Boeing 787s must be turned off and on every 51 days to prevent 'misleading data' being shown to pilots

The Register ^ | Apr 2, 2020 | Gareth Corfield

[dayglored]

Hmmm. "several potentially catastrophic failure scenarios" sounds pretty serious.

Although I doubt the affected systems are Windows based, I'm gonna ping the WindowsPingList because... why not?

[dayglored]

Not-A-Windows ... PING!

You can find all the Windows Ping list threads with FR search: just search on keyword "windowspinglist".

Just figured it was interesting.

[Lurkina.n.Learnin]

“Although I doubt the affected systems are Windows based, I’m gonna ping the WindowsPingList because... why not?”

BSOD. Blue Skies of Death

[dp0622]

Can’t they just give it a good kick on the side?

[brownsfan]

Ok, so Boeing is pushing out crap. But I bet their engineering staff is multicultural and diverse.

[miliantnutcase]

51 days is pretty low up-time for networking equipment. They must really be paranoid.

[CodeToad]

BSOD: Boeing Skies of Death?

[pepsi_junkie]

It’s like they never even tested their planes.

[Bellagio]

Are you kidding me?? These software jockeys can’t purge the extraneous data automatically via maintenance cycles that are self initiated by the software/firmware? This is beyond belief.

[catnipman]

sounds similar to the Y2K problem except it happens after every 51 days ... i.e., counter overflows and similar extremely bad coding ...

probably because the coding was done in India, China, Pakistan and the like, or because they brought Indians, Pakistanis and Chinese to the U.S. to do it ...

assuming they continue to refuse to use U.S. coders, they’d have been WAY better off to bring in some Russian or other Eastern European coders instead, who are some of the best coders in the world ...

[DEPcom]

” power cycling is needed to prevent stale data from populating the aircraft’s systems”

Wonder who did the programming. Sound like memory leaks cause by orphan pointers.

The program was most likely written in C++ for speed.

[headstamp 2]

This is to occur no matter where the planes are.

[catnipman]

“51 days is pretty low up-time for networking equipment. They must really be paranoid.”

from reading the article, it’s no paranoia but a known problem, in other words, REALLY REALLY REALLY bad programming ....

[Flick Lives]

[TalonDJ]

Yeah but this is ‘on aircraft’ network equipment. 51 days is a long time to keep an aircraft powered on. What this is saying is they can’t leave the same plane powered for more than 51 days at a stretch.

[dayglored]

> 51 days is pretty low up-time for networking equipment.

No kidding. I have datacenter network gear that stays up without a reboot for years. The only time it gets restarted is after applying a required security patch.

[Zathras]

I’ve said this before.
Intel was a super company and run very efficiently and their chips were rigorously tested.... until the H1b’s hired around 2000 moved up the ranks to upper management.

There are some true morons now running Intel and Microsoft.
At least they forced out BK and Rene James as co-CEO.

[Red Badger]

It’s not a ‘bug’, it’s a FEATURE!.....................

[Flick Lives]

According to the directive itself, if the aircraft is powered on for more than 51 days this can lead to "display of misleading data" to the pilots, with that data including airspeed, attitude, altitude and engine operating indications. On top of all that, the stall warning horn and overspeed horn also stop working.

On a plus note, the onboard entertainment system is unaffected.

[dayglored]

> Ok, so Boeing is pushing out crap. But I bet their engineering staff is multicultural and diverse.

Isn't that what -really- matters? Diversity Is Our Strength, right?

And I'll bet that when one of these planes hits the ground, the resulting pieces are, indeed, quite diverse.