MS Hotmail Offline For Hours

That explains it... by Burianski11 · 2004-03-13 20:42 · Score: 4, Funny

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.

Re:That explains it... by Openstandards.net · 2004-03-13 21:47 · Score: 2, Funny

I hope they document and publish the process they used to install the .NET applications so others can get their sites back up and running this quickly.

--

Open Standards Portal
Re:That explains it... by Pieroxy · 2004-03-14 05:01 · Score: 3, Interesting

So last week java.sun.com was down for three full days and nothing (even though I submitted a story). Now hotmail goes down for 4 hours we get a story on the front page. Wow.

--
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Re:That explains it... by Adam9 · 2004-03-14 11:25 · Score: 2, Insightful

Maybe because millions of people don't use free java.sun.com e-mail addresses?

Well it just figures by caston · 2004-03-13 20:42 · Score: 3, Funny

they must be running Exchange.

--
Beings aspergers AND pulling chicks... I enjoy the challenge!

Re:Well it just figures by shadowmas · 2004-03-14 00:37 · Score: 2, Informative

well microsoft used to use unix/linux for it but then ppl started pointing it out so now they use windows servers i think. and b4 this transition to windows i dont seem to remember any downtime on hotmail.
>telnet hotmail.com 80 GET / HTTP/1.1 HTTP/1.1 302 Redirected Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0 Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2004 12:36:25 GMT Location: http://lc1.law5.hotmail.passport.com/cgi-bin/login Connection to host lost.
Re:Well it just figures by xanadu-xtroot.com · 2004-03-14 02:30 · Score: 5, Informative

Actually, MS use UNIX servers for Hotmail

Ummm... no. You have no idea what you're talking about. If you had said "used" (as in past tense), then you'd at least be close. Still wrong, but close. They used one of the BSD's until people called them on it. Hell, for all we know, they still are and just changed the headers that the server hands out to look like a MS box like the other post in this thread shows.

Anyway, you're wrong on all accounts.

--
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
Re:Well it just figures by xanadu-xtroot.com · 2004-03-14 11:19 · Score: 2

Actually, you're wrong too. HotMail, before they were bought by Microsoft, used FreeBSD

To quote myself:

"They used one of the BSD's"

I said that. How am I wrong?

--
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.

Dammit by Frogbert · 2004-03-13 20:43 · Score: 5, Funny

And here my girlfriend is blaming that stupid mozilla program. Try explaing that its Microsofts fault to someone who thinks that MS is infallable.

Re:Dammit by ender81b · 2004-03-13 20:50 · Score: 4, Interesting

You think that's bad? Try working at an isp and have people yelling at you and blaming you for breaking hotmail ;).

ahh the joys of the internet.
Re:Dammit by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-13 21:03 · Score: 3, Funny

Well, they can't be right all the time.
Re:Dammit by DrSkwid · 2004-03-13 22:55 · Score: 4, Informative

Why do people despise the Mac platform so much?

perceived levels of freedom

Back in the day, both IBM PCs and Apple Macs were closed systems, their internel workings were undocumented to the outside world. There was, however, one crucial difference. PCs set up the hardware with the BIOS and then went to disk for the OS whereas MACs booted from an internal ROM. Compaq succeeded in cloning the IBM BIOS which meant you could put an IBM floppy in a Compaq machine and it would boot. Some companies tried to clone the Mac but were slapped with lawsuits because you couldn't copy the Apple ROM. The company that supplied IBM with the stuff on their floppies was a Washington startup called Microsoft who had cunningly retained the right to ship MS-DOS seperate from a computer.

Consequently the PC Clone market flourished and IBM lost their control over the PC Platform driving down price while driving up incompatibility. Meanwhile Apple continued to develop their platform. It was a technically superior platform with a unified graphical user interface, used Postscript for printing and SCSI for devices. This made MACs expensive when you did CPU Cycles / $. You could walk into an Apple dealer, choose the bits, go home, plug it all together and it worked whereas you would go to a PC dealer tell him what you want and he's spend a few days building it and battling to get the bits talking to each other but when you got it home it worked.

Because it was difficult to build and maintain PCs, their builders and maintainers looked down on the MAC, it wasn't as fast for the same $, was too easy to use, you didn't have to take the case to pieces to add a peripheral and the only people you knew who had them were too rich to deserve them.

As the builders and maintainers of the PCs of everyone in their social circle, the non-techies trusted the techies opinion, parroting the same lame arguments in PCs vs MACs arguments the world over.

--
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Re:Dammit by leereyno · 2004-03-13 23:11 · Score: 4, Funny

I hope she's good in bed cause I'd never date someone that clueless unless she could make my toes curl, my eyes roll into the back of my head, and jets of steam shoot out of both ears.

Lee

--
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Re:Dammit by EverDense · 2004-03-14 00:22 · Score: 5, Funny

I hope she's good in bed cause I'd never date someone that clueless unless she could make my
toes curl, my eyes roll into the back of my head, and jets of steam shoot out of both ears.

You want her to put you in a microwave?

That is Kinky!

--
http://jesus.everdense.com/
Re:Dammit by AndroidCat · 2004-03-14 00:36 · Score: 5, Funny

So it was you! I missed several important messages from a business associate in Nigera and others for expanding my .. opportunities. Important security update from Microsoft were lost! I'll sue!!!
Gads, I've had my hotmail account since before Microsoft bought them. It makes a useful account to hand out on Usenet posts, Slashdot or on web pages--I can quickly give any emailer a real address for contact--mainly it's a spamtrap. But I would never ever depend on it for email or cry if it died.

--
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Re:Dammit by HeghmoH · 2004-03-14 03:38 · Score: 4, Informative

Jeez.

Building a computer from parts might be easy for you, but that does not make it "easy". Most people can't handle it. They want to buy a computer and take it out of the box and plug it in and turn it on. This goes for PCs or Macs.

Have you used a Mac that was manufactured in the past half decade? You can use any USB mouse with them, including your seven-buttons-with-scroll-wheel optical mouse. They use PCI, AGP, ATA, and USB for expansion. They have a "taskbar", it's called the Dock.

Windows's popularity is entirely attributable to Worse is Better.

--
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Re:Dammit by DrSkwid · 2004-03-14 04:31 · Score: 2, Insightful

"hard to build"

is a relative term

opening the case and removing / inserting cards is considered harder than plugging in a scsi cable

> put the jumpers in the right places

ah, you seem to have missed the irq conflicting fun and the 'this board is hardwired to use address 0x300' when 0x300 was the reserved 'development' address manufacturers were supposed to leave free but often did quite the opposite.

I'm basing my story on working in b2b computer retail from 1990ish onwards in the time before Windows when Dos 3.3 was the operating system that shipped with PCs.

The time when you were a child.

--
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Re:Dammit by MojoRilla · 2004-03-14 06:51 · Score: 4, Informative

One irony is that the original Apple II came with a schematic of all the circuits.

Apple was very innovative, but made a number of large mistakes that really hurt them in the market. While software for the IBM PC focused on business applications (DBASE and Lotus), the Mac focused on paint programs. It is no surprise that today artists still like Macs.

Apple made some very questionable hardware decisions. They made the original Mac non expandable (no slots, you even needed a special tool to open the case, didn't change until the Mac II), even though expansion was a key to the Apple II's success (they totally ignored their hacker roots). They did thing like use a self ejecting floppy drive, which was patented by Sony and drove up the price. They had a one button mouse and a keyboard where a lot of keys were unsupported (including the forward delete key). They made their own networking hardware (localtalk) which although cheaper was slow, and had connectors which were non-locking (causing endless technical support problems).

Sure, you could go into a store and by Mac bits, and they would all work, but that is because they had a lock on the hardware and the software. The Mac has had its share of low level problems and incompatibilities. Some of the famous ones include a bad virtual memory implementation (which was so bad most users turned it off) and 28 bit vs. 32 bit addressing (it broke a lot of badly written software so there was a switch to turn it off). Imagine using a machine where you had no virutal memory, and running out of memory becuase you opened and closed programs in a certain order.

In the beginning (pre 1995), Apple had a better operating system than Windows. They innovated the GUI, and they had technical advantages, such as things like a flat address space. But Windows caught up and overtook the Macintosh, both in terms of user interface and developer tools. Before OS 10, the mac was still mostly 68k assembly, and was very difficult to program and debug on. Also, until OS 10 there was no protected memory, meaning it was easy for one badley behaved program to take down the system.

When Apple moved to the Power PC in about 1995, instead of porting their operating system, they ran most of it in emulation. Which ment slower speeds and more difficult debugging for developers.

While Apple patched and limped along, Microsoft built Windows NT from the ground up, written mostly in C (so it was portable). While previous Microsoft operating systems were more like the Mac, NT had protected memory and preemptive multitasking, two features that are critical to a modern, stable operating system.

So while Apple had the early lead, they had a wealth of technical problems and poor hardware choices which hurt their platform.
Re:Dammit by Hal9000_sn3 · 2004-03-14 09:21 · Score: 2, Informative

Back in the day, both IBM PCs and Apple Macs were closed systems, their internel workings were undocumented to the outside world

No, actually the IBM Technical Reference Manuals for available, and not only documented all the circuitry, but also the BIOS. It was all copyrighted, but not 'undocumented'.

The actual difference had more to do with that IBM chose to use a documented bus, the ISA, and encouraged others to manufacture add-on hardware. While Apple strongly discouraged add-on hardware.
Re:Dammit by Phattypants · 2004-03-14 11:36 · Score: 2, Funny

What do you mean? Since I started using Hotmail prior to the MS acquisition, I've put all my company's mail-security needs into this miraculous service! Why, it was but ten years ago that my penis was two inches shorter! Not only that, but now that all of my debt has been consolidated, I can just pass on the tab to my next of kin!

Why you hating? Hotmail works for me!!! ;)

Thanks, Microsoft! by illuminata · 2004-03-13 20:44 · Score: 5, Funny

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.

Re:Thanks, Microsoft! by Alcohol+Fueled · 2004-03-13 20:53 · Score: 2, Funny

Its okay now. You can go back to reading about ways to enlarge your penis and how to get money from that kind Nigerian prince! :)

--
Ah am not a crook! (\(-__-)/)
Re:Thanks, Microsoft! by AndroidCat · 2004-03-14 01:16 · Score: 2, Insightful

You do know that the second Received line (from Hotmail) was forged, right? (Clues: Hotmail rarely relays email via a interbusiness.it dynamic IP. An Italian server using west coast time is odd. Adjusting for timezones the email was received an hour before it was sent.)

--
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Re:Thanks, Microsoft! by ScrewMaster · 2004-03-14 01:22 · Score: 2, Insightful

All I know is, if my bank, my credit cards, or any of the other reliable online services that I use were as flaky as Hotmail (or any other Microsoft owned and operated Internet service) I'd simply use an alternative, and encourage my friends to as well. Microsoft has shown, time and time again, that it really isn't competent to run a major online operation. That's why I don't use Passport, Hotmail, Messenger, indeed any Microsoft service (other than Windows Update) convenient as they might be at times.

--
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.

3rd party connections by Cliffy03 · 2004-03-13 20:44 · Score: 5, Interesting

I thought they had blocked other programs again. Trillian and Gaim couldn't connect, but I installed MSN 6.1 and got right back on.

--
In Soviet Russia, Nigel makes plans for you!

This is news??? Who the fuck cares! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-13 20:45 · Score: 5, Insightful

God, how fucking petty is slashdot getting???

Sure, hotmail was down, boo-hoo. It's a free email service. Deal with it.

Why is slashdot determined to report every single trivial detail when it comes to Microsoft? Try to stick with the big stories, please, not "Bill Gates forgets to lift toilet seat!" or "Steve Ballmer takes up two parking spaces in Microsoft parking lot!"

Re:This is news??? Who the fuck cares! by kasperd · 2004-03-13 20:52 · Score: 5, Funny

It's a free email service.

I'm sure RMS would disagree with you.

--

Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
Re:This is news??? Who the fuck cares! by xxx_Birdman_xxx · 2004-03-13 20:54 · Score: 5, Insightful

It might seem petty, but the reality is that there is a huge number of people that use hotmail on a regular basis.. this kind of downage affects a lot of people.

What is interesting is how:
- Microsoft responds, their press releases etc.
- Possible reasons for failure
- What others can learn from these kind of failures, to prevent them happening.
- That such a large system that must deal with a massive number of requests has completely gone down instead of the service degrading due to servers failing, etc..

Lighten up a bit, i'm honestly suprised it would go down for a significant amount of time.

--
Live in your skin. Keep changing the scenery.
Re:This is news??? Who the fuck cares! by addbo · 2004-03-13 21:02 · Score: 2, Interesting

I seriously didn't know Hotmail was down. I had users asking me why it was down and I thought it may have been our connection. It's actually of some relief to know it was a technical problem on Microsoft's end... and I would not have found out about it if not for Slashdot...

So it's not necessarily a "petty" thing as a "nice to know" thing... like all other slashdot stories... you are within your rights to refrain from reading the articles... no need to get grouchy if an article doesn't suit your taste. JUST DON'T READ IT! =P

Addbo
Re:This is news??? Who the fuck cares! by Vancorps · 2004-03-13 21:18 · Score: 4, Insightful

An outage like this is not caused by a server failure but a misconfiguration. If it were bad hardware it would have been replaced, but that wouldn't have effected the whole cluster now would it? It also wouldn't have effected multiple services.
Nope this problem is a central database problem, probably they tried to normalize the passport database, screw the pooch and had to roll everything back which is why it took so long.
Or maybe they changed a permission and spend the whole day figuring out which one did it.
Re:This is news??? Who the fuck cares! by DARKFORCE123 · 2004-03-13 21:27 · Score: 3, Informative

Uhhh no. You can also purchase a paid Hotmail account which gives you more storage room. If I pay for something , I don't expect downtime and I would expect MS to refund me for the portion of the day I couldn't access my email.
The same goes for any service. Not just MS.
Re:This is news??? Who the fuck cares! by jamesh · 2004-03-13 21:36 · Score: 4, Informative

It's free, but you can pay for it and get extra features, like a bigger mailbox.

I'm jharper@hotmail.com (I'm not afraid of posting the address publicly, i think i'm on every mailing list I could be on anyway :). I run the account in 'whitelist' mode, so everything goes to the 'junk' folder. The only thing I get in my actual inbox is messages from hotmail telling me my mailbox is full :)

So if I used the account seriously, rather than just as an address I can hand out if I need to hand one out, i'd need the extra space to hold all the spam that built up overnight.
Re:This is news??? Who the fuck cares! by CryBaby · 2004-03-13 21:39 · Score: 4, Insightful

Allowing a system as large as Hotmail to completely fail is a MAJOR technical screw-up. It would be an interesting and embarrassing story no matter what OS it's running or who is in charge of it. Especially from a sysadmin point of view, it's a big deal. While it's obviously not important to you, it's anything but trivial.

It makes me smile that it never went down when it was running on FreeBSD (shameless advocacy), although, to be fair, this incident was almost certainly due to an architectural weakness or network hardware failure and not an OS issue. I guess we'll never know...
Re:This is news??? Who the fuck cares! by PacoTaco · 2004-03-13 22:18 · Score: 5, Funny

RMS is planning to start his own free email service. Supported clients will include Emacs and Netcat.
Re:This is news??? Who the fuck cares! by ender81b · 2004-03-13 22:53 · Score: 4, Interesting

It's odd this outage lasted for so many hours. Hotmail is spread across multiple clusters at multiple geographic locations. Presumably, so is passport (which is what was br0xx0red). You would *think* MS would keep a complete backup of the last known passport config somewhere, like 1 day - 1 week, etc.

In theory it should only take a matter of minutes to rollback the entire thing... and you would've thought they'd test it before deploying any changes.

Sounds like somebody screwed the pooch on this one.
Re:This is news??? Who the fuck cares! by NanoGator · 2004-03-13 23:42 · Score: 3, Informative

"Why is slashdot determined to report every single trivial detail when it comes to Microsoft?"

They're trying to prove to the world that Microsoft is incompetent and evil. Those of us that use Windows must all be real morons who don't know shit, so they're hoping that by pointing out that Steve Ballmer double-parked we'll finally "see the light!" It wouldn't bother me except that it is generally assumed that my choice to use Windows 2000 wasn't voluntary. Slashbots think that Microsoft's monopoly put a Windows box on my desk at both home and at work. Yeah, there might be some truth to it. But seriously, if Windows was the big lump of shit that the people stuck in the past imagine it to be, I wouldn't be able to do 3D rendering on it.

I agree with you that the petty "anything that can be spun against Microsoft" campaign is childish and obnoxious, but in this case, it was nice to find out why Hotmail was down. It's also nice to know when the next big worm breaks. Slashdot's helped me stay protected for years now.
I just hope one day Slashdot will take Microsoft a little more seriously instead of the righetous BS that I need to be running Linux even though my work software isn't running on it.

*sigh* This post isn't going to be visible for very long. Pity. At least it felt good to let it out.

--
"Derp de derp."
Re:This is news??? Who the fuck cares! by Yakman · 2004-03-14 00:07 · Score: 2, Interesting

Being a cluster you would think they'd be upgrading them one server at a time, and they'd pretty quickly notice that the first server they tried to upgrade wasn't working. They could just take that one server out of the cluster until it was fixed.

They proabably rolled a change out to all servers via SMS (not the text messaging protocol) and couldn't back it out :)
Re:This is news??? Who the fuck cares! by Odin's+Raven · 2004-03-14 01:48 · Score: 2, Funny

It's a free email service.

I'm sure RMS would disagree with you.

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.

Well it WAS working until you /.'ed it. by insanegadgets.com · 2004-03-13 20:47 · Score: 5, Funny

(nt)

Re:Well it WAS working until you /.'ed it. by Grant_Watson · 2004-03-13 21:19 · Score: 2, Informative

OT: what does (nt) mean??

No text, i.e., the subject _is_ the whole message.

Date in the story? by Klerck · 2004-03-13 20:47 · Score: 5, Informative

Perhaps a date in the story would have been more useful, since "As of 8:15 PM EST" is now just highly misleading. That 8:15PM EST was on Friday, March 12. This story is making it sound like it's been down for days, but in reality it was just a few short hours.

This story isn't even relevant at this point.

Re:Date in the story? by GSloop · 2004-03-13 21:58 · Score: 2, Insightful

"Few short hours"? - Would you consider like 12 hours to be a few short hours?

Agreed about the data, but 12 hours for a major outlet like HM is pretty incredible.

Makes you think twice about the supposed reliability of anything MS doesn't it? If not you, than certainly me...

Anyway...
Re:Date in the story? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-13 23:46 · Score: 5, Funny

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.
Re:Date in the story? by Odin's+Raven · 2004-03-14 02:08 · Score: 3, Funny

In reality most hours are the same length. Hotmail was down for a few standard-length hours.

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.

Redundancy anyone? by OriginalSpaceMan · 2004-03-13 20:48 · Score: 5, Interesting

That article didn't go into much detail. I don't know what kind of system MS uses to run Hotmail, MSN and other services, but where's the multiple location clustered redundant load balancing system? My only guess is that someone at MS really messed up their own DNS systems, which of course would take it all "down" (by name at least). Does anyone know what actually happened?

--

You talk better than you fool!

Re:Redundancy anyone? by Vancorps · 2004-03-13 20:58 · Score: 4, Interesting

My first guess since it effected multiple services and not just hotmail that it was a database issue, they may have blocked permission on the cluster on accident. Such a central problem can't really be caused by faulty software, just faulty configuration.

I think someone was implementing a new backup scheme and decided it would be a good idea to dismount the store, move it over to another cluster.

Course it looks like if people managed to get on their service was fine, so maybe they screwed up some passwords. Time will tell this story
Re:Redundancy anyone? by IamTheRealMike · 2004-03-13 22:17 · Score: 2, Informative

Probably Passport - it's gone down before and when Passport dies it takes Hotmail, MSN Messenger, .NET alerts and most of Microsofts assorted web properties with it.
Re:Redundancy anyone? by jwgoerlich · 2004-03-13 22:33 · Score: 2, Interesting

My only guess is that someone at MS really messed up their own DNS systems, which of course would take it all "down" (by name at least). Does anyone know what actually happened?

It looked like an infrastructure issue, to me. Possibly a downed router (or three?). I could tracert Hotmail from a couple remote sites, but not others. It looked like a dead route.

News for nerds? by cioxx · 2004-03-13 20:49 · Score: 3, Insightful

The question is - how many nerds use Hotmail.com, and why does this non-event warrant a front page article?

Re:News for nerds? by mstefanus · 2004-03-13 20:54 · Score: 5, Interesting

Actually many... Nerds use Hotmail for junk email accounts, like when they want to download something that needs registering first but don't want to receive the newsletter junks.
Re:News for nerds? by killyourblender · 2004-03-13 20:58 · Score: 2, Insightful

Sadly enough, considering how many millions of people are dependant on Microsoft's email system, granted I'm sure we all know at least one person who uses their hotmail account on a regular basis. All the same, an impact like that has a larger effect on the world as a whole by canceling out a major piece of the world's communication for a whole day. e.g. - you may not like carrots, but if your girlfriend is a vegetarian who eats carrots like mad and a plague wiped out the nation's carrot crop, she'd be pretty bummed out and not want to come visit tonight because she didn't get her dose of vitamins from the carrot.

--
"Would you rather be right, or happy?"
Re:News for nerds? by cioxx · 2004-03-13 21:05 · Score: 5, Informative

For those things there is Mailinator.

Throwaway accounts should never be, out of all places, registered on Hotmail.com. They suspend your account if you don't login for 30 days. At least Yahoo!Mail or other free alternatives let you forget the account for few months and not get penalized for it.
Re:News for nerds? by addbo · 2004-03-13 21:08 · Score: 5, Interesting

It is a great account for your junk mail! Then again so is Yahoo... but hotmail was the first I believe =)

It is also my first email account (got it in 96) and so now people can still contact me after I've moved around the world.

When a service like Hotmail and MSN go down for a few hours it affects ALOT (millions) of people... nerd included... why shouldn't it be on the frontpage? I know I was interested enough to click on the articles (though I agree they are sparse on details)

Addbo
Re:News for nerds? by Tony-A · 2004-03-13 21:54 · Score: 2, Insightful

Throwaway accounts should never be, out of all places, registered on Hotmail.com. They suspend your account if you don't login for 30 days.

Isn't that the idea of a throwaway account?
Re:News for nerds? by PacoTaco · 2004-03-13 22:29 · Score: 2, Funny

Slashdot was down for a few minutes the other day. Why isn't that on the front page?

Internal problems? by Alcohol+Fueled · 2004-03-13 20:50 · Score: 2, Funny

"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! (\(-__-)/)

...and the world collapses by MarkMcLeod · 2004-03-13 20:52 · Score: 5, Funny

So that's why I couldn't access my inbox full of ads for Penile Enlargement, Hot Sex, and credit cards...

Re:...and the world collapses by betelgeuse-4 · 2004-03-13 22:56 · Score: 3, Funny

Has your penile growth rate slowed? Did you miss your daily dose of hot sex with lesbian teens? Are you now low on credit? I think you could sue Microsoft if you answered yes to any of these.

--
Decode these

In other news.... by trotski · 2004-03-13 20:52 · Score: 4, Funny

Observers noticed a marked decrease in spam emails most of Friday. Analysts remain puzzled.

--

"Entropy is the bad-guy, and he is everywhere"

Looks like "Passport" problems by Betabug · 2004-03-13 20:52 · Score: 5, Interesting

Judging fromt the description that people had problems logging in, but that things work fine once logged in, and OTOH that Messenger had problems too, I would conclude that the problem is with their Passport infrastructure.

Re:Looks like "Passport" problems by sl956 · 2004-03-13 21:23 · Score: 5, Informative
Bingo!

Here is today error message for my hotmail account:
The .NET Passport service is currently unavailable at this Web site for one of these reasons:
- The site may contain an error or be experiencing a problem that affects the .NET Passport service.
- The site may not be an official .NET Passport-participating site.
It was worst on Friday though: there was not even an error message as loginnet.passport.com was either dead or unreachable.

Problem trying to explain to clients by Quizo69 · 2004-03-13 20:53 · Score: 4, Interesting

Figures. Here I am at a client's house fixing his computer so the cable modem works again, and I'm trying to show him how good Proxomitron works with getting rid of all the Hotmail surrounding ads, and I can't even connect. He didn't believe me when I said that it was probably Hotmail being down....

Perhaps if it was some routine maintenance on Microsoft's part, they could forewarn people about it? It affects a lot of people's lives, whether free or not.

--

Visceral Psyche Films

Microsoft quality. by Tokerat · 2004-03-13 20:59 · Score: 3, Funny

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?

Cool!!!! Three day old news! by mrshowtime · 2004-03-13 20:59 · Score: 3, Insightful

There should be a TOPIC/STORY negative modifier for old news, or news that is blatantly obvious. Or just have "FARK" tags. If this "story" about how hotmail was down ran on Fark, it would have the "obvious" tag.

--
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide

This was announced by I-R-Baboon · 2004-03-13 21:02 · Score: 4, Funny

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)

i was talking to MS customer support when by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-13 21:06 · Score: 5, Interesting

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.

Re:i was talking to MS customer support when by 1s44c · 2004-03-13 22:17 · Score: 3, Funny

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.
Re:i was talking to MS customer support when by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-13 22:37 · Score: 4, Funny

Lets get this stright. You -brought- windows XP.

No, he bought Windows XP.
Re:i was talking to MS customer support when by xk · 2004-03-13 22:48 · Score: 2, Insightful

there was a delay in speech with the guy I was talking to as well

Microsoft outsourced their tech support to India?

Single point of failure by tepples · 2004-03-13 21:07 · Score: 4, Interesting

That must have been one heck of an internal problem for it to knock out Hotmail AND MSN Messenger.

For example, the problem might have lain in the Passport login servers. Single sign-on is a single point of failure.

Re:Single point of failure by Vancorps · 2004-03-13 21:15 · Score: 4, Interesting

Single sign-on has a flaw. The only legitimate flaw is that you have one username and password to crack, sometimes some challenge reponse questions too if you are into the Novell and Sun directory services.
At any rate, just because its one password in no way means you can't have a cluster of 5000 servers all storing and accepting transactions for it. I'd hardly call passport servers in Russia, the U.S., Germany, England, China, Japan etc... a single point of failure.
Normally I'd just assume you were referring to the password issue but right now that has nothing to do with this story so I'll just leave my assumptions out this.
Re:Single point of failure by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-13 21:38 · Score: 2, Insightful

At any rate, just because its one password in no way means you can't have a cluster of 5000 servers all storing and accepting transactions for it. I'd hardly call passport servers in Russia, the U.S., Germany, England, China, Japan etc... a single point of failure.
Sadly that last downtime proves you wrong: hotmail's passport was down not only from the U.S. but also from Germany and England. I've not tested those alleged russian and chinese servers but it seems that a single misconfiguration has taken down all those 5000 servers. That's exactly what I would call a single point of failure.

BSD is dead!!! by Stefman · 2004-03-13 21:08 · Score: 2, Troll

Maybe it was another attempt to switch from BSD to Windows servers. Don't they know it doesn't work...give it up!!!

This is why everyone should subscribe to /. ... by oasisbob · 2004-03-13 21:08 · Score: 5, Funny

...Hotmail goes down on Friday, and you're the first to know on Sunday!

Re:This is why everyone should subscribe to /. ... by prandal · 2004-03-13 23:02 · Score: 2, Funny

Well, I tried to mail Slashdot editors from my hotmail account ;-)

Hotmail offline - spam decreased by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-13 21:10 · Score: 3, Funny

Anyone notice that whilst Hotmail was down their daily quota of spam reduced ;-)

What I liked most... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-13 21:15 · Score: 2, Interesting

What I found most alarming was that MS did
not know if they were under attack or not.
They first thought some hacker took down their
system. Then they realized it was some "internal"
fsck-up.

How can a service of that magnitude with M$
money backing it not realize it was/was not
under attack?

Even if there were some coincidental attack
going on at the same time (it's probably
a constant issue with big sites), it's
shocking that they could not properly analyze
the attack to see if it could explain something
like, oh, say, the ENTIRE FSCKING SERVICE
being unavailable.

In a way, this tells us plenty about the
quality of service. Not only does it go
down from time to time, but the company
running it is not able to accurately
communicate what the problem is.

Boy am I relieved by bigberk · 2004-03-13 21:21 · Score: 3, Funny

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 :)

Neither Use Hotmail nor Messenger but... by myownkidney · 2004-03-13 21:27 · Score: 3, Interesting

I neither use Hotmail nor messenger. I have my own webmail service, and I use ICQ through trillian because it supports encryption.

That said, both these services have millions of users. And from what I hear from these users, both services go down pretty frequently, messenger especially so.

Apparently things have gotten worse since MSN 6 came into being. I have seen MSN 6, and it has the words "lame ass" written all over it.

If what I hear is true, it takes 2 minutes to login to MSN 6. Quite a lot of your IMs are bounced back.

--
Indefinitely Detained US Citizen

Considering I got this ... by SmoothTom · 2004-03-13 21:29 · Score: 5, Interesting

... trying to get to the Hotmail FAQ at 0125 on Sunday the 14th, I'm not at all convinced "all is well" (or ever was).

Luckily I don't use Hotmail (or any other Microsoft product).

bScreen = 'True'; var searchtextsize="21"; var bSkinny = (screen.width<=800); if (bScreen == 'True') searchtextsize=(bSkinny)? 19:25; var cu, cb, br, INI_Encoded, INI, H_APP, H_APP_Encoded, ITSFile, Filter, BrandID; var v1, v2, v3, v4, bShowSearch,t_contactus,Survey ; cu='http://www.hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/dasp/ua_inf o.asp?pg=ar_eform&_lang=EN'; Survey=''; cb=''; INI_Encoded = 'MSN_Hotmail_PIMv9_FAQ.ini'; INI='MSN_Hotmail_PIMv9_FAQ.ini'; H_APP_Encoded = 'MSN+Hotmail'; H_APP = 'MSN Hotmail'; ITSFile = 'msn%5Fhotmail%5Fpimv9%5FFAQ%2Eits51'; Filter = ''; BrandID = ''; H_VER = '2.6'; bITFind = 'True'; t_contactus="Contact us" v1 = 'http://www.hotmail.msn.com'; v2 = '?&_lang=EN&country=US'; v3 = ''; v4 = 'DH_FREE'; var sTMT = 'MSN_Hotmail_PIMv9_FAQ'; ; bShowSearch = true; NoMax = '0'; var LEVELMAX = 10; var levelNodes = new Array(LEVELMAX); var activeNode, activeIdx = 0, bActiveSet, activeLevel = 0; var XMLTOCLoaded = false; var sHTTP_REFERER = 'http://www.hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/dasp/ua_info.a sp?&_lang=EN&country=US'; function CULink(ExtURL) { if (navigator.appName.indexOf("TV") >= 0) { if(ExtURL.indexOf("http") == -1) ExtURL = "http://" + ExtURL; parent.location.href = ExtURL; } else { window.open(ExtURL,'_helpext'); } } Microsoft VBScript runtime error '800a01f4' Variable is undefined: 'agent_isSafari' E:\WEBROOT\PRODUCTION\HELP\CON TENT\EN_US\..\!shared\frameset.inc/searchfooter.in c, line 27

Re:Considering I got this ... by Isbiten · 2004-03-13 21:54 · Score: 2, Funny

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.

Odd coincidence by flogger · 2004-03-13 21:37 · Score: 2, Funny

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

Hmmmm by warlockgs · 2004-03-13 21:42 · Score: 4, Funny

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?

its proof centralisation is bad by auzy · 2004-03-13 21:49 · Score: 3, Insightful

Microsoft basically wants to centralise everything in the future in longhorn.. And this pretty much proves that while it might be good for them, that major problems will arise.

.. For instance, Networks like MSN messenger are completely centralised.. Sure MS has full control over it, but unlike decentralised networks like jabber, if one server goes down, the entire network doesn't..

I'm hoping consumers learn from this and learn about the importance of decentralisation, and from now on make choices taking into account decentralisation too..

sorry, just thought this thread needed someone to expand on this little event

Can I sue? by Zakabog · 2004-03-13 21:49 · Score: 5, Funny

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.

Re:Stop the presses! by prockcore · 2004-03-13 21:52 · Score: 3, Informative

Seriously slashdot, your Linux loving policy is blinding you as to what is relevant and what isn't.

And your ignorance of news is blinding you to the fact that all the other major news sites reported hotmail and msns outages as well.

Even CNN had it as a top story in the technology section.

Lets get this straight by AvengerXP · 2004-03-13 22:00 · Score: 5, Insightful

No "customers" were harmed. The only people who use Hotmail are people who are too poor/lazy to install their own ISP's mail system on their machines.

And if you base your business on Hotmail, i'd say you have a serious I.T. decisions problem.

--
Trolls dont like to be Flamebait, because they burn so well. Protect our Troll heritage!

Re:Lets get this straight by 1s44c · 2004-03-13 22:09 · Score: 3, Insightful

And if you base your business on Hotmail, i'd say you have a serious I.T. decisions problem.

I'd totally agree. But it doesn't change the fact that a very large number of small businesses do use hotmail email addresses. I can walk down any highstreet near where I live and see hotmail addresses on shop windows and the side of vans.

Hotmail has become the choice for people that know nothing about IT and just want something simple that works.
Re:Lets get this straight by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-13 22:28 · Score: 2, Insightful

Maybe they even know a little about IT!
Like: don't use an ISP mail address, as next year there may be an attractive offer from a competing ISP and you might not want to be locked-in by a mail address that is tied to one ISP.

Using a generic address like @hotmail.com is one step between using an ISP address and registering your own domain.
Re:Lets get this straight by prandal · 2004-03-13 22:54 · Score: 2, Informative

You think "white van man" (it's the van that's white, not the man) could do this?

Now Novell's our friend, why not use MyRealBox instead of Hotmail?
Re:Lets get this straight by 5lash · 2004-03-14 03:08 · Score: 2, Informative

because it says "Because of the testing nature of this site, service outages are to be expected from time to time as problems are discovered and diagnosed". fairly ironic that you would recommend that service since this news story is about the unreliability of hotmail!

--
Everything sucks except musicandstuff
Re:Lets get this straight by ZWithaPGGB · 2004-03-14 04:26 · Score: 4, Interesting

Yes, "Customers" were affected. There are plenty of people who pay for extra storage on Hotmail. Also, Windows Messenger is a part of XP, which people pay for, so it is a service that they PAID for.
Last, but by no means least, anyone who uses other Passport authenticated services, like MSDN (Costs over $2K a year, I have it) was unable to connect. Considering that many of those services are the very ones that people need to prep for deployment of XP SP2, which I would wager a lot of organizations were planning on testing and/or deploying this weekend, having the tech resources needed to properly configure and evaluate that deployment off-line presents a major problem.
Your assertion that no-one of consequence, or who paid for a service, was harmed is complete BS. It simply indicates that you have no idea what else Passport authenticates, or maybe even how Hotmail works.

Re:Predictable by rastakid · 2004-03-13 22:11 · Score: 3, Interesting

Why am I not surprised Microsoft claims its an internal problem?

Actually, it would make more sense when Microsoft would claim it was an attack. Internal problems can be blaimed on the company (bad software design, bad system administration, etc.), external attacks can't, only for a lack of security or something like that. But in most cases, a company gets away quite well with an external attack.

--
In need of reliable and affordable server monitoring?

A successful migration? by niittyniemi · 2004-03-13 22:20 · Score: 5, Interesting

From the MS case study on converting Hotmail from FreeBSD to 2K:

> Changing the operating system on each server should have
> zero impact on day-to-day operations.

No impact whatsoever....if you ignore uptimes :)

> Under FreeBSD, bugs and memory leaks would often go
> undetected because of the lack of tools. With Windows 2000
> and IIS 5, the tools exist to optimize the performance and
> truly understand exactly what the code is doing at all
> times.

Crikey, handy they've got all those tools to help them out (soooo unlike FreeBSD with all it's bug leaks). Looks like it's saved their asses this time round...
</sarcasm>

Microsoft: Where do you want go today?

Customer: I want to take a rock solid service that has true customer value and turn it into a spam ridden, bug infested hole that doesn't work half the time and customers hate.

Microsoft: Consider it done!

--
The Machine stops.

Re:A successful migration? by Mr.+Piddle · 2004-03-14 06:15 · Score: 2, Insightful

With Windows 2000 and IIS 5, the tools exist to optimize the performance and truly understand exactly what the code is doing at all times. (emphasis mine)

You mean I can attach a debugger to a running Windows kernel just like I can with UNIX kernels and look at header files and documentation to understand the data structures and run-time parameters?

Vendor-paid case studies. Lame 2001 reference: "My god, it's full of lies!"

Any IT professional that relies on a vendor-provided case study for decision making is incompetent.

--
Vote in November. You won't regret it.

The guy is right by 0x0d0a · 2004-03-13 22:26 · Score: 3, Insightful

I hate to say it, but websites do go down. It's regrettable, but the reasons people here dislike Microsoft are not because they have a website that happened to go down. Blame Microsoft for their real flaws.

Heck, if the FOSS world was held accountable for, say, Sourceforge or Slashdot reliability, we'd all be in a world of hurt.

--
May we never see th

Re:The guy is right by anubi · 2004-03-13 23:52 · Score: 2, Insightful

I don't know why 0x0d0a got a flamebait because what he said is absolutely true.
I have had days I could not log onto my PacBell account because of some difficulty they were having. No big deal. I have had a day where I could not log onto the ISP I am now with as a result of some technical problems they were having. They worked it out. No big deal.
I hardly thought this topic was even worth looking at. I guess I could jump all over someone for not doing a perfect job, but then, I don't do a perfect job at every attempt I make, regardless of my intentions. ( Actually, I get very few things perfect. The longer I work on it, the more I approach perfection, but I rarely get there.. often being forced by time and economics to accept "good enough" ).
I will rant till I am blue in the face if I think their failures are due to unsound practices ( aka embedded executables, unverifiable hidden crap, etc. ), but they just had server difficulty, and any of us that have to work on things of this size know how much more complex these things are than something, say, like a radio station or something.
For now, I guess there is no telling what was causing all the grief. As dynamic as a mail system is, I congratulate them for not losing all the mail. I sure have had things take me more than a day to fix. Actually I am impressed they keep it working as well as they do.
Microsoft started out really neat - remember how they helped all of us get out from under the control of "big iron". It wasn't until just a few years ago they got a bee in their bonnet to start making things very difficult to understand in order to hide the inner workings so various tricks and games could be used for intelletual property rights enforcement. Games which sometimes go wrong and leave a trail of innocent victims who paid for a product, but could not receive the benefit.
Dropping a day of Hotmail service... no big thing.
Releasing unverifiable code that I can't troubleshoot and fix if something goes awry - now that's a horse of a completely different color.

--
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]

Re:Predictable by jwgoerlich · 2004-03-13 22:30 · Score: 4, Insightful

it would make more sense when Microsoft would claim it was an attack. Internal problems can be blaimed on the company ...

With Win2000, Microsoft was working hard to get away from their reputation for instability. Some of this they fixed with software changes, and some with marketing propaganda.

With Longhorn, Microsoft is working twice as hard to get away from their rep for insecurity. At least for the moment, it is better to have their systems appear a tad unstable than insecure.

jwg

This is news? by God!+Awful+2 · 2004-03-13 22:36 · Score: 5, Funny

I seem to remember /. was down for a few hours last week... but somehow that story didn't make the front page.

-a

--
/. users can't

invasive Microsoft feature poor market domination by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-13 22:44 · Score: 4, Insightful

I was thinking - why did they post this as a story, who cares about Hotmail downtime, ...but then I realised that it IS important, it just goes to remind us all of how invasive one single company is, so invasive that in the software area that I specialise is, although there are well over 20 equivalent products, I already have to assess the QUALITY of products as such:

1. Microsoft: assessed: .. 80% on dominance, .. 10% luck, .. and 10% on product features
- it will get 15-50% of the market simply because of who it is, and will either be Market leader, or number 2.

2. All the others, which get assessed mainly 50-90% on product features.

So then of course the advice has to be, well one of the advantages of selecting the MS product because you know that you won't have to convert the data from some other system that will be driven into the ground by MS.

I can only advise clients the "truth" - that is what I get paid for, but I am not happy with this situation.

In this particular market segment, I can say that MS would not get in the "top 3" in terms of features.

This is a terribly sad situation to be in, and people need to be reminded of this regularly. The lack of action by authorities on Monopoly practices appears to show that the MS Billions have won the day.

I am not a Linux-plugger, and I know that MS has produced some good services, however these days they are way beyond the scope of traditional monopoly abuse. Are all politicians and scientists out there so "chicken" or greedy?

------------------
no sig. of course!

Yeah, I'll say... by i1984 · 2004-03-13 22:45 · Score: 2, Informative

...those people should stick with their American Online CD disks for downloading on the interweb!

Fortunately I escaped from supporting the end-user general public several years ago, but it was many years earlier that Hotmail stopped working for me. As I recall, it was shortly after Hotmail was purchased by MS that my entire mail quota could be filled with spam in mere days, and it was then that the system got so sluggish and unreliable that it was never a surprise when I couldn't use it. (Microsoft is really good at some things, not least among them making people feel like pawns in billion dollar chess games.)

There really was a time when I both used and liked Hotmail. I think that time was 1997.

But as you point out in your post, the innocence of those simpler days is still alive, like a proverbial chest-burster from Alien, in the hearts of many Internet users.

Re:Yeah, I'll say... by KilBee · 2004-03-13 23:20 · Score: 4, Funny

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.
Re:Yeah, I'll say... by AndroidCat · 2004-03-14 01:01 · Score: 2, Informative

you can only use outlook or the website to read your emails (unless you use hotwayd from hotwayd.sf.net)
There was a two part article in Delphi Informant (Jan-Feb) on creating a proxy server using SMTP/POP and WebDAV to talk to Hotmail from any email program. (Their WebDAV interface is undocumented, but they can't change it too much without breaking Outlook.)

--
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Re:Yeah, I'll say... by JudicatorX · 2004-03-14 01:05 · Score: 2, Interesting

Yes.. That terrible, evil company.. They were so wrong to give you a free email service. How dare they..
It's not free. It's ad-supported, meant to make them money. It's MS' aim to draw people in so they can suck money from them. If they want to make money, they could provide a better service, namely one that people are willing to use. What would you say if the provider of your primary email account, something you've come to rely upon, was bought out by $MULTINATIONAL_CORP and you started getting 5 megs of spam email a day?

--
"It is a good divine that follows his own instructions" - Portia, The Merchant of Venice
Re:Yeah, I'll say... by Awptimus+Prime · 2004-03-14 04:40 · Score: 2, Insightful

Read up to one of my previous posts. It's quite ignorant to put yourself in a position of becoming dependant upon a freebie mailbox.

Pay $100, get a domain registered for 10 years, pay a few dollars a month for someone to host your mail. This way, you have your "lifetime" email address you can take with you when your provider does something you don't agree with.

Anyone who depends on Hotmail, Yahoo, etc for their important email is not a good idea. The suckers that become dependant will learn the hard way.

Junk accounts by dsolley · 2004-03-13 22:55 · Score: 2, Informative

Um, you haven't heard about spamgourmet yet, have you?

So much for the 5 9's by dameon · 2004-03-13 23:00 · Score: 2, Funny

Guess there's still time for maybe 2 out of 5?

--
Remember, a truly wise man never plays leapfrom with a unicorn

Simple Answer = Patch-Day at Hotmail by NoSuchGuy · 2004-03-13 23:51 · Score: 4, Funny

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/

Let's do both! by AndroidCat · 2004-03-14 00:18 · Score: 2, Informative

I wasn't getting to www.hotmail.com, and traceroute was dying somewhere on the west coast. I forget if the last hop was into Microsoft space or not. My first thought was: Did they fsck up the domain registration again? :^)

Routing to Slashdot occasionally has problems passing through Clueless & Witless space, but that's normal.

--
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.

Check those gift-horse teeth.. by k98sven · 2004-03-14 00:30 · Score: 4, Insightful

When it comes to 'free' things on the internet, the old phrase 'don't look a gift-horse in the mouth' just doesn't apply: You should be giving that horse a full dental exam!

People do have a right to complain if they feel a service is bad, even if it's free. Especially if it's a service such as e-mail, which is a pain to switch. It takes time and they know this and exploit it.

I suspected as much by CmdrGravy · 2004-03-14 00:45 · Score: 3, Funny

I wondered why I wasn't getting so much spam yesterday.

google news headline by BrianB · 2004-03-14 00:59 · Score: 5, Funny

Google news has been running the headline:

"Microsoft restores faulty Hotmail service"

I thought that said it all.

This was NOT a Hotmail outage (as such) by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-14 01:18 · Score: 5, Informative

It was a .NET Passport outage. Even if you have no clue what this is, you almost certainly have one if you have a hotmail email address, or use MSN, or MS Money, MSN messenger, or a million other services. It's even used for RADIUS authentication of MSN dialup users.

Unlike Hotmail, which still runs primarily on UNIX, Passport is entirely based on Windows servers.

Passport is the authentication / single sign-on system for all these MSN services. If it's down, everything's down. And sadly it has proven a little unreliable recently, for reasons never disclosed.

MAC? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-14 01:33 · Score: 2, Funny

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.

Paid for services down too. by Bishop · 2004-03-14 02:20 · Score: 4, Interesting

Paid for services, such as MSDN subscriptions, were down as well. The real news is not that Hotmail was down, but that all Passport based services were having problems. MS has been trying hard to sell Passport as a "single sign on solution." This indicent does not help that marketing effort. This is not the first time that Passport has been out. In the past the passport domain expired and was rescued by a very nice person who registered the domain on a weekend, reinstating the service.

Jabber by amacleod98 · 2004-03-14 02:48 · Score: 2, Insightful

I tried to make use of this outage to help convince people to switch from MSN Messenger to Jabber. Unfortunately everyone I know seems too entrenched in the Microsoft way of life to even consider switching. Jabber offers many independent servers so if one failed people would still be able to use another server.

The Scene at Microsoft Towers... by displaced80 · 2004-03-14 04:11 · Score: 3, Funny

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?

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) ... clicks 'roll back' button... minutes pass... sirens continue

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* .... 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!

--
What's the frequency, Kenneth?

Not only Hotmail... by claes · 2004-03-14 05:04 · Score: 2, Informative

.. about a week or two ago all of java.sun.com , www.javasoft.com etc was down for more than a day. Not only did this affect people trying to surf on java-related pages. It also affected some java tools that tried to validate EJB deployment descriptors as the default DTD was located at this server. Certain default ant tasks hung since they tried to do lookup of http://java.sun.com/j2ee/dtds/ejb-jar_1_1.dtd, and this was not available. I wonder how many application servers were affected by this downtime? It was briefly mentioned on TheServerSide.com.

My question by NineNine · 2004-03-14 05:13 · Score: 2, Funny

It's relevant on Slashdot, as it's a blatant excuse for Microsoft bashing.

I agree completely... The only thing is... where do I go to bitch when /. goes down?

If Pirates of Silicon Valley Is Correct.... by f0rt0r · 2004-03-14 06:01 · Score: 3, Interesting

When Microsoft made the deal with IBM, they didn't even have an OS, but they quickly bought an OS someone else had created for $50,000 and obviously had it ready in time. Once again showing Microsoft's innovation isn't with software but rather with business deals.

--
I can't afford a sig!

Microsoft IE Patch KB832894 - Could Wreck the Web by Nathan+Johansen · 2004-03-14 07:34 · Score: 4, Informative

A recent cumulative update patch for Internet Explorer browsers removes support for the user:pass@www.site.com basic authentication method for HTTP and HTTPS URL's - a response to widespread misuse of the functionality to spoof web addresses to trick unsuspecting users into revealing personal information to a dubious third-party. However, a side effect of this patch includes intermittent clobbering of hidden form fields used to maintain state or session on sites that do not implement cookies. This will render most script driven web sites useless.. Also, installing this patch clears out and resets any internal IE cache of username and password combinations used on frequently visited sites, causing people to have to enter these details anew.

It is likely that this issue may be responsible for the recently reported Hotmail and MSN related outages (CNN) and a variety of increasing problems on many other web sites as users continue to install the update patch into their IE browser over time. A MS TechNet article describes this problem and proposes workarounds - one is to uninstall the patch, or install a new patch to fix the previous patch for users of IE 6.0 and higher. Web site operators are also encouraged to increase the server KeepAlive connection timeout, although a specific numeric suggestion isn't proposed. There is an informative thread on this topic available in the Google Groups UseNet archives. Apparently this issue has been growing more problematic over the past five weeks, and will continue to effect sites and users unless steps are taken to address it.

IMHO: An illustrative analogy to this problem would be like your automobile manufacturer determining that accidents are caused by vehicles in motion. As a solution, all tires will be removed, thereby preventing accidents. What a great cure.

RedHat Network offline for days, unannounced by rcgraves · 2004-03-14 10:09 · Score: 2, Informative

In other news not reported on slashdot, RedHat Network, the only way to get critical updates for RedHat Enterprise Linux, has been down ALL WEEKEND. Their web site says this is a planned outage, but it most certainly was not announced to paying customers who had scheduled and announced outages requiring access to RHN this weekend.

122 of 443 comments (clear)