definition goes here.
#endif


Hopefully never!
1) C already contains a macro 'assert()' which does nothing if NDEBUG is defined, and aborts the program with an error otherwise, so you would be reinventing the wheel
2) If you detect the program is in an invalid state in a release version, why would you want to continue execution as if nothing were wrong??

Avionics programmers

[Okian Warrior]

Okay, I *am* an avionics programmer. Here's some background.

FAA regulations categorize software in 5 different levels of criticality, depending on how a failure of the software would affect the safety of the plane. Level "A" software is reserved for things like the "low fuel" alarm, which could potentially knock the plane out of the air on failure, to level "C" for things like the cabin pressurization system where the pilots can take emergency actions to compensate, to level "E" for things like the microwave in the kitchen.

(Beware: I gloss over a few details for clarity.)

The higher levels of software criticality have progressively higher levels of standards for testing. In the case of level-A software, each individual line of code must be examined for correctness in the context of the rest of the code. Each line of code must be executed as part of testing and actively shown to be correct, and each line of code must be individually code reviewed by another engineer.

At the higher levels of software, limit testing is required for all function arguments and if-statements. Multiple-clause if statements such as "if A and B but not C" must be tested for all combinations of the subject clauses, and so on.

In addition to this, all avionics software I've worked on makes a distinction between showing erroneous information and showing *no* information (or, working incorrectly versus not working at all). If the digital altimeter goes blank, the pilots will notice and can take corrective action. If the altimeter is reading the wrong information, then that's a critical failure which could cause an accident.

Thus, avionics software innards are heavily checked throughout execution to ensure proper operation, and any failure causes the system to immediately go offline. All function arguments are ASSERT'ed for correct range, all calculations are checked for range and accuracy, &c.

The entertainment system, and in particular a game within the entertainment system, is almost certainly a level-E software component, and so is not required to go through such rigorous testing. The hardware has to be shown to not interfere with the avionics and that's about it.

Re:Avionics programmers

[waded]

And what is more complex... "if A and B and not C", or something that asserts that it's actually supposed to be "if A and B and C"... what requires more tests? Are the same standards applied to the level-A test software?

Re:Avionics programmers

[Voice of Meson]

Interesting stuff this critical code. When I started out as a grad at a large Aerospace company we were given shiploads of Flight Control Computer code to unit test for a new(ish) fighter aircraft. Most of the stuff we worked with was what you have described as 'Level A' code but I didn't really understand what it all meant at the time.

Anyway, the level of testing required was very, very high. I say that even though we were grads working on it, because it was not our choice what to test and what to leave, and they were done multiple times with different people, the the branches, lines run etc compared. It was the lowest level of the software tests and everything was in modules about 30 lines long that needed 100% coverage, every logical combination tested out etc. Plus the languages they used (ADA95, fortran(77?) and assembly) were cut down to remove anything too untestable. I think 'while' loops were out because, as opposed to 'for's, there is a chance of a infinite loop. That sort of stuff. Would be a nightmare to code in.

In not sure how other FCC's usually are, but interestingly this one had 4 CPU's with a fifth 'controlling' one or something and basically each calculation would be performed on all 4 then the results correlated and the majority answer taken. I guess to protect it from a freakish glitch or maybe some deliberate interferance? Not sure, but surely accurate.

Fly-By-Wire - It's not just the software that crashes.

Re:Avionics programmers

[unts]

From the mighty Wikipedia:

The hardware of a typical autopilot is a set of five 80386 CPUs, each on its own printed circuit board. The 80386 is an inexpensive, well-tested design that can implement a true virtual computer. New versions are being implemented that are radiation-resistant and hardened for aerospace use, but this aged computer design is intentionally favored because it is inexpensive and its reliability and software behavior are well-characterized.

If it ain't broke...

Re:Avionics programmers

[First Person]

Thanks for the explanation. Comments like that are why I read /.

Re:Avionics programmers

[CompMD]

I work with a $100,000 helicopter UAV that is controlled by a 486DX-33 with 8MB of RAM that boots off a 128MB CF. The CF has linux and all navigation and flight control software. She flies great.

Re:Avionics programmers

[spyrochaete]

If it ain't broke...

... just increment by 1

Re:Avionics programmers

[Anonymous Coward]

But, if you didn't press the "turbo" button, it would go a lot slower, right? :)

Re:Avionics programmers

[pjt33]

I think 'while' loops were out because, as opposed to 'for's, there is a chance of a infinite loop.

Given that in most languages the semantics of a for loop are an initialisation block and a while loop, I wonder what you mean here.

Re:Avionics programmers

[Voice of Meson]

It just makes it safer, in that it is easier to see what's going on.

for(int i=0; i< 100; i++)
{
  // Do stuff, and for the love of god dont mess with i. As long as you don't, this loop will ALWAYS exit.
  // And importantly, the number of itterations is immediately clear.
}

while (thisValue < 100)
{
  // Need to explicitly increment thisValue in here. If you stuff that up its infinite.
}

The compiler may turn it into the same code but that is irrelevant. What is important is that one is safer and more testable than the other. When it's used for a purpose like controlling an aircraft at almost mach 2 you dont want any surprises. It also assumes that you don't use a variable for the for loop limit, which is why they had extensive coding standards that said what you could and couldn't do.

As a side note...

[Rackemup]

On a recent Air Canada flight the flight attendant actually came on the PA to tell everyone that the in-flight entertainment system was being turned on for our use. She then proceeded to tell us to be sure we didn't push 4 of the buttons on the main screen or else the screen at your seat would crash and they would be unable to fix it in flight. I thought it strange that a computer entertainment system installed in an aircraft would be a "work in progress" instead of just installing a full-functional system. Among the buttons we were not to touch? Weather and Flight tracking...of course.

Re:As a side note...

[mspohr]

Last week I flew from SFO to Frankfurt on Lufthansa. Halfway through the 12 hour flight the entire entertainment system crashed and had to be reset... Imagine my surprise to see the Windows CE boot sequence on my screen...

I can't believe that people in the real world build systems based on such a piece of crap.

Re:As a side note...

[slacktide]

I wholeheartedly agree. You may find this picture relevant to your interests, I took it on Dec. 26 2006, onboard a Delta Airlines flight from New York to Seattle.

http://i12.tinypic.com/2j17rc4.jpg

The IFE had to be rebooted 3 or 4 times during a 5 hour flight, some people's screens never worked at all. Luckly I caught a snapshot of the offensive software's startup screen.

Re:As a side note...

[Bob54321]

I may have been hallucinating (I don't like flying a consequently drink lots...) but I'm sure the Qantas IFE runs on Linux.

Re:As a side note...

[atomicstrawberry]

Maybe the Air Canada aircraft I flew on last time were the exception rather than the rule, but I'm not at all surprised to hear something like this. They were clearly in drastic need of some upgrades. I just hope that they were skimping on maintaining the unimportant systems in order to afford to maintain the critical systems.

Re:As a side note...

[Don_dumb]

She then proceeded to tell us to be sure we didn't push 4 of the buttons on the main screen or else the screen at your seat would crash and they would be unable to fix it in flight.

So what did happen when you pressed the buttons?

Re:As a side note...

[elrous0]

She just didn't want you to know that the Captain had gone bonkers and was flying you straight toward a hurricane.

-Eric

Re:As a side note...

[NotTheNickIWanted]

A small black light lit up black.

Re:As a side note...

[Nasarius]

Congratulations, you've learned that you can write shit software on top of any OS.

Proof?

[Anonymous Coward]

That reads like a great story, but where is the proof that it actually happened... or are we supposed to believe it because it was on the internets? Having already seen this story a number of times on other blogs, ALL of them with advertising, the author certainly would have a good profitable reason to make up the story.

Bug in the article too!

[mr_zorg]

0 I think the author meant 0 < value <= 5 instead. If it was truely as written, it should accept any number, since that basically means 0 (value = 5) and 0 is always 5...

Re:Bug in the article too!

[mr_zorg]

Ack, perhaps the author did exactly what I just did. Forgot to escape his < symbols... What I meant to say was:

0 < value = 5

I think the author meant 0 < value <= 5 instead. If it was truely as written, it should accept any number, since that basically means 0 < (value = 5) and 0 is always < 5...

Shoulda hit "preview". Doh.

Re:Bug in the article too!

[Anonymous Coward]

He was giving it as an example of an off by one error, not as what could have possibly been in the system.

Okay

[Mathness]

Okay, who entered the number 5 and kept pushing +? Congratulation, you just crashed the server.

Mirrordot to the rescue

[idonthack]

http://mirrordot.org/stories/78b27588587fb8b086acd 346451d845a/index.html

Yeah tell me about it ....

[taniwha]

I fly across the pacific a few times every year and they always warn people to take it easy and be patient with the IFE "or it will crash" - which is certainly true - without trying I managed to spend 10 hours staring at a Windows CE "some thing bad happened" dialog box .... couldn't even turn the damn thing off when I wanted to sleep

Re:Yeah tell me about it ....

[iocat]

IFEs are basically like the movie WarGames. The only way to win is not to play. Put it on the map, turn on your iPod, and open a book or DS or PSP.

Re:Yeah tell me about it ....

[CmdrGravy]

The map is almost always the most interesting thing on those devices. I'd really like them to have external cameras linked up to it as well, I've seen the option for this on some systems but it never seems to be working.

Re:Yeah tell me about it ....

[Anonymous Coward]

As you can see here, some IFE systems run Linux and they crash too.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/milliped/116393699/

Re:Yeah tell me about it ....

[chrisjwray]

I flew to Crete (Heraklion) from Gatwick in 2002, while we didn't have IFE's on the seatbacks there was a camera in the nosegear which came on the TV monitors on takeoff and landing. This is the only flight Ive ever been on with this feature but it was _very_ cool.

Bring Down

[Tablizer]

FBI spider sees 3 words: "bring down plane", and Dept. Homeland Security goes nuts.

Re:Bring Down

[Anonymous Coward]

And you didn't quote that hot string as AC? You're fucked now :(

Re:Bring Down

[bill_mcgonigle]

FBI spider sees 3 words: "bring down plane", and Dept. Homeland Security goes nuts.

Don't worry -- he wrote it in English.

Some of these systems run Linux, and how I got bla

[Samarian Hillbilly]

I was coming back from a conference wearing a hat with a promenent penguin on it, when our in-flight system crashed. As it was re-booting it was obvious to some of the more tech-minded passengers that it was running through the Linux boot sequence. I started hearing calls of "lynch the guy with the penguin hat", from the seats behind me...

You can tell it's Linux when it crashes.

[VirtualSquid]

I suspect it might be fairly common for seat-back computers to crash?
I don't know enough about Linux to understand what it said on my screen when it was trying (and failing) to boot back up again:
http://washedashore.com/misc/inflight_error.jpg
(This was April 23, 2005, on a flight from Bucuresti Romania to NYC.)
-Ben

Re:You can tell it's Linux when it crashes.

[newt0311]

If I had to guess, I'd say that that was a custom initrd running through and testing the very basic commands (echo, ldd, etc.) to make sure that those worked. This is probably an embedded, super cut down system, since this would not make any sense to do in a normal desktop.

Re:You can tell it's Linux when it crashes.

[iabervon]

Looks like the terminal was doing fine, but the server was down so it didn't have anything to run.

Re:You can tell it's Linux when it crashes.

[greyc]

The output is pretty clearly that of a shell script being executed with 'set -x'. There's quite a bit of debug output there; aside from that, it seems to be doing little aside from setting a few environmental variables.

The ldd call would make sense for debug output, but interestingly it doesn't print anything like what ldd would. In fact, it likely isn't the usual ldd(1), but another binary that happens to have the same name; especially since the debug output stops there, suggesting that it didn't return and the following output was generated by that ldd process, or its children.

The Debug output could have been deactivated with a 'set +x', but before the deactivation went through that command itself would have been printed, so that's out. What is possible, though, is that the ldd was in fact the last command executed in a subshell, and the parent (which wasn't even necessarily a shell), wasn't set up to produce that kind of debug output.

A search for "seatapps" brings up very few results, those apparently being first-hand accounts of people who have seen similar screens during a flight, suggesting that the whole setup, as you suggested, highly specific and non-standard.

Re:You can tell it's Linux when it crashes.

[Anonymous Coward]

svc: bad direction 1718580590, dropping request

Translation: Linux thought the plane was heading in a bad direction and requested avionics to drop the plane. Luckily a bug in avionics prevented that request from being fulfilled, or you wouldn't be on slashdot today.

Re:You can tell it's Linux when it crashes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does one of the IP addresses belong to the US Naval Reseach Labs & another to BBN Communications? Hmmm when I dig further it looks like BBN might have developed the software and have re-used IP addrs from one of their other project for the navy!.

~AC

Re:You can tell it's Linux when it crashes.

[AndroidCat]

Are you sure that they didn't just customize the CE blue screen code to display that instead?

Re:You can tell it's Linux when it crashes.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a Panasonic system which has seats running Busybox linux which is kept within a small amount of flash memory. When the seats boot up they connect to one of two head-end servers (which one depends on aircraft layout), at which point the servers can broadcast data back down to the seats if necessary. 'airsurf' is the name of the IFE application used on this system.

intent...

[Animaether]

sure, it wasn't critical - and I'd hate to have him get on a no-fly list or get fined or be banned from that airline.. or whatever.

But this isn't just some kid accidentally hitting that remote, changing things to 5, then playing.. or then realizing they can hit up a few more times.. and then playing.

This guy actually knew, in his mind, what was going on.. Not only that... at the point where things would go wrong, he actually paused, sat back, made the change that might make things go wrong and enjoyed the half-expected result.

That's intent, right there. If nothing else, he should be slapped around for making the rest of the cabin annoyed because their in-flight entertainment was interrupted for no good reason whatsoever - causing a flight attendant to be occupied with a task he/she should not have been occupied with, etc. etc.

If this guy wants to have fun with mucking about with systems, have him get his own in-flight entertainment system, or apply for a job at a place that makes these things / the software :P

That said.. yay that he found the bug.. I hope they fixed it now.

Re:intent...

[NtroP]

... If nothing else, he should be slapped around...

If he should be "slapped around" then the companies that designed the system, wrote the system, tested the system and installed the system should be criminally liable. But then again, if we held software companies liable for selling shit software, Microsoft would have been out of business a long time ago.

As a programmer, I try to be as careful as possible. I try to keep up with best practices. I try to anticipate what might be passed as input to everything, and *then* I try to remember that I can't anticipate everything and use techniques to reduce or eliminate the impact of bad data. Even so, I still insist that someone else review my code and have someone else test it. When I get reports of some user finding a bug or vulnerability, my first response is "WTF? Why would they ever think to do that?" My next response is to come back down off my high horse and realize that I'd made a mistake and take it as a challenge to fix it.

It wasn't always that way, but I've been doing this stuff for over 20 years and I've come to realize that even the most "trivial" program or portion of code can be enough of a chink in an app's armor to give a miscreant a toe hold.

I crashed a gas station

[Anonymous Coward]

I crashed out a whole gas station.. whoops. I wasn't trying to find a corner case, it just had very very VERY crappy code apparently. My apologies if the writer of the code reads slashdot, but seriously, come on! 8-) I think the instructions said to select grade of gas, select inside or outside, and THEN put the gas nozzle into the car. What I did (I think) was pull the nozzle, push "pay inside", then the grade. Anyway, I didn't do anything weird like mash buttons or anything, I just did it not in the exact order listed. The screen blanked out! OK, so I pulled out and went to the next pump. It was dead too! I drove by the others and saw they were all dead. Whoops. Yeah.. I left and went to a working gas station then. I've used the same style pumps (usually not doing the right order still) and haven't had them crash, so I think the software has been improved. But holy crap! You'd think it would have been SLIGHTLY tested before it was put in the field.

Geek Moron

[Anonymous Coward]

So what do you do for X hours on a flight after the entertainment is gone, you selfish prick?! Hope the guy gets arrested when he lands! Anyone got a keylogger for this yet?

Future Flight.....

[IHC Navistar]

Pilot: "Dave, set the autopilot for LAX so we'll be on time. We don't want to be late."

(click, click)

Autopilot: "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that."

Abuse case

[tcdk]

He calls it one of the most interesting examples of a software 'abuse case' he has ever seen. He doesn't get out much.... oh, on a plane?

I think it's more of a case of bad quality control. If the testing environment of the developers had contained a single "lets throw an exception" or maybe a "lets try to lock up a process at 100%" test, they would have see that they needed to at a bit of exception handling (in the first case).

But writing good test cases can be hard.

Anyway. I've seen code like this tons of times. Some people apparently have issues with (how hard can it be), so they use equal instead, but one day, the step value is changed from 1 to 2 (make it go directly from 99 to 101), or some routine fails and returns a default value of -1. And suddenly the code is in the twilight zone.

Anyway^2, I actually did find this rather un-interesting.

Re:Abuse case

[iamacat]

Some people apparently have issues with (how hard can it be)

Very hard, apparently.

Re:Abuse case

[tcdk]

Du'h - Nemesis if anything. Here are the missing character: > <

Re:Abuse case

[SanityInAnarchy]

one day, the step value is changed from 1 to 2 (make it go directly from 99 to 101), or some routine fails and returns a default value of -1. And suddenly the code is in the twilight zone.

Seems to me all a < or > would do is prevent it from going farther than 101 or -1, unless you specifically coded with the assumption that it might one day become some random, weird value.

And of course, the right way to prevent against that is to make it an object and wrap it in an interface which doesn't allow you to step by 2 without changing the object. Changing the object implies that you're going to run the test cases, or adjust them and then run them, so at least in the case of changing step value from 1 to 2, you would catch it in your test suite.

And nothing should ever use a return value to indicate an error situation, if you're in anything resembling a decent language. If you run into APIs that like to do that, build wrappers which actually throw exceptions.

Way too much effort

[plsuh]

Deliberately crashing the IFE system is no great accomplishment. At least some of the darn things crash themselves just fine with no abuse. I was on a Virgin Atlantic flight from Washington, DC to London a couple of years ago, and the IFE systems would crash on a regular basis by groups of four seats. You could be blissfully watching a movie and then poof, everything goes dark. The flight attendant would reset the system and then sometimes it would come back up and other times it would just sit there at a dark screen. Uptimes varied from 10 minutes to a couple of hours. Very, very frustrating, both for the kids trying to play but getting frustrated and cranky and for the parents trying to keep their sanity during an eight hour flight.

--Paul

Re:Way too much effort

[Animats]

Virgin Atlantic flight ... to London a couple of years ago

What, that low-end system with an Nintendo NES emulator and an analog TV tuner, run from an under-the-seat box that cuts into legroom?

cookie monster

[Tablizer]

"Today, Sesame Street was brought down by the number 5"

The word wasn't "fortune"

[Foerstner]

The word wasn't "fortune," though. It was "fortunately." Unlike "fortune," "fortunately" does not imply that luck was involved. It simply means that it was a beneficial arrangement. The sentence in the summary does not imply, in any way, that mere luck is responsible for the arrangement of the avionics and entertainment systems. You invented that ridiculousness on your own. "Fortunately" is derived from "fortune," but that does not mean that they carry the same meaning, as any dictionary will tell you.

Another example...if I give you "a murderous look" it does not mean (or even imply) that I killed you, attempted to kill you, or even contemplated a violent act toward you. "Murder" and "murderous" are not as close in definition as they are in derivation.

Not connected to the avionics system....

[stox]

but it is connected to the sewage control system. Now we know the mysterious source of ice falling from the skies lately. Could it be?

TSA

[sidb]

Who let that guy onto the plane with a brain over 3 ounces? Don't they know that thing is a deadly weapon? Heads are going to roll.

Similar Crash

[Roger W Moore]

Several years ago I managed to crash an in flight entertainment system on a united flight completely inadvertently. The system in question required only had a few games for free with the rest costing money to unlock. Since I objected to having to pay for the games I restricted myself to the free games until suddenly in the middle of a game of pong it got more and more sluggish until the screen freezes, goes black and the system reset itself. I went back into pong, cranked up the number of balls to the max allowed (4 IIRC) and noticed that now it would crash within a minute or two.

Playing around (there really was nothing better to do) I found that quickly wiggling the bat around with 4 balls on the screen would crash the system. After about the 4th or 5th crash the system came back up but this time with all the games enabled! After that I was careful not to crash the system but still about 30 minutes from landing it crashed again and came back up with only the free games.

I wondered at the time how such an easily triggered failure could have been overlooked. Unlike the article my crash only affected my screen...but at least there was some beneficial affect!

Re:Similar Crash

[Marcos Eliziario]

Bad Man, Bad!
Now wait for the folks from IFEAA (IFE Association of America) to send their lawyers at you branding copies of the DMCA and calling you a pirate.

The Airline and Aircraft

[Spritzer]

Based on the description of the IFE system and having recently flown and played a version of Tetris which fits his description ..... Delta 767 I'll see if I can confirm the hack without the crash (I guess I'm just too nice) next week.

Re:The Airline and Aircraft

[Yunzil]

Funnily enough I flew back from London to DC today on a British Air 747. I tried to access the games and just got a screen saying, "Sorry, games are unavailable". I blame Slashdot. >:(

Peanuts.....

[Taulin]

This would be all true and believable if it weren't for the fact that airlines stopped serving peanuts on flights a few years ago due to allergy complaints. If you have had peanuts served to you lately, let me know what airline it was because I miss them!

Re:Peanuts.....

[Touqen]

It's still possible to get roasted peanuts on Southwest. Though since they recommend you bring your own food on Southwest you could just bring your own peanuts.

Re:Peanuts.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure it's about the allergy thing?

It's not like they come to your seat and force the packet down your throat. :(

Re:Peanuts.....

[Alioth]

I flew on Southwest from Houston to SLC in January this year, and on each leg of the flight (it was one of those 'train' flights where they stop at a few airports on the way, as the flight progresses across the country - Houston was its second stop, then ABQ, then SLC, then it went on to the Pacific North West) I got a bag of airplane crackers and a bag of roasted peanuts.

Re:Peanuts.....

[sheph]

Yep, SOUTHWEST!!

Re:Peanuts.....

[elrous0]

You just gave me a great idea for a serial killer movie. "Mr. Peanut," the story of a serial killer who goes around randomly putting peanuts into large quantities of food at restaurants. But I still need a lead actor. Maybe Dean Cain is available. If not, I bet I can get Ralph Macchio pretty cheap. Oscars, here I come!

-Eric

Re:Peanuts.....

[Anonymous Coward]

TAM (from Brazil), Aerolineas Argentinas, gives you in some flights a bag of mixed snacks, including peanuts. Peanut allergy and willing to suit is more endemic in USA than any other country.

Re:Slashdotted

[Pugzilla]

FBI most wanted 1.OBL 2.Irrational #'s

Long?

[LFS.Morpheus]

Wouldn't you want to buy Fruit of the Loom, since the victims will have to buy new underpants?

Re:Long?

[beckett]

Wouldn't you want to buy Fruit of the Loom, since the victims will have to buy new underpants?

nah, if you're investing in Fruit of the Loom, you're always selling shorts.

How Long?

[Anonymous Coward]

How long until he gets arrested for terrorism?

Red Hat and Delta

[Johnny Mnemonic]

I flew Delta today, and they rebooted their IFE to try and address an issue. I thought it was pretty interesting when I saw the familiar linux boot messages appear, and indeed it was Red Hat--complete with Tux icon. I hadn't heard of Delta's use of Linux, and if it wasn't for the reboot you would never have know--who knows where Linux is in use by the masses, and don't realize how important it is becoming to them?

Unfortunately, the reboot didn't fix the issue. ;(

Re:Red Hat and Delta

[drinkypoo]

On this note I suspect that a very significant percentage of the linux PCs on this planet are slot machines. I work for a casino and one morning I came in to see linux kernel log messages scrolling up a just-rebooted video slot, from one of the manufacturers from whom we buy a lot of games.

GITMO

[Anonymous Coward]

What? You're messing around with something on an AIRPLANE??? You fool, I hope you like spending the rest of your life in Gitmo. You would think in this post-9/11 world people would learn that this kind of thing on planes isn't funny anymore, ESPECIALLY if you use the word "crash" to describe it.

Re:Some of these systems run Linux, and how I got

[Anonymous Coward]

I was coming back from a conference wearing a hat with a promenent penguin on it, when our in-flight system crashed. As it was re-booting it was obvious to some of the more tech-minded passengers that it was running through the Linux boot sequence. I started hearing calls of "lynch the guy with the penguin hat", from the seats behind me...

Unlikely that was the tech-minded passengers. More likely, some people saw the penguin and though "OMG, that guy hax0red the system and put the penguin picture on his hat into it".

Thanks for nothing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, great.

Now I can just imagine my next cross-Pacific flight ... snot nosed little imitations of Beavis & Butthead snorting with glee as they crash the IFE system for the tenth time in as many hours :(

That's suboptimal.

[jd]

Since the number has to be between 1 and 4, you can do one of:

• value = (value % 5)
• value = (((value - 1) & 3) + 1)

But, if you want to confuse them, use:

value = ((12 >> value) & 3)

as this gives you greycodes.

Re:That's suboptimal.

[4D6963]

value = ((12 >> value) & 3)

Confusing users is such an amusing activity.. lol..

Thats just embressing

[bensch128]

The fact that the WHOLE system has to reboot if just one entertainment application goes down seems embressing/stupid to me.
Sounds like overly simplistic program management. They should have used a watchdog program to ensure that each process is up and running like normal and if they crash, they get restarted individually, not the entire system. that way, if you crash your console, you won't affect the experience of the other people around you.

Cheers
Ben

Using asserts in release code

[bensch128]

Yeah, it seems like the better way to leave the asserts in the release code because users are more likely to stumble across bugs then the testers are.
Your "million-dollar" code is far too complex and massize to be fully tested by any normal size QA department or for all of the corner cases to be thought of by the programmers.

A better solution however is to use exceptions and exception-handling so the application can recover from the error by alerting the user, emailing an error report, and trying to rollback to a previous stable configuration.

However, way too many people bitch and whine about how much overhead exceptions take so expect to see more crashing asserts.

Cheers
Ben

Re:Using asserts in release code

[Abcd1234]

However, way too many people bitch and whine about how much overhead exceptions take so expect to see more crashing asserts.

Absolutely it requires overhead. Specifically, in the need to write exception handling code. And every additional line of code you introduce is another line of code that needs to be tested. Worse, error handling code is precisely the kind of code that's the hardest to test, as the conditions for triggering it are so godawful difficult to manufacture. This would be why the vast majority of untested code in any product is in error handling code. Anyone who's ever done code coverage analysis on any non-trivial product understands this.

And this is assuming you can recover from the error in the first place. In many cases, an exception means that you simply *cannot* recover (how do you plan to recover from an out-of-memory error, precisely?).

The fact is, in what I would guess is the majority of cases, your best error handling is a single exception handler right at the top that sends an error report and terminates the program. Yes, it's crude, but odds are, your specific error management code wouldn't be able to do much better, anyway.

2005 Is Nothing

[Piazzola]

When I flew with British Air in 2002, they had touchscreen/telephones in each seat. Made the intercontinental flight much less boring.

Procedures save the day, not programmers

[master_p]

In the sector of real-time/avionics/defense applications (like the one that I work in), it is procedures who save the day, not programmers. Managers of these systems actually prefer average programmers who do not try to be smart and follow guidelines 100%. It is the strict conformance to the software development procedures (coding, debugging, testing) that allow these systems to have 100% uptime.

Re:Procedures save the day, not programmers

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely. Processes and procedures. Duh. The rest of the industry could learn a ton from Avionics developers. Don't get too clever, plan ahead, work to plan, and test the hell out of it all. We made it a policy not to hire "cowboy coders". They couldn't even code a decent avionics-grade test suite for their own stuff.

Re:Procedures save the day, not programmers

[dxlts]

It is true that good policies and procedures are absolutely vital to projects like these. However, there seems to be this myth that with the right set of procedures, you can have retards for programmers and still produce solid, reliable systems. There's also a flip-side to this myth, which is that smart programmers are just a bunch of cowboys that are too clever for their own good, and are somehow incapable of writing reliable code because they refuse to follow procedures. Both are completely false, and I actually find them offensive.

All else being equal, smarter is always better.

Knowing what the hell you're doing is always better than blindly following a procedure.

Yes, it's true that all programmers (even the smartest ones) make mistakes, and a good procedure and lots of testing can help reduce those mistakes.

However, this does not mean that the procedure is the only thing that matters and that programmers are therefore interchangeable.

Reliability means more than not crashing. Procedures can weed out common mistakes such as endless loops, but I challenge you to write a procedure that will guarantee fast, efficient, readable, scalable, maintainable code. For that, you need a good programmer. End of story.

Try as you might to remove the programmer from the equation, you will invariably fail to do so. The whole idea that it's possible to do so is a fallacy that was (IMO) cooked up by a bunch of dullards (software engineering types, bean counters, etc) who are resentful and envious of others who are smarter and more talented than themselves. It's every dullard's wet dream to somehow prove themselves to be more important than those of superior ability.

Re:Procedures save the day, not programmers

[master_p]

It's not a myth. I have witnessed the importance of procedures in the projects I have participated into. I have also witnessed many cases where smart programmers' optimizations created havoc with the applications.

Re:Procedures save the day, not programmers

[Anonymous Coward]

Jeezus, did you even bother to read the parent comment? It didn't say that there was a myth that procedures are important, or that smart programmers sometimes make mistakes.

It said there was a myth that the right set of procedures will allow you to have retards for programmers and still produce solid code.

It said there was a myth that smart is somehow a bad thing when it comes to programmers.

RTF post before you comment!

Re:Procedures save the day, not programmers

[master_p]

But that's what I am trying to tell: you can have good procedures and retards for programmers and still produce solid code.

Re:Procedures save the day, not programmers

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a retard if you believe that. I've spent way too many hours of my career fixing crappy code written by retards to believe that. And it's NOT the lack of a proper procedure that caused them to write crappy code, it's the fact that they are RETARDS.

Re:Procedures save the day, not programmers

[Bastard of Subhumani]

However, there seems to be this myth that with the right set of procedures, you can have retards for programmers and still produce solid, reliable systems.

You can. It will just happen very slowly. Plus it will probably be a hog performance wise and need wide swathes of rewriting for any non-trivial modification - which is bound to happen unless the spec is 100% perfect up front.

It would probably be obsolete before it's finished.

Re:Procedures save the day, not programmers

[Anonymous Coward]

What you described hardly seems "solid" or "reliable" to me.

The bottom line is, if you have dumb programmers you're going to get bad code, regardless of what procedure they follow. Like I keep saying, procedures can only weed out common mistakes like buffer overflows, array bounds errors, infinite loops, etc. Procedures CANNOT make a retard write good code, unless your ONLY qualification for calling it "good" is that it doesn't have infinite loops, etc. If the system that has been spec'd is anything non-trivial, you're going to need at LEAST one or two NON-RETARDED programmers to do all the hard parts of the code, or the resulting product won't even do what the spec says it should.

I am totally dumbfounded as to why you and others keep insisting that there is ANYTHING redeeming about having dumb programmers work for you. Dumb programmers produce shitty code. PERIOD!!!

And I'm equally dumbfounded as to your disdain for intelligent programmers, which you claim are nothing but cowboys who are incapable of writing reliable code because they're too clever for their own good. That is TOTAL BULLSHIT! Smarter is ALWAYS better! If you've had bad experiences with programmers trying to be too clever, and producing crappy code, that just means they weren't really as smart as you (or they) thought they were. Truly smart programmers don't trip over their own attempts at cleverness.

Selection bias

[srussia]

My hypothesis is that people who would have scored, say, 1 sigma below 100 are much less likely than those at +1 sigma to be in an environment where they would be tested.

disjoint...

[Ixthus2001]

Fortunately the IFE system is totally disjoint from the avionics.

I was at a presentation (about nine years ago, now) where someone from the aviation industry was showing us the future (or the future as he hoped) of aircraft systems - in particular a new bus that was being used for communication around the aircraft. And yes, the in-flight-entertainment used the same bus as the avionics. It was being actively presented as a positive feature. Sadly, I don't remember the details.

Re:disjoint...

[CompMD]

As a aircraft systems and avionics developer in the aerospace industry, I would have done my moral, ethical, and professional duty and shot the presenter. :)

Off to a great start

[shack420]

This was the first photo I took when we headed off for a 6 week holiday last December, flying Qantas. http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/7781/img0716lar gets0.jpg

Torture!

[MWoody]

Wait wait wait, so let me get this straight: you have to sit in that seat and stare at the 4 buttons they specifically told you not to push? For hours on end? That is my own vision of a personal hell.

Re:Torture!

[Anonymous Coward]

I can almost imagine a Fr. Dougal mcGuire like incident ...ted.

Gnome Competition

[Sapphon]

Sure, but Fruit of the Loom will have to compete with the dirt-cheap Gnome Underpants flooding the market. If you search long enough, you'll find an exact replacement for the ones you lost!

for real??

[PopeRatzo]

His next story is going to be about how two hot flight attendants took him in the bathroom and did him. It will be as believable. The part about how the other passengers' screens blinked out one by one didn't sound real to me. If there was a system-wide crash, wouldn't they all say "tilt" at the same time? I am definitely not a programmer (but I've done my share of software abuse) so I don't really know, but it sounds too cinematic to be true.

Re:for real??

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought it might be possible if the consoles in each seat were separate fat-ish clients and everyone was streaming video from the central server and their buffers ran out at different times, but it certainly wouldn't be based on proximity to him as he describes it.

Re:for real??

[gEvil (beta)]

but it certainly wouldn't be based on proximity to him as he describes it.

No, but keep in mind that he could only see the few seats around him. That is unless he's dumb enough to stand up and gawk at the entire plane after crashing their inflight entertainment system (something I'm sure a few slashdotters would probably do).

Re:for real??

[Bastard of Subhumani]

His next story is going to be about how two hot flight attendants took him in the bathroom and did him. It will be as believable.

LOL!!! Three people in an aircraft lavatory. As if!

Wiring danger

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes Kapton wiring we all know (or should know) the nasties of this Du Pont wiring in most commercial (banned in military and astronautics) equipment.

I bet if he found the power lines by ripping open the plastic he could just short them out, start a fire or smoke alarms and you can bet they will land that plane or redirect it very quickly.

Nothing beats a simple hardware hack to cause chaos and potentially cost lives.

Who needs a gun these days?

That's just dumb

[AndroidCat]

And backing that up, a hardware watchdog timer that'll force a reset/state recovery if not fed regularly.

That system probably started in the development pipeline a number of years ago, but these days, I'd question any system that used one central processor for all the consoles. An ARM9 Linux-onna-chip for each one shouldn't bump the unit cost much in quantity, and would be more rugged with much less complex network cabling (a major cost/safety issue on planes). There'd be network code involved rather than one fat problem^w program, but that's all off the shelf. Fly Beowulf!

Bad assumption ...

[Y Ddraig Goch]

that all programming languages have an Assert() function...

The solution, according to closed source advocates

[Opportunist]

Couple the in-flight entertainment system with the avionics, then it would become a crime to expose the flaws.

Well, that'll teach him

[SkyDude]

Unable to connect to database server

Nice going slashdotters.

Nightmare at 6,096 Meters

[AndroidCat]

"Gremlins! Gremlins! I'm not imagining it, he's on the LAN! Don't look, he's not out there now. He swaps out whenever anyone might stat him, except me."

Re:Some of these systems run Linux, and how I got

[Fred Ferrigno]

Seems likely some of the people on the place would be coming back from the same conference and probably just as tech-savvy as this guy.

I know the name of the flight/airline...

[webgrappa]

... it's the Oceanic Flight 815!

Level of Safety

[s31523]

The entire plane entertainment system goes down (and thankfully the cascading system failure didn't spill over to the plane navigation system)!
There was/is no danger of this happening. I develop software for major airline Flight Management Systems (FMS) and the entertainment system is physically separated from the FMS as well as other "flight critical" systems. Also, Software on an aircraft needs to be developed according to the guidelines of RTCA's DO-178B, which classifies the fallout of software into "levels". The most critical, Level A, like autopilot and flight controls requires very stringent evidence of verification. The least critical, Level E, requires basically no verification or documentation whatsoever, and this is what entertainment systems are developed under.

There was a case in the early days when in-flight entertainment systems were first put on planes where a short in the video system crashed other critical computer components due to the entertainment system and flight system being on the same electrical bus. This obviously caused changes to the rules, so now everything is separated.

Re:Level of Safety

[g1zmo]

This morning I accidentally knocked over the bicycle next to mine on the bike rack, which in turn hit the next one over. Thankfully the cascading failure didn't spill over into the hospital's life-support systems!

Re:Some of these systems run Linux, and how I got

[AndroidCat]

Good old Dr Fun

DAMN BUGS!

[burnttoy]

Of course, there's a bug in my code! Maybe I meant #ifndef not #ifdef eesh... /me whistles innocently...

computer crashed

[dlhm]

My IBM laptop crashed last time I was in an airplane with it.. It was a battery/power level bug. Seriously, How is crashing a gaming system in an airplane differant than crashing one at home? I see nothing special... move along...

similar bug with unsigned....

[vasanth]

recently I saw a similar bug with unsigned numbers.. it went something like for(unsigned int i=num;i>0;i=i-2)

uh.... yeah....

[Anonymous Coward]

You've been on Slashdot for 5 years, and now you start posting, and you come up with one of the least useful posts possible.

You just summarized TFA's explanation of "what went wrong," but less succinctly and less coherently than TFA.

Way to go.

Re:Red Hat and Delta & Cathay and Linux

[tburt11]

I recently flew Cathay Pacific to Hong Kong, and yes, the in-flight entertainment system is Linux based, although I did not notice which distro.

If you are looking for Linux in use, in business, don't forget the phone company uses Unix for the electronic switching equipment. Always have. That is a HUGE installed base.

Flight Simulator

[cybermage]

Kinda off topic, but I've always thought it would be a bit morbid (i.e., amusing) to have a flight simulator as one of the games available on those console if for no other reason than to upset the other passengers who don't realize it's a game.

Delta Uses Linus

[bab72]

On my Delta flight this morning one of the in-seat-boxes rebooted with a cute little Tux boot image. It was a few rows in front of me so I couldn't identify a specific version. The plane was one of the 757's they acquired from Song last year.

I'm still at the airport waiting for my next flight. God, I love free internet access! (Sorry to bring religion into this)

That's the History Eraser Button you fool!

[AmazingRuss]

Don't touch it!

Linux - Inflight Entertainment

[IMightB]

When I flew to Malaysia, the airline Cathay Pacific, the entertainment consoles were running linux with Mame.

Typical geek response...

[Anonymous Coward]

Found myself seated next to an IFE tech, a most buxom and cute island chick, on a recent transpacific flight. Took us about 10 minutes to figure out a workable hotbox - joystick interface.

Re:Typical geek response...

[Anonymous Coward]

And then you woke up to some old guy feeling up your junk.

Not in the world of slashdot

[tacokill]

No way! Not here on slashdot.

Up is down. War is peace. Your enemy is your friend. Making money is bad. Companies and corporations are bad. Fuck Bush and co. Yea Apple and Yea Google.

I for one, welcome, our new "shorting when news is good" overlords.

Best In Flight Entertainment System EVER!

[Kagato]

JAL has a great solution for it's business and first class passangers that want video game entertainment. They just hand you a Nintendo DS. Problem solved.

Re:Red Hat and Delta & Cathay and Linux

[Hijacked Public]

If you are looking for Linux in use, in business, don't forget the phone company uses Unix

Are you an SCO attorney?

Hugh has a talk show, as well

[Anonymous Coward]

Saw Hugh at the RSA conference, where he told this story and talked about a new internet talk show that he's hosting. Don't know that it's for everyone, but the slashdot crowd should dig it.

Yes, they are

[wsanders]

Although I'm not losing any more sleep over it knowing that equally talented people are in charge of my bank account, antilock brake system, 911 emergency call center, and missile launch silos.

Actually I haven't slept in 19 days. Help!

Why it might be BS -

[wsanders]

- the missing link is the phone keypad that controls the video. I don't fly much, but I've never seen one of those. The phone is always a separate gizmo from the EFIS.

Anybody ever seen a phone that controls the EFIS?

Not to take away from this story - Hugh told it at his (otherwise somewhat lame) RSA keynote appearance. It was very funny story as told.

Answers to your questions

[Okian Warrior]

Test *software*, if it is used, is software that exists outside of the avionics software in question. It does not need to be rigorously tested, only "qualified" (FAA term). Qualification means that someone goes over the code in a cursory manner and checks each logical case the software tests for, and verifies correct operation.

For example, a coverage analysis tool would have a qualification test report that shows the system works for an if-statement, a for-loop, a while-loop, and so on. Similarly, the compiler is qualified by showing that it generates correct code for an if-statement, a for-loop, &c.

In practice, there is usually very little external test software that can be used effectively. Exceptions exist, but largely much of the avionics software components don't port to another system for testing very well. (As opposed to testing the *entire unit* by having some sort of simulator computer which generates synthesized inputs, which works very well.) (Fly-by-wire calculation engines being one of the exceptions.)

In the case of ASSERT's and other constructs which continuously check the code inside the unit, they are considered to be part of the avionics software and thus must undergo the same level of criticality testing as the rest of the code.

As an example from projects I have worked on, in a level-A project each separate ASSERT statement was tested for both cases (pass/fail) and verified to be working. In a level-C project the ASSERT macro was analyzed and shown to generate correct code, and then a handful of the simple-clause ASSERT's were rigorously tested, and from this all the rest of the simple ASSERT's were deemed OK. (and complex clause ASSERT's were rewritten to use simple clauses, and the one remaining complex ASSERT was tested rigorously).

No, crash it!

[SanityInAnarchy]

In fact, you might even consider crashing it repeatedly, although that does kind of destroy any claim to innocence you might have.

If you want them to start rolling out decent software, you have to demonstrate that the existing software is not good enough. If it keeps crashing, and people on the plane start complaining, they might actually fix the problem.

What ever happened to unit testing?

[SanityInAnarchy]

You can't test the complex and massive million-dollar code, fine. At least test the individual components.

And yes, exceptions are the right approach here. I'll have to read about that overhead, though, I've never heard of exceptions being a performance issue...

Actually, it probably is...

[Okian Warrior]

The IFE systems I've seen have a mode where you can see various plane/trip statistics, such as current altitude, distance to destination, and an icon of your plane superimposed on a map showing your point of departure and your destination.

One of the items shown is OAT, which means "Outside Air Temperature". This and the several other plane data items leade me to believe that the IFE system is connected to the plane's ARINC bus.

The ARINC bus is a wired network system within the airplane, and is used by the avionics systems to pass information back and forth. The altimeter places altitude on the bus, the autopilot reads altitude and makes corrections. The gas tanks place "amount of fuel left" on the bus, the cockpit computer reads this information and triggers an alert if necessary. And so on and so on for literally hundreds of types of information.

If the IFE is connected to the flight computer ARINC bus directly (likely), then it is possible for the IFE to fail in such a way as to interfere with the flight computer. One simple way would be for the IFE to send zillions of ARINC packets back to the flight computer and slow it down enough to degrade performance.

Of course, the flight computer is level-A, and has a separate ARINC bus for the IFE, and is specifically engineered to defend against such problems from external devices. And these sorts of problems are trivial to simulate during testing, so we know that the avionics computer is robust. (Testing for these sorts of problems is specifically called for in the FAA regs.)

But the point is this: the IFE *is* connected to the avionics system, but that system is hardened and will not crash.

Math Help

[Uosdwis]

127 + 1 = -128.

Are you sure?

[Anonymous Coward]

> No offense, but I don't think avionics are your run of the mill programmers.

I was an intern, back in college, and I wrote code to test the avionics hardware. The code was ugly, and it was in some form of VB (I'm repeating myself, I know).

Granted, I don't think I did anything wrong--if anything, knowing that it was for something important made me want to code as best I could, but I was still just some random college student who was chosen primarily for having BASIC on his resume (the wrong form of BASIC, but learning VB isn't exactly difficult, I think that even monkeys could be trained to use it and they may have written it to begin with).

Oh, and this was with respect to the actual avionics, not some IFE (they didn't have those back then). Yeah, that means reading & writing things like pitch, roll and yaw. I believe that the avionics even communicated over some form of Ethernet? Although it would, of course, be isolated from anything the passengers are supposed to have access to.

mean vs. median

[zippthorne]

That depends on the shape of the distribution.

For instance, there could be one or two drivers who are so astoundingly bad that they drag the average down to the point that everyone else is above it. It is perfectly possible for more than half of a population to be 'above average.'

You have confused average and median. Median is the middle value of a population. With the median, we can create frightful statistical nonsense phrases like, "Did you know that roughly 50% of all doctors graduated in the bottom half of their class? Scary."

Someone has to...

[pjt33]

BA Lufthansa? Have you travelled back in time to make your prediction of consolidation among European carriers, or did I just miss the memo?

Re:Someone has to...

[Registered Coward v2]

BA Lufthansa? Have you travelled back in time to make your prediction of consolidation among European carriers, or did I just miss the memo?


No, just taht I think those three will be the winners - along with the discount carriers - and I realize that the idea of consolidation amongst EU carriers is not a new idea; I also think that a major US carrier will wind up as part of a more global single carrier - only this time it will pass teh regulator's scrutiny.

Re:Someone has to...

[Raenex]

Dyslexic much? Sorry, couldn't resist.

Re:Someone has to...

[Registered Coward v2]

?huh

Be carefull Slashdot...

[vortex2.71]

The NSF data miners might not like that you used "crash" and "flight" in the same sentence.

"Crashing an In-Flight Entertainment System"

Re:Be carefull Slashdot...

[TommydCat]

Like you just did? Ooops! :)

I found you dumb too, matey

[Bastard of Subhumani]

am totally dumbfounded as to why you and others keep insisting that there is ANYTHING redeeming about having dumb programmers work for you.

I'm totally dumbfounded by idiots who (rather than reading what's written, understanding it, and making a germane response) pull strawman arguments out of their ass.

If you'd like to really dumbfound me, maybe you'd like to point out where I advocated said policy. To anyone with an IQ approaching their body temperature it's pretty clear that I hardly gave it a glowing endorsement; though I guess you'd need to know what big words like "obsolete" and "finished" mean to grok that.

You may also like to note the difference between "could" and "should" before you come back here and end up with a hat-trick of what most people only have one of.

TOTAL BULLSHIT!

The precis normally comes before the article.

Re:I found you dumb too, matey

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, fine. I overreacted a bit to your comment. I wasn't making a straw man argument so much as I was just posting my reply to the wrong comment. Your comment just kinda set me off because it started off by saying "You can." I *did* read the rest of your comment before I replied, and I got that you weren't praising dumb programmers. But just to be clear, my original comment said you can't create "solid, reliable code with retards for programmers," to which your response was "You can, but it will just take a very long time". I disagree. I don't think dumb programmers can produce "solid, reliable" code even if given a practically infinite amount of time, just as I can't paint like Da Vinci or play guitar like Eddie Van Halen *no matter* how long I practice. That's why I reacted so strongly against your comment, even though you weren't really claiming that dumb programmers are valuable. Your comment was more along the lines of the old "1000 monkeys with typewriters, given enough time..." idea. So, to sum up, I'm sorry for overreacting to your comment. I should have left that response for master_p, who does indeed appear to be claiming that retards can write good code as long as they have the right procedure. In fact, even master_p's comments aren't what really got me irate. What really did it was the fact that I keep encountering people in my career who believe that intelligence is not a necessary quality for a programmer, and that it really is just ALL about the procedure. That attitude offends me greatly, as I believe it to be not only false but also irresponsible and potentially dangerous.

criminally liable

[Animaether]

If a crime had been committed through their fault, rest assured that they -would- have been criminally liable. As it is, they have professional liability to worry about if this guy's tinkering did actually crash the plane or otherwise caused irrepairable damage or harm to any one person.

should the programmers be held 'liable' over an entertainment system going down? no
should the guy be held 'liable'? no
should he be slapped around because he full well knew something might happen and in his infinite curiosity, tried it, then sat back and smiled to himself? yes
should the programmers fix the damn bug? hell yes