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MS Hotmail Offline For Hours
chalker writes "According to CNN, and others, the Hotmail online e-mail service, operated by Microsoft, was down for most of the working day on Friday, affecting 'a significant portion of MS customers.' People are also having trouble accessing products such as the MSN Messenger instant messaging program. The company said it was an internal problem rather than an attack on its system and that it hoped to have service restored by 5:30 p.m. PST. As of 8:15 PM EST, Hotmail appears to be online again."
I was getting a "Service Unavailable" but couldn't figure out if it was my flaky connection or Microsoft's flaky software. Guess now I know.
Beings aspergers AND pulling chicks... I enjoy the challenge!
And here my girlfriend is blaming that stupid mozilla program. Try explaing that its Microsofts fault to someone who thinks that MS is infallable.
That downtime really blew. I couldn't read my spam.
Don't let it happen again, Microsoft.
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
(nt)
"The company said it was an internal problem rather than an attack on its system..."
:(
That must have been one heck of an internal problem for it to knock out Hotmail AND MSN Messenger. Maybe their servers BSoD'd!
Ah am not a crook! (\(-__-)/)
So that's why I couldn't access my inbox full of ads for Penile Enlargement, Hot Sex, and credit cards...
It's a free email service.
I'm sure RMS would disagree with you.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
Observers noticed a marked decrease in spam emails most of Friday. Analysts remain puzzled.
"Entropy is the bad-guy, and he is everywhere"
Microsoft is very good at maintining their own products and services. Imagine how well Hotmail and MSN have to be configured to be in proper working order to gain respectible uptimes.
With that in mind, just remember: All those Windows boxes have to be restarted at some point. Hats off to MS for holding out as long as they did.
(Flamewar disclaimer: It's a joke. Laugh.)
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Dear Infidel /.er
Microsoft products and services never suffer any sort of failure that is not announced first. This was not exploited and service was not denied. With our services working, we suspect a massive monitor failure caused by a new virus coded by a member of the linux community. We enjoy providing hotmail, and DEATH TO THE SPAMMER!
Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf
Director of Public Relations
Microsoft, Inc.
-1 Overrated (Too many big words for me to comprehend)
...Hotmail goes down on Friday, and you're the first to know on Sunday!
Anyone notice that whilst Hotmail was down their daily quota of spam reduced ;-)
On Friday I was tinkering with a student LAN I help maintain... swapping in new switches, trying to sort out a mess of identical ethernet cables.
:)
I was about to leave, satisfied that the network was back to running as normal, but people started complaining that they couldn't reach hotmail. That seemed weird since hotmail is typically rock solid... I got kinda stressed by this, thought maybe I was dealing with a bizarre netmask thru DHCP or perhaps a DNS failure.
What a relief... hotmail was broken
Strange, my DSL provider was down for the entier day on the 11th. And now Hotmail is down for an entire day. I think there is some sort of new tracking software being installed all over the net to see who is swapping files with whom.
:-)
[/tinfoil hat]
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
I was going to send the webmaster an email saying that the hotmail/msn services were down, but I couldn't get into my hotmail to send it. What do people do in these kinds of situations?
Can I sue for damages incurred because I couldn't order my penis enlargement pills before my porn audition? Damn you microsoft, you kept me from making millions! Now just give me some money and we'll call it even.
Seems like it doesn't like to serve you infidels who don't understand the real power of Internet Explorer
Variable is undefined: 'agent_isSafari'
(It's a joke! Don't hate me mods)
I fought the corporate America, and the corporate America bought the law.
i just got hung up on, and that was approximatly the same time on friday. i was trying to get an activation code for win xp when i was disconnected from them all together. i waited a while thinking that like all good cutomer support they would call me right back because i was hung up on, but waited half an hour and called them to try to talk to the guy i was dealing with, and they told me that they were having serious internal problems. im not sure how it works, but i think MS might use some kind of internal VOIP system because there was a delay in speech with th guy i was talking to as well, but hotmail and their tech support both went down around the same time as i was informed of "major internal problems." so something big happened.
Lets get this stright. You -brought- windows XP.
RMS is planning to start his own free email service. Supported clients will include Emacs and Netcat.
Slashdot was down for a few minutes the other day. Why isn't that on the front page?
I seem to remember /. was down for a few hours last week... but somehow that story didn't make the front page.
-a
Lets get this stright. You -brought- windows XP.
No, he bought Windows XP.
Guess there's still time for maybe 2 out of 5?
Remember, a truly wise man never plays leapfrom with a unicorn
Yes.. That terrible, evil company.. They were so wrong to give you a free email service. How dare they..
yes, simple and kind Microsoft Corp. offers free email out of the goodness of its heart.
in reality it was just a few short hours.
In reality most hours are the same length. Hotmail was down for a few standard-length hours.
Even MS has to patch their own servers.
TechAdmin: We have to install the latest Mediaplayer updates on the Hotmail servers.
Executive Manager: Why, that means downtime - for every minute downtime of hotmail.com I get less bonus! The servers stay up!
TA: But we have to install these updates because without them we can not patch the servers.
EM: Why do we need to patch the servers?
TA: To make them more secure.
EM: But we use our own MS Products...
TA: That's we need to patch so often!
EM: But the latest patches were not labeled even 'critical'
TA: That's because of Steve and Bill and the guys from marketing, so they can tell everyone that our products are secure.
[May someother continue...]
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
I wondered why I wasn't getting so much spam yesterday.
Google news has been running the headline:
"Microsoft restores faulty Hotmail service"
I thought that said it all.
Really, Message Authentication Codes arn't popular? I thought they were used all the time.
Come on people, it's short for Macintosh, not some sequence of words. Unless you write people's nicknames in all caps, this should be easy to remember.
Would it help if they started referring to their service as GNU/Hotmail? ;-)
A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.
Anyone who's watched the "time remaining" during a Windows installation or a large file copy ("...but it's been 3 minutes remaining for the past half hour!") knows that Microsoft uses their own, superior standards for time measurement, rather than slavishly adhering to those obsolete SI units.
Hotmail was only down for 10 MS-minutes.
A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.
Sure, it was on the front page, but HELLLOOOOO, the service was down so you didn't see it. You must be one of those tech support guys who send me my password in email when I forgot my email password.
Jim(staring at Software Update Services admin page): Hey, Dave! Is it safe to apply this Combo-Uber-Hyper Security Update Patch for March 2004 for SQL, IIS, MDAC, Windows Scripting MediaWotsit Turbo?
... clicks 'roll back' button... minutes pass... sirens continue
.... those damn Roll Back engineers, I swear they just party all night and turn up to work with hangovers.... Well that's the final straw! I'm quitting. I'm gonna learn me some SCO and go work for EV1Servers. Ha!
Dave (not really paying attention): Yeah. Sure. Why not. We've got that Magic Roll-back Button they told us about in MSCE class, haven't we...
Jim: Cool. click... Uhh.. Approve.. yeah, that's it. click... Woohoo. Damn, this makes patch management easy! Christ, I'm smart.
FX: Alarms... sirens... flashing lights...
Dave (sighing)
Jim: Uh-oh. I'll call someone.
Dave (rising panic): But.... the button! It said... roll back! (..close to tears now...) Oh, why does this happen every time... *sobs*
What's the frequency, Kenneth?
It's relevant on Slashdot, as it's a blatant excuse for Microsoft bashing.
/. goes down?
I agree completely... The only thing is... where do I go to bitch when