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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."
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.
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!
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!"
(nt)
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.
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!
So that's why I couldn't access my inbox full of ads for Penile Enlargement, Hot Sex, and credit cards...
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.
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.
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.
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.
...Hotmail goes down on Friday, and you're the first to know on Sunday!
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
Luckily I don't use Hotmail (or any other Microsoft product).
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.
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!
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.
I seem to remember /. was down for a few hours last week... but somehow that story didn't make the front page.
-a
Google news has been running the headline:
"Microsoft restores faulty Hotmail service"
I thought that said it all.
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.
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.