Daily Tech's Brandon Hill explains in Lockheed's F-22 Raptor Gets Zapped by International Date Line how computers on the world's mightiest jet fighter crashed crossing the International Date Line, on a trip from Hawaii to Japan.
I was not surprised to read that. Buggy IDL code exists in plane (pardon the pun) view on those Web sites that graphically track the progress of passenger flights. When the yellow line tracking the airplane's progress across the Pacific Ocean crosses the date line, the line suddenly veers to the extreme east of the map, and then shoots back to the IDL.
I've written to the hosts of these Web sites, explaining the bug in their tracking software, but was ignored. Perhaps this Y2K-of-geography problem will now be taken more seriously.
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