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Windows 7 RC Rush Crashes MSDN, TechNet Pages
CWmike writes "Microsoft Developers Network (MSDN) and TechNet paid subscribers were supposed to find the 32- and 64-bit editions of Windows 7 RC available for download today. But in a snafu reminiscent of the problems Microsoft had in January when it tried to launch Windows 7 Beta, the download pages for the release candidate were inaccessible, despite numerous attempts over an hour-long span up until about noon Eastern. TechNet and MSDN subscribers were not happy. 'Man, this stinks,' said a user identified as Lyle Pratt, on a TechNet message forum at 10 a.m. ET. 'I can't believe we can still bring MSDN to its knees!' said John Butler, a Microsoft partner. 'Surely, they should be able to deal with this? Not a good advert for Microsoft.' The Windows 7 RC is slated to be available for public download next Tuesday, May 5. Meanwhile, Microsoft said today that the RC would operate until June 2010, for 13 months of free use — a significantly longer time than it did with Vista's previews."
Torrent links anyone?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Microsoft releases Vista/2008 SP2 AND Windows 7 RC AND Windows 2008 R2 RC AND Virtual PC RC AND the Windows 7 SDK on the same day and they don't expect to have bandwidth problems?
Geez, what were they thinking? SP2 should have come out on RTM day, that would at least cut a few hundred mb downloads out of the picture.
Buncha consumerist lemmings :)
Because it's what 80% of the world will be running in about a year?
Does your XP disc dissolve at some point in the next 13 months?
If you're smart enough to get the RC running, you know how to re-install XP.
No joke. They should have provided a torrent. This type of distribution is what bittorrent excels at. It would have provided everyone with a better experience and saved MS some bandwidth.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
East Coast developer tries to download the ISO during his lunch break. It ain't gonna happen.
Seems Microsoft might be trying to make the best of a bad situation when it comes to people pirating their software, but turning them into beta testers. Sure you have to give them something for free but in the end you'll get a whole lot of people who would just pirate your software anyway doing a whole lot of free QA for you. Pretty smart move if you ask me.
Funnily enough I didn't hear anything about Microsoft pursuing the Pirate Bay for hosting the torrent of their latest builds, which seems to support this theory. Anyone seen anything?
The Refined Geek - Technology, Finance, Space and everything in between
Nobody can blame them for not offering a torrent though. Thanks to MPAA/RIAA and various ISPs, P2P, especially torrent is an issue for large companies.
Steam uses torrents.
Most large companies do not use torrents because they are a little complex for most users - the equivilent is that they use a CDN to distribute the content across many servers, served locally to the user (I know it's not exactly the same but it has a similar effect of distributing load). I wonder if Microsoft was using a CDN or trying to host everything locally.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Looks like this story was right!
Except my computer hasn't started to freeze and jitter. What's up with that?
How is this a screw up on their part again? They release a preview of the next os and there is so much interest in it that they can't keep up with demand. That sounds like they did something right to get that kind of attention. Also Vista was released 2 years ago. I know it's fashionable to complain about MS but a 2 year cycle doesn't sound like rushing it out.
Which part of "insert credit card to continue" is confusing you?
No sig today...
Well, when downloading Linux or other FOSS stuff you can check the md5 against the "official" md5 on the project site.
You can often count on MSFT to sell you a partial solution to a problem they sold you.
-=Maggie Leber=-
But that was the point of Vista: to make whatever came next look revolutionary.
Forget everything, can you believe the lemmings download it from Pirate sites? An operating system?
I downloaded a copy of Vista 64 from a demonoid.com torrent. Already had a legit key from MSDNAA, just didn't have a copy of the x64 version. Microsoft puts the SHA1 sum for the ISO file on their MSDN site, so you can verify that it's an untampered copy. A bit like that cheesy scene (one of many) from the movie Swordfish, where Travolta barks to one of his cronies "Verify this!" and, after a pause, the computer dude says "Verified!". Fuck, that movie was fucking awful.
Or are you suggesting that you can slip in a trojan and still get the SHA1 sum to match, using some collision that nobody else knows about?
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/downloads/default.aspx?PV=36:350:DVD:en:x64
SHA1: FC867FE1AB2E0A9796F9E4D155B44EA6998F4874
Oh, that's right, they sell anti-virus software now, don't they?
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
You could spin it that way, but that ignores the rest of the story. Many gamers will upgrade their video card before buying a new computer (with OS included).
"When you see a unixer brainwashed beyond saving, kick him out of the door." - Xah Lee
The MDSN users are clearly to blame here. They are probably using Vista and IE8. They should be using a Mac and Safari.
Imbecile. It's common (nay, EXPECTED) in the software industry to use one's own products. It's referred to as "eating your own dog food". Fuck off with the "cool-aid" shit.
Also, the servers would be running on a server class OS. Windows 2008 Server, unless Windows 2010 Server has gone RC recently (it hasn't) - Microsoft actually does tend to use RCs of their own products on their servers, as most software companies do. I assume Apple does the same thing, and it wouldn't surprise me if Canonical updated to RC versions of Ubuntu Server.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Yes you can, but they strongly recommended against it. It tried it, and it worked on one out of three machines.
And the machine where it worked on, strange issues have cropped up.
So the recommendation to do a clean reinstall should be taken seriously.
Windows Server 2008 R2 (as the Windows 7 server equivalent is called) has RCd at the same time Windows 7 has.
Of course, if this had happened during an RC release of a major Linux distro, the comments would be more along the lines of "zomgwtfbbq, Linux is so popular now the masses can't get hold of it fast enough" whereas since it's a Windows RC being released, people are taking the opportunity to flame like idiots instead.
Doesn't paint a very pretty picture of the FOSS community.
Quality, performance, value; you get only two, and you don't always get to pick.
Screen cap from MSDN
en_windows_7_ultimate_rc_x86_dvd_349010.iso MD5 Hash: 8867c13330f56a93944bcd46dcd73590
en_windows_7_ultimate_rc_x64_dvd_347803.iso MD5 Hash: 98341af35655137966e382c4feaa282d
The x64 leak on mininova has the same MD5
Rocket science is easy. Neurosurgery, now *that's* difficult.