Here's an interesting blog post in which a computer expert describes meddling with an in-flight entertainment system until it completely crashes and has to be rebooted.It's not the fact that you can screw up the system that I found interesting, more that he was easily able to surmise various things about the programming behind it just by just fiddling around. For example, since he was able to select an illegal number of bricks to see in the game Tetris, he guesses this statement:
may well have been mistyped as this:
This means the program will accept five or fewer bricks, instead of any just fewer than five. It's simple error but opens the door to more mischief. By adding to the number, it was possible to increase the bricks to 128, at which point the whole system goes belly up, taking every headrest screen on the plane with it.Thankfully, as he points out, it didn't take any of the more important in-flight systems with it. It's a good illustration of the importance of being carefully with you code. But I'm glad they didn't let that guy near the cockpit.
Will Knight, online technology editor.
