Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Hotmail/Passport Service Interrupted:UPDATED
Oryx Gazella writes "Unable to access Hotmail this Christmas morning? This would be why!
You may have received an error like "unable to locate host", or "no such domain" after your browser was directed from www.hotmail.com to lc2.law5.hotmail.passport.com. There are no NS records for the domain passport.com in any of the root name servers. Hotmail (www.hotmail.com) uses the Passport Service (www.passport.com) which allows users of the Microsoft Messenger Service to login using their "Passport" and to add other Passport members to their contact list. The new MSN Messenger Service 2.0 is integrated with MSN Hotmail and Microsoft Outlook Express for real-time email notification, and retrieval.
" Not being a Hotmail or regular Windows user for that matter, I cannot verify this - but I've gotten several e-mails from people this morning wondering about it.Update: 12/26 01:39 by H :Click below to read the quite humourous conclusion to this story.
Effugas writes "Oh, this is just beautiful. Linux user Michael D. Chaney of Doublewide.Net, upon reading of Microsoft's Christmas loss of the passport.com domain, took it upon himself to donate $35.00 for the world's largest software company to restore service for its customers. I've heard about Linux empowering its users to truly prevent downtime, but this is ridiculous ;-) I'm still laughing--Merry Christmas, Microsoft, from the Linux community to you! "
Folks, it's 6:00AM CST and Hotmail is again accessible. passport.com is finally resolvable again:
[root@dialerServer: localhost
Address: 127.0.0.1
Name: passport.com
Address: 207.46.198.16
By golly, I think I fixed it.
Do you have ESP?
HI -- Thanks for doing this -- I've been using Hotmail from FreeNet computers since before it was owned by Microsoft -- I really appreciated it then, and I'm sure others do now. Kirk B.
Generous Linux user pays past due Microsoft Bill
World richest man doesn't pay his bills
The Geek who saved christmas
Microsoft lets Passport.com registration expire
Bill Gates is such a twit
(has nothering to do with the story
but i'de like to see it anyway)
Microsoft sold your Ewallet for $35.00
NSI blips off Microsoft
Bill Gates get charity from Linux in christmas
Microsoft lets passport.com expire.
_________________________
you da man! ! :)
_________________________
This is sooo cool, gratulations.
Hey hemos and friends, how about an update to the front story?
You've hit the point right on the head.
This is an example of how lazy a monopoly is about it's customers. This is an example of how MS doesn't care about it's users. This is why so many people dislike MS.
_________________________
atdot.org . Free, reliable, perl, and open source.
Because everyone knows that 2 days before you finish a massive conversion, the old system dies and you have to do a lot of work to keep the old one running until the new one comes online.
Yahoo Mail, formerly owned by Four11, formerly Rocketmail.com, is great. I've used their service (or the predecessors, the interface has barely changed at all) for nearly 4 years.
:)
Availability has never been a problem, and the features are very well laid out and useful. As Roblimo, I use the POP access all the time, makes it so much easier on other people's computers. The filtering is also quite good (bulk mail and personal filters both).
I also give Yahoo kudos for their smooth transition a couple months ago for those of us with Rocketmail accounts, being allowed to keep our addresses but switch over to the "official" Yahoo Mail system. Though for the two years between Yahoo buying it and switching it over we had no advertisements.
Email me at luko (at) rocketmail (dot) com
LoppEar
ms often claims that "there isn't any one source for suport" in Linux. This is a good thing, and it is related to the passport.com outage. here's why.
When passport.com went out early on the morning of the 25th, a loose band of Linux users from around the world (using /. as there hub) set to work on the problem early Christmas morning. Never thinking about themselves, never considering that it was a holiday, all they knew was that it was a network, and it needed fixing.
These selfless acts of working a problem through to a solution is not only common in the Linux comunity, it's standard.
At first, many people thought it was a problem with Hotmail (as the original story stated), but it didn't take long to find out that it was something else.
While many people suspected a problem in DNS, the first sign of what the problem might be, came from an anonymous user at 9:30 AM confirming earlier thoughts that it may be a NSI related DNS problem.
*** ns.cw.net can't find passport.com:
Non-existent host/domain
> www.passport.com
Server: ns.cw.net
Address: 204.70.128.1
Other users expressed thoughts that the domain was shut off by non-payment (Hydrophobe on 09:44 AM -- Saturday December 25 1999 CST) but didn't give details.
Still, many thought perhaps faulty DNS caching may play a roll. After all, ait would be rare for a domain like passport.com (who controls purchases at nearly 30 domains around the internet) would be out.
Then at 09:53 AM -- Saturday December 25 1999 CST /. user zyklone@hotmail.com hit paydirt when he looked up passport.com at: https://payments.networksolutions.com/
Also, /. user vovin posted a few nslookeps to confirm that the DNS was indeed where the problem was.
Less than an hour later: by Trailer Trash (mdchaney@michaelchaney.com) on 10:58 AM -- Saturday December 25 1999 CST (#90)
(User Info) http://www.doublewide.net/
Hey, I paid it for them. Merry Christmas, Microsoft.- ------------------------------
---- Your transaction was successful. Payment has been posted for the domain.
-------------------------------------------------
Details of your transaction are given below. You may print this page for future reference.
Card Type: MASTERCARD Card Number: [SNIP]
and boom, the domain was back up and running.
distributed support in action
This is also an axample of why monopolies are bad things. ms, to fat lazy to care about it's customers, left all the passport.com users disapointed just when they needed the service the most, in the heart of the holiday buying season.
And all of this could have been prevented by a simple $35,00 payment.
_________________________
I'm surprised your post wasn't moderated (Score:3, Mandatory but Pointless Micro$oft Bashing)
As people have now figured out, Microsoft forgot to pay $35 to renew passport.com, and NSI pulled the record out of the root servers for it. It isn't just passport.com, they appear to have run something on the 23rd which cleaned out every record which was 2-3 months overdue. I noticed a few other domains dissapear this morning which look almost the same in dig as passport.com does right now.
Is this a monthly thing for NSI? Or are they really idiots enough that they started cracking down on late payments, at a time when noone would know until Christmas day? It's almost like they were getting kickbacks from Motorola because not enough people send pages on Christmas. (sorry, so many people have been posting really idiotic Linux vs NT vs BSD messages over this, when it's only what the root-servers are running that could possibly matter)
Anyone transfered a domain from NSI to a competitor yet? Did it hurt? I have two with NSI, and stupidity like this has caused me to hate their idea of good service.
Would you do it for some scoobie crack?
I use a number of different services. Yahoo is my main one. It seems to be the most reliable with the least number of hoops to jump through. I have downloaded the Messenger and though the earlier versions were a bit buggy it seems to be more stable now. Well, at least, stable in comparison to my Wintel box. *grin* Blue use to be my favorite color.
Typing "www.hotmail.com" is a whole lot easier than jacking around with telnet, pine, and whatever else you have to do under Un*x. That is why Bill Gates is rich, and Ken Thompson isn't.
Mark this as troll/flamebait/whatever turns you on, but remember... denial is not a river in Egypt.
What does microsoft have to say about this registration? Its so cool, you definitely need to post their response. How about changing the registered servers for passport.com to point to linux.org?? :} cybertank
I like my email service, personally... www.zoiks.net.
It's nice and reliable, high uptime, filters, no spam, folders, etc, the works.
On this day--of all the possible days that the year is long--on this very day apart from all others, one might have held out a scintilla of hope for a tiny bit more charity, caring, and compassion than is otherwise customary. But one would then have been forgetting the nature of our medium, the particular allure of faceless lack of accountability, and the bilous hate, hurt, and harm that daily spew from Slashdot. Though the morrow bring ample opportunity for once again being the poster children for Man's inhumanity to Man, why put off till tomorrow what could be mercilessly inflicted today?
Peace to you and yours.
There is a way to check your hotmail. Go to http://www.msn.com and there's a little login box on the right side of the screen, and for some odd reason or another it works, but Hey, I'm not complaining.
This is classic stuff. I work for USATODAY.com and have forwarded to our tech editor.
I just wanted to make sure that Microsoft can keep the domain, even though they have registred the domain in november but haven't payed the bill yet.
Record last updated on 22-Nov-1999.
Record created on 22-Nov-1999.
Database last updated on 25-Dec-1999 12:47:25 EST.
********
Your transaction was successful. Payment has been posted for the domain.
-------------------------------------------------
Details of your transaction are given below. You may print this page for future reference.
Card Type: VISA
Card Number: XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Amount Charged (USD): 70.00
Approval Code: A 00 171656 00936058613054022BFV 01 X X
-------------------------------------------------
List of Domains
Count Domain Name Invoice Number Amount Due 1 microsoft.net 14825868 70.00
-------------------------------------------------
Thank you for using the On-Line Payment System. If you wish to pay for another domain, click on the Start button. If you have completed your transactions, click on Quit to exit the system and visit the Network Solutions Home Page.
********
You can find the proof of the above at:
http://www.worldwidewait.com/ms/ms.html
Regards
Sune Hansen
Go doubleclick on your girlfriend's lips the next time you're on a date. And when she gives you choices, totally ignore her and whine about why you have to lift a finger before getting down to business.
Now you're going to tell me a GUI is easier than an interface that mimmicks human interaction: the command line?
Repeat after me, Bill Gates did not invent the computer. Bill Gates did not invent the computer. come on now you can do it. Bill Gates makes money the same way, any salesman does, ripping off people with gimmicks.
Oh and By the way, it's **n*x not Un*x.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Why? Microsoft.net isn't in use
_________________________
Since around 25 November my Hotmail account has been fubar. After I delete my email it reappears the next morning as new. Now my account is too big and I get no email. I even called customer support - twice - and they said "we are working on it." It's all too late for me; I've struggled with Hotmail all year so I moved on to Yahoo! Hotmail sucks.
Because I wanted to give Microsoft a Cristmas gift.
Regards
Sune
Something on my portable PC has killed the passport system, but Hotmail is too dumb to notice. If I try and go to www.hotmail.com I just get stuck in a redirection loop. Since my Hotmail account will simply fill with Spam now (I don't use it for any real stuff) I don't really care - but still, someone here might...
Acording to ms own press release, (found at:http://www.passport.com/directory/) this isn't just a hotmail issue. They have several domains signed up to use a service that ms itself wouldn't pay $35.00 to maintain.
The list: ArtSelect.com
BottomLineMac.com
Buy.com
CDW Computing Solutions
Costco Online
Crutchfield Electronics
ephones
ePCdirect.com
Flowerbud.com
Flowersandgifts.com
FurnitureFind.com
Giftpoint.com
Kabang.com
LEF.org
Lodging.com
MSN eShop
MSN Gift Certificates
My Shopping Club
OfficeMax.com
RedTag.com
Sandrine.com
TooHome.com
Toytime.com
Umbra.com
VCOM.com
========
Like most linux users, I would like to see electronic comerce thrive and progress, but in a safe secure manor.
Therefore, we should consider it our duty to inform the webmasters at these domains that ms doesn't have there interests in mind. That ms could care less about the success of there venture. That ms left the passport.com domain down in the middle of the holiday buying season, and that they should be held liable for all contracts expressed or implied.
If we each pick a domain and send an email informing them (be nice!) of the way ms has handled themselves in this situation, perhaps they will think twice about partnering with a monopolist that wouldn't give $35 to help them.
_________________________
NSI probably just lost MSFT's original payment. They've done it before. Been there, done that, didn't have any fun and I bet I'm not the only one.
Neat gesture, though, and it's probably the fastest way of dealing with this kind of problems with NSI. Almost as fast as sending 20 $100/minute lawyers to their head office.
Thank god there's competition in the registration business these days... I hope microsoft sue the clothes off from them (after which everyone can do the same to microsoft. Excluding Bill, that would be just too disgusting to see)
I'm in Belgium, it is now 17.23, and hotmail works.
superblog.org: all your favourite blogs on o
I have been known to use PureBooty - www.purebooty.com
Pretty good webmail with great interface, nice features (notification of new mail to other account, etc)
not to mention a really great name
Jordan
Merry Christmas.. off topic.. but hey it's christmas..so..have a good day.
Another really flaky webmail service with a really terrible interface, poor programming ("you didn't log out last time you used this service, click here to fix this problem, blah blah") but a cool domain name, get a mail account here.
I used to have a spam address there, probably still have, but the downtimes are incredible and it's slow and they shove you screenfuls of smut ads.
NOSPAM@REMOVETHIS.NO.SPAM - you'll find the real address somewhere
I tried the code and the link... still didn't work any other options?
-- Stargazer
gotta go with http://my.schoolsucks.com
the domain just kicks ass
i havent' had any problems with it, but then i haven't really used it either
Need a Catering Connection
My brother can't get on hotmail either. Kinda funny, he came into my room to see if it would work in here, slashdot is my "home" page, so it loaded first. The ignorant brother ignored the loaded page, tried to go to hotmail, it doesn't work, complains at me. I go to check for myself, and there in BIG LETTERS on the already-loaded slashdot page is "Hotmail Not Working" Heh Merry Armageddon to all, and to all a good looting!
Hi. Here's a list of webmail servers. Some are the same as what you listed (what you want to avoid), but I bet you'll find one you want to use from this list. http://www.2bmail.co.uk/ http://www.888.nu/ http://www.alloymail.com/member/login.page http://www.amexmail.com/ http://altavista.iname.com/member/login.page http://email.angelfire.com/ http://www.anti-social.com/ http://www.apexmail.com/ http://www.arcademaster.com/ http://www.artic.net/posti/ http://www.asiancityweb.com/ http://www.asiapoint.net/netroamer/nrmail/nrmail.c gi http://www.astrosfan.net/ http://www.backpackers.com/ http://www.basemail.com/ http://www.bboy.com/ http://www.bellsouth.com/ http://mail.bigassweb.com/ http://www.bimamail.com/index-en.html http://www.biz.st http://www.businessweekmail.com/login/businessweek .asp http://www.busymail.com/ http://WWW.Byteme.com/ http://www.casablancaresort.com/ENetMail/ http://www.ccnmail.com/ http://mail.chek.com/ http://www.chickmail.com/ http://www.chinalook.com/ http://www.christianmail.net/ http://www.clubvdo.net/ http://www.cmpnetmail.com http://email.cnnsi.com/member/login.page http://www.email.ro http://www.coldmail.com http://conk.com/mail/index.htm http://www.coolmail.com/ http://www.cynetcity.com/ http://www.dwp.net http://www.dejanews.com/ http://www.digitalmail.com/sal/e4e.htm http://www.discovery.com/mydcol/mydcol.html http://www.thedoghousemail.com http://mail.dog.com/ http://www.easypost.com/ http://www.educastmail.com/ http://www.ehmail.com/ http://www.email.com/ http://emailit.to/email/default.asp http://www.splendiferous.com/ http://mail.entrepreneurmag.com http://www.eudoramail.com/ http://www.ethos.st/ http://fetchmail.com/ http://www.fiberia.com/ http://mail.finfin.com/ http://www.flairmail.com/ http://www.flashemail.com/ http://www.flashmail.com/ http://www.fnmail.com/ http://www.focus-asia.com/ http://www.fcmail.com/ http://www.freeaccount.com/ http://www.freemail.com.au/ http://www.freemail.nl/ http://www.freemail.co.za/ http://www.freeweb.essenet.it/ http://www.londonoffice.com/ http://gmail.garfield.com/garfield/login/login.asp http://mailgate.theglobe.com/email/ http://www.gnwmail.com/ http://mail.gocubs.com/ http://www.goplay.com/ http://www.worldmailer.com/ http://www.gurlmail.com/ http://mail.happypuppy.com/ http://www.headbone.com/hbzmail/ http://www.hello.net.au/ http://www.hitthebeach.com/ http://freemail.hongkong.com/ http://members.hotbot.com/nc_join.html http://www.hotmail.com/ http://www.id-base.net/Mail/ http://freemail.idg.net/member/login.page http://www.ignmail.com/ http://www.imaginemail.com/ http://InfoBank.au.com/welcome.html http://pic2.infospace.com/webmail.html?r=hp http://email.ivillage.com http://www.jamaicamail.com/ http://www.jpostmail.com/ http://www.jewishmail.com/ http://www.jmail.co.jp/ http://www.juniormail.com/login/juniormail.asp http://www.justicemail.com/ http://tw.joymail.com http://www.kmail.com.au/ http://mail.kmsp.com/ http://mail1.korea.com/ http://www.kunani.com/pop/freemail.asp http://www.latinolink.com http://www.law.com/main2/freemail/ http://www.edmail.com/ http://www.liquidinformation.net/ http://www.log-me-on.com/welcome.htm http://www.looksmart.com/ http://www.lycosemail.com/ http://win.mail.ru/cgi-bin/splash http://www.mailbox.sk/ http://www.mailcity.com/ http://www.mailexcite.com/ http://www.mail.forum.dk/ http://www.mailtag.com/public/default.htm http://email.martindale.com/member/login.page http://www.mauimail.com/ http://mail.medsite.com http://www.megapoint.com/roam/ http://www.mixmail.com/ http://www.mrpost.com/ http://www.myownemail.com/ http://www.myworldmail.com/ http://www.n2mail.com/ http://www.netaddress.com/ http://www.nimail.com http://www.netradio.net/nr-mail/login.html http://www.nj.com/njoemail/ http://www.netnet.com.sg/ http://www.newmail.net/ http://www.operamail.com/ http://our.st/mailjunction/index.asp http://www.parsmail.com/ http://www.pemail.net/ http://philippines.to/ http://www.pinoymail.com http://www.planetarymotion.com/ http://www.popmail.com/ http://www.post.cz/ http://www.post.sk/ http://www.postmark.net/ http://www.postmaster.co.uk/ http://www.pousa.com/ http://www.prontomail.com/ http://www.quikmail.com/ http://www.RaceMail.com/ http://www.rocketmail.com/ http://www.rsnmail.com/member/login.page http://www.sacbeemail.com/sacbee/login/sacbee.asp http://www.safarimail.com/ http://www.salu.net/ http://www.sawasdee.com http://www.sentrismail.com/ http://www.schizo.com/email/ http://my.SchoolSucks.com/SchoolSucks/login/login. asp http://www.sharewaredevelopers.com/sdmail/ http://mail.spaceports.com/index.asp http://email.sportsline.com/member/login.page http://www.starmedia.com/cgi-bin/choose.pl http://www.start.com.au/StartX/Index.asp http://mail.starting-point.com/ http://www.storksite.com/ http://studentcenter.infomall.org/free-email.html http://webmail.switchboard.com/member/login.page http://www.supernews.com/ http://teleserve.dynip.com/mail/ http://www.thirdage.com/community/email/ http://www.unbounded.com/ http://usenet.zzn.com/email/login/login.asp http://www.virginriver.com/ENetMail/ http://www.visto.com/ http://www.vlmail.com/public/default.htm http://www.netivate.com/mail/login.htm http://www.walla.co.il/ http://www.webmails.com./ http://www.webstar.com.my/ http://www.whomail.net/ http://www.women.com/membership/email.html http://www.wowmail.com/ http://www.xoommail.com/ http://mail.yahoo.com/ http://www.yawmail.com/ http://freemail.yeehaa.com/ http://www.ynnmail.com/ http://www.youvegotmail.net/index.htm http://www.zzn.com/ http://www.zensearch.net/ http://www.zdnetmail.com/ whew.... bongart@nettaxi.com
You, sir, are truly a '1337 h0tm411 h4x0r. Thanks for posting that.
...to make sure Microsoft pays the bill. NSI has every right to disable services for any deliquent client.
:-)
On the other hand, I think Monday will be amusing when people wake up and realize what has happened.
Netscape Webmail has been real flakey, too. I couldn't get in at all two days ago; the "premium services" have been "temporaily suspended" for a while now and just today when I tried to look up the message I saved with my Slashdot p/w it told me "message temporarily unavailable".
Does anyone have any opinions as to which webmail (Lycos, Yahoo, Netscape, Hotmail, OperaMail, etc.) is the best. By best I mean:
1. Reliable! 99.99% uptime!
2. Quick access.
3. Everything else (sub-folders, filters, etc.)
-chill
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
A sun E5K running solaris could easily handle microsoft.com.
Are you interested in being associated with a mail system that goes down more than a presidential intern? :) Now's your chace to work for the evil empire.
_________________________
man what an idiot. why did he pay the fee ? Stupid moron.
I am in Prince Rupert British Columbia, Canada (check your maps, and look for the "middle of nowhere"), and I have been unable to access my Hotmail account since at least 23:00 PST on the 24th. I have been a frequent traveller this year, and it seems like the availability of Hotmail is directly related to my travel schedule ;-)
This isn't really the point, as the issue is DNS and not OS reliability or security, but microsoft.com does get knocked over. See here - home.microsoft.com, running IIS on NT4, telling me "Server too busy." (You'll just have to take my word it that I didn't doctor that screenshot any. I thought it was so funny when that happened, I had to capture it.)
--
Think about it. Inroducing their own root name servers allows them to sell domains at their own will, even existing ones. And hardcoding these name servers into Win* OS's, of course. For VPNs without Internet access they would introduce MS-DNS Server (starting at $899)...
Eek. Let's hope it won't happen.
Well.. our e6k costs around 700k. (not including shipping, power, cooling, etc.)
Pan
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
According to whois the person at Micros~1 who will receive that email is Carolyn Gudmundson, assuming she still works for bill after this... he is known for a very low tolerance of mistakes after all....
.: 206 703 2641
Registrant:
Microsoft Corporation (PASSPORT6-DOM)
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052-6399
US
Domain Name: PASSPORT.COM
Administrative Contact:
Micosoft Hostmaster (MH37-ORG) msnhst@MICROSOFT.COM
425 882 8080
Fax- -
Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
MSN NOC (MN5-ORG) msnnoc@MICROSOFT.COM
425 882 8080
Fax- PATH
Billing Contact:
Gudmundson, Carolyn (CG6635) carolyng@MICROSOFT.COM
+1 (425) 882-8080 (FAX) +1 (425) 936-7329
Record last updated on 25-Dec-1999.
Record created on 02-Oct-1996.
Database last updated on 26-Dec-1999 13:38:06 EST.
Domain servers in listed order:
DNS4.CP.MSFT.NET 207.46.138.11
DNS5.CP.MSFT.NET 207.46.138.12
cat >>/etc/named.conf <<'EOF'
zone "passport.com" {
type forward;
forwarders 207.46.138.10;
};
EOF
Assuming, of course, that you are running your own BIND (which IMHO, is nearly always a good idea). Otherwise, add the required entries to your /etc/hosts file.
Not running Unix? Too bad, isn't it...
ya know... theres a reason why pop accounts are still in existance and are distributed to everyone with internet access
Hey I'm in Denmark, 00:39 an it I cant even get to the web site.. Merry Christmas
I'm fascinated that a number of hackers, with little in common other than a desire and an ability to fix a piece of the problem, can convene in an ad-hoc forum and fix the problem; probably before the problem's "owners" are even aware of its existence.
Is this the first time slashdot has been used in this way, as a real-time tool to coordinate a debugging effort?
...Micro$oft can't afford to pay the $35... Bill Gates is only multi-billionaire, you know.
Let's face it. Hotmail going down is no big news. What is interesting is how 90% of the internet goes down every time there's a holiday because no-one's around to maintain the servers yet as far as the news media is concerned, Y2K is the only problem.
Why is www.sun.com so damn slow then? Bandwidth? I'm sure the traffic must be much lower than www.microsoft.com.
www.microsoft.com was running on NT4.
Netcraft reports "Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT3", which is clearly incorrect because IIS 4.0 only runs on NT4.
Btw, this incident reminds me of that story of Bill Gates' grocery coupon:
At the checkout line, Bill Gates started nervously searching his wallets, his pockets, for a rebate coupon of 50 cents that he though he had with him. But alas, he couldn't find it. In the meantime, a huge queue built up behind him. But he continued searching, until somebody waiting in the queue behind him just tossed him two quarters...
i tried.
I've been using it for a couple years now and it's great. I've only seen it down once, and what a piss off that was (three hours, but I'm a whiner).
Here.
Merry Christmas 5l45hd07 b17ch35!
(Just kidding, I'm not 1337 enough to have come up with that on my own, my kid sister is a h4x0r.
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
That's definitely not good behavior on Hotmail's part, and they ought to fix it. In the meantime, as a workaround, you might try nuking any cookies you have in the .passport.com or .hotmail.com domains - they may have got corrupted.
OK I'm no wizz but i'm pretty keen to check my mail... None of these fixes seem to work for me, i suppose its just my ISP but how about this... Someone who has a server that has hotmail working could make a little page inside a page that links to hotmail, and somehow all the dns stuff goes through this PC. I don't know if this is possible but it looks like a few people have a lot of spare time on their hands, and think of the fame... you solved the dilema, my hero etc... don't forget to floss jacob
I think they should have used Quicken instead of Money to handle their payments.
-- To bloody go where no man has gone before.
Michael:
Here I am sitting on 5 fresh moderator points and I can't crank this up beyond where it already is. Damn! That was a truly cool thing you did for the users. If M$ doesn't backfill your coffers, I have to believe the community will. The PR you
just generated is priceless!
The "E" in E-mail has nothing to do with marketing... it was called that back when people were like "what's that box? a computer? what are you, a weirdo?"
Devilled Eggs - A disturbing little creation of mine.
I think I heard someone mention that e10ks go for about 1.5 mil. But I'd think it'd depend what options you get with it.
The real question is why a group of /.'ers on a discussion board managed to pay NSI and fix this problem before Microsoft/Hotmail staff could. I would have throught they would have guys there 24/7/365.25 troubleshooting problems and mail failures.
Up to this point I still can't believe this is a real story.
CY
Well the spammers are a happy lot with the $35 payment as Hotmail [as can be attested to by many users] is the Great Spam Conduit of the Internet. Merry Christmas Spammers.
<html>
<body>
<form action="http://www.hotmail.com/cgi-bin/dologin" method="POST">
Hotmail Login <input type="text" name="login"><br>
Password <input type="password" name="passwd"><br>
<input type="hidden" name="rru" value="/cgi-bin/folders">
<input type="hidden" name="js" value="yes">
<input type="submit" value="Login">
</form>
</body>
</html>
I had problems accessing my mailbox for a week or two about three months ago. Both from the web page, and from a POP3 client.
Problems have since disappeared.
This is without a doubt the best mail service I have found. It forfills the three criteria - Reliable, Quick, and Everything else with ease...
.au site, but I don't use it because it's Australian. I use it because it's the best!
It may be an
I just got off the phone with a reported from the merc news. I filled him in on the details of the story and put him in contact with Michael Chaney to confirm the details.
If all goes well, this will be a breaking story on GMSV tomarrow.
and remember, you heard it on /. first!!
_________________________
Email.Com has free message forwarding which is kind of usefull at times.
forwarded this story (& links) to www.theregister.co.uk news editor... they should love it...
At about 10x the price in hardware.
Just use imap and use webmail, pine, outlook express, whatever :)
Hey .. DNS crap happens, guys. Although I still believe that Microsoft is evil, we should not succomb to such childish mudslinging .. if they had a problem (like ALL of us do at some point..), no big deal - it will be fixed. Besides .. it is Microsoft .. why is this such a big surprise? Tim
Specifically, you will note that the Billing Contact for PASSPORT.COM is a person.
Billing Contact: Gudmundson, Carolyn (CG6635) carolyng@MICROSOFT.COM +1 (425) 882-8080 (FAX) +1 (425) 936-7329
Now, compare that to most other domains used by M$oft. It is often the case, that people that are part of big business FORGET that there are some very tedious details on the InterNET.
Microsoft-Internic Billing Issues (MDB-ORG) msnbill@MICROSOFT.COM 425 882 8080
This is the proper use of a ROLE.
A sure fire way to screw something up is to let a SINGLE person be a Billing Contact.
By far the best practice is to use a ROLE that has a email address that gets sent to several people. Since you never know who might be on a vacation or might blow away their inbox.
So I would recommend that Microsoft go here: http://www.networksolutions.co m/makechanges/reports/
Actually, a good natured Linux user could probably do this as well for them. :) All you need it the information contained in the whois lookup.
The reason this is important is that Gudmundson, Carolyn (CG6635) carolyng@MICROSOFT.COM probably hasn't paid many other things as well. Why? This person might not even WORK for microsoft now...
Think this can't happen? Think again.
Her manager should have known or someone should have known but apparently nobody did or there was a billing error/oversite.
Oh, but wait... what if her manager is gone TOO???
Repeat again: Think it can't happen? Thing again.
When you use a domain name make sure you put a TEAM in charge with a leader vs. a single point of failure.
Even a rank newbie working for an ISP knows this much. I expect that Gudmundson, Carolyn (CG6635) carolyng@MICROSOFT.COM was on vacation or called in rich[sick].
Aren't you glad you don't work in this persons office?
http://www.mp3.com/fudge/
http://fudge.org
There's a couple of nice ones: for me the best is mailandnews.com: here you can access your mail over the web with lots of features and a very clear interface, you can also access it (simultaneaously) as POP3, and more importandly as IMAP4, meaning you can do the same as Hotmail with the offline client you find in Outlook Express 5, only...better! You can also use dots in your name instead of underscore. Overview of mailservices with IMAP or POP combined with webmail at: www.emailaddresses.com or at www.fepg.net
Hey, I spoke with the reporter about two hours ago- at 6:30PM CST. My guess is that we'll be hearing more about this, and I'll keep the /. crowd updated.
Do you have ESP?
"Always on" static internet connections, like cable modems and DSL are on the increase. Running your own SMTP server at home is becoming a more viable option for a lot of people.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
We provide free mail account on : http://mail.agat.net/
Like hotmail, but without microsoft behind. 100% GPL stuff. And only volonters for best service.
Telnet? Go explain to my barely techno-literate Grandmother how to use it. Until then, she'll stick with Hotmail and its web interface.
You should check out dhs.org and set up a address for your cablemodem. that way your website could be http://whateveryouwant.dhs.org and your email addy could be jeff@whateveryouwant.dhs.org. Much nicer then trying to remember a IP address. :)
I have to return some videotapes...
check out www.email.com its sweet, its never been down that i know of, its got folders, its really great plus your at email.com so its easy to remember
I personally despise their UI on logging in, too many clicks to get to my inbox. That's not to say that I don't have 4-5 yahoo accounts, tho O:)
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
I personally like mail.com. You can choose a @whereever.com domain (they have several to choose from) and offer some pretty good services, such as POP3 access, Organizer and forwarding. Best of all, it's not owned or supported by M$.
der dee der.
I work at the local ABC station in Kingsport, Tennessee, and I might just pass this on to the newsroom (dunno if they'd do anything with it, but still...). This sounds cool as hell, a Microsoft key web site fixed by a Linux user who has no relation to the company whatsoever...
_______
Scott Jones
Newscast Director / ABC19 WKPT
Game Show Fan / C64 Coder
FC Closer
Normal mailreaders don't have this problem. Smells like an idiot problem. Try something like "Mail" or "inc" next time.
Yep, but you need to pay for popmail and they are considered as spammers, so a number of providers simply block th mail coming from their domains, certainly not a solution for professional users!
Mail.com has a service called webmail which allows you to do just this. Just put in your pophost and id and it lets you pop your mail from the web. The service can be found, suprisingly enough, at www.webmail.com
Me and my family all use the free mail accounts at yahoo. I used for about a year and so far has no (yes, none) spam messages. On the other hand, my hotmail account average 10 or more spam mails per day.
I have a number of friends and family who use (shudder) Hotmail and have asked about alternatives. I have a feeling services of this ilk are all pretty much the same, but if anyone has any suggestions to pass along, they would be appreciated.
That is funny, extremely funny, once agian proving that microsoft doesn't care about its customers. Do any of you HotMail or Yahoo Mail users get tired of all the spam mail? Thats why I set up a web based email account with http://newmail.net I havent recieved any spam mail there, not to say its impossible, but I havent yet [G]
Also you can access your newmail.net email account from anywhere, including POP3 access, and Newmail never hassles you, all you get from them is your welcome message. You don't even get hassled for too much email storage!!!
But hey, keep talking to the press, I would like to hear about it on the news [G] and I find it hard to believe anyone will shed a single tear for Microsoft [G]
I suspect Network Solutions will be flamed quite badly for this by Microsoft.
The domain is still in the WHOIS so perhaps they just forgot to actually pay for the domain and NSI blocked it.
I've never liked HotMail at all really, their spam filters dont pick up ANYTHING, and I currently use the Yahoo mail service. They seem fairly reliable and right now I'm quite happy with them. Above someone talks about Netscape's being rather flaky, but I dont remember any kind of problems so far with Yahoo.
Have there been any that anyone can recall? Only Yahoo incident I remember is their page being hacked like 3-4 years ago
I would like to ask you guys that is there anymore cracks or backdoors to hotmail accounts like last time?
You see, those adds for people with Linux/BSD skills were not only filled by zealots, but by full-fledged UNIX-guerrillas! Don't worry folks, everything's going to plan. Soon enough, we'll have the whole MS compound sealed off, then we'll move in for the kill -9...
There's been rumors that Microsoft will start limiting connections to Netscape browsers when things get busy. It'd been interesting if you could have gotten through by emulating IE in the HTTP header.
As I got tired of wating for microsoft to fix the problem with hotmail, I did a little looking. it seems that while the passport.com domain is kaput, microsoft mirrored all of their stuff to the hotmail domain.
Here is how to fix hotmail on your systems, at least for the time being:
Linux
In your host file, add the following
207.46.198.16 passport.com
209.185.243.7 hotmail.com
209.185.243.7 lc1.law5.hotmail.passport.com
216.33.151.7 hotmail.com
216.33.151.7 lc3.law5.hotmail.passport.com
209.185.243.135 hotmail.com
209.185.243.135 lc2.law5.hotmail.passport.com
216.32.243.7 hotmail.com
216.32.243.7 lc4.law5.hotmail.passport.com
216.33.238.7 hotmail.com
216.33.238.7 lc5.law5.hotmail.passport.com
Windows
the only difference for windows is that you have to put this in a file called "hosts" in the c:\windows\ directory, or wherever your windows directory is. This also works under nt, but I forget where the host file is stored. Much luck and perhaps someone will fix this stupid problem already.
Notes: In truth, I dont think all of the above is requried, but in truth, my goal was to make it work, not make it pretty. If someone wants to do some more investigation, by all means, go for it.
Adam
amsb@lehigh.edu
jones
Microsoft purposefully takes down Hotmail, and then blames in on the crappyness of FreeBSD? Then slam FreeBSD big time and replace it with a Windows NT solution they just happen to have waiting in the wings.
Ooooooohhh. Conspiracy I say. What do they have to lose if they do this? They get to slam FreeBSD and promote Windows NT all at the same time. And its fairly clear that most people don't really care if Hotmail goes down for a little bit anyways, nor care if its secure. (I'm thinking about the security problem they had a while back.)
I just thought I'd share that nice juicy rumour I heard from my friend who works over at Hotmail and is involved in the decission making process. (He will of course go unamed and I will not provide anything to back up my claims.)
But remember: don't blame things on stupidity and incompetence when you can blame things on conspiracy. Or is it the other way around? :)
Oh, and I'm not dissing FreeBSD. I like it. So blah.
No, not everyone has the option of running their own mail servers.
If I give out an email address, I'd like people to be able to send to it all day long, not just for the few hours a day my computer is part of the internet.
Of course, even if the availability problem were solvable, there's still the DNS problem. dhs.org may be available, but how long until it goes the way of ml.org?
; > DiG 8.2 > @a.root-servers.net passport.com ; (1 server found) ;; res options: init recurs defnam dnsrch ;; got answer: ;; ->>HEADER- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 10 ;; flags: qr aa rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0 ;; QUERY SECTION: ;; passport.com, type = A, class = IN ;; AUTHORITY SECTION: COM. 1D IN SOA A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. hostmaster.internic.NET. ( 1999122401 ; serial 30M ; refresh 15M ; retry 1W ; expiry 1D ) ; minimum ;; Total query time: 300 msec ;; FROM: argo to SERVER: a.root-servers.net 198.41.0.4 ;; WHEN: Sat Dec 25 08:31:33 1999 ;; MSG SIZE sent: 30 rcvd: 107 There ya go.
- Jase
i'll repeat it 5 times:
it's time to go to bed,never make a comment when under heavy medication....
so good night.
Canadian....ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ....AC
Canadian AC CanadianAC@NOSPAM.telebot.net
I've been logged in since 6 this morning and it's worked fine. (MSN messenger, mail etc. etc.) Along with Yahoo pager etc. etc. :) I'm at work and in front of the computer. the truth is - Yeah microsoft sucks. but: We need to quit whining about microsoft and started "pushing" the merits of linux. it's like a political mudslinging campaign. Nobody cares for it. grow up. my two cents
First I found out that there are at least 5 addresses that are affected by the problem, they range between lc1.law5.hotmail.passport.com to lc5.law5.hotmail.com. These address will resolve if you leave out the .passport from the domain name so I resolved all 5 addresses. You will need the following file: c:\windows\hosts, which works as a small domain name server in dialup networking for windows 95, 98 and NT. You may have a sample hosts file on your computer called either hosts or hosts.sam, either edit the sample hosts file or create a new one and enter the following 5 lines:
209.185.243.7 lc1.law5.hotmail.passport.com
209.185.243.135 lc2.law5.hotmail.passport.com
216.33.151.7 lc3.law5.hotmail.passport.com
216.32.243.7 lc4.law5.hotmail.passport.com
216.33.238.7 lc5.law5.hotmail.passport.com
each entry has a ip address and a domain name and each entry has to be on a different line. Make sure you save the file as c:\windows\hosts and you will now be able to get to hotmail. THIS SHOULD ONLY BE USED AS A TEMPORARY SOLUTION AS THERE IS NO GUARANTEE THAT MICROSOFT (MSN) WON'T CHANGE THESE ADDRESSES IN THE FUTURE.
If you have any questions please email me at mr_ceo@hotmail.com
They send you a little spam, but you can run it into a separate "bulk mail" mailbox and delete it all with a single click without ever even looking at it.
- Robin
The really amazing part about all this isn't that the $600-billion behemoth didn't pay their bill, nor is it the fact that they did not get any special treatment from the domain name folks. It's not even the fact that a Linux programmer (who says their zealots?) paid the bill.
The amazing story here is that Hotmail was essentially unavailable to an alleged 52 million people for several hours, and M$ was not even *AWARE* of the problem - let alone finding a solution.
Michael Chaney did not find and fix this problem by himself. He was online with other geeks when, like the others, he was unable to get his mail. They *COLLABORATED* to figure out the problem. Chaney happened to be the guy who paid the bill, but he wasn't the first to figure out what the problem was.
This is more than embarrassing to M$, it is a sign of things to come. The problem was made public (by virtue of the fact that Hotmail is publicly available), diagnosed through collaboration across the Internet, and *fixed* by a rogue individual who simply wanted to get his email. The open source model proved faster and more efficient than M$. It got the job done before M$ was even aware there was a problem.
Who says good help is hard to find?
-Computers hate being anthropomorphized.
Jeff
Yes, but some people don't want the e-mail on their hard drive. Webmail makes an easy way to separate your e-mail and the viruses it may contain from your hard drive. Thus keeping your computer safer. Hope you have a very good virus scan and keep it up to date or maybe you just wipe and rebuild on a regular basis?
it should work with many other domains at certain
times and you should keep it
"Not being a Hotmail or regular Windows user for that matter, I cannot verify this - but I've gotten several e-mails from people this morning wondering about it." Hey, how'd they e-mail you if they can't access Hotmail?
Devilled Eggs - A disturbing little creation of mine.
[ Yes, I'm an anonymous coward! My email address gets around enough for anti-spam efforts. ]
With the domain name check in hand, perhaps you can use it as leverage to encourage Hotmail and Passport to act firmly against spammers? They have been apparently using MAPS for blocking spam, but their own policies have been so poor that they are facing being put on that list of spam sites.
Perhaps you can use this to get the name of the person to convince them to handle things correctly?
I am in US, and going to http://www.hotmail.com doesn't work. But I notice that if I use Microsoft messenger, it works. Is this a move by Microsoft to force people to use their own IM?
Hrmm.
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
Should I give up on Hotmail.com and consider my email account a loss? Since Christmas Day, I have not been able to login to my email account and continue to receive the same error message. I have tried to call the help phone # but on hold too long. Customer service definitely sucks. Also, I have sent an email message describing my problem and this was the reply: Thank you for writing to Microsoft Passport. This e-mail is to let you know that the problem you've described to the Technical Support Staff has been confirmed and is currently under evaluation. We understand the importance of this issue and are doing everything within our means to correct the situation. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you, and we thank for your continued patience. Sincerely, Microsoft Passport Customer Support
This service interuption has happened before and probabbly will continue for some time to come. If for any reason, the login server that the users account information is stored on is unavailable (and those servers do not appear to be replicated) then you can't login. I do have hotmail.com, yahoo.com and netscape.com throwaway accounts and can get to HotMail today. The architecture behind Passport is not yet robust. Maybe never will be since it relies upon NT. Passport is part of Bill's attempt to gain enough market share to allow him to charge either a PI fee for the service or more likely become the credit card transaction processor. David
This service interuption has happened before and probabbly will continue for some time to come. If for any reason, the login server that the users account information is stored on is unavailable (and those servers do not appear to be replicated) then you can't login.
I do have hotmail.com, yahoo.com and netscape.com throwaway accounts and can get to HotMail today.
The architecture behind Passport is not yet robust. Maybe never will be since it relies upon NT.
Passport is part of Bill's attempt to gain enough market share to allow him to charge either a PI fee for the service or more likely become the credit card transaction processor.
David
(Sorry if the lateness of the reply contributes to the proverbial beating of a dead horse, folks... my Winshit box died, and I've been knocking heads with it since the 26th due to time constraints.)
>Well the spammers are a happy lot with the $35 payment as Hotmail [as can be attested to by many
>users] is the Great Spam Conduit of the Internet. Merry Christmas Spammers.
Actually, the domain doesn't even need to exist for spammers to use it. Anyone remember ybecker.(net|com), before it was registered by FREE (Forum for Responsible and Ethical E-mail, for those who may not know)? Or public.com, which is pretty much a dead domain as far as e-mail is concerned (due to "friend@public.com" forged into the From: header)? Paying for passport.com's registration fee doesn't really effect how often Hotmail is used in a spam run.
Besides, have you actually *used* the HM interface for sending mail? It's an exercise in masochism, even when sending one individual mail, let alone the zillions required to make a spam run worth it (to the spammers, anyhow). Even for the spammers stupid enough to use the HM servers directly, it's practically like painting a bull's eye on their back, thanks to the X-Originating-IP header inserted by Hotmail's servers.
Dan "I don't use M$ products because I like them, but because I need to" Poore
[insert witty quote here]
All mail in and out of hotmail seems to going through (thank god).
Check out Http://www.emailaddresses.com and pick one. With reviews and all.
The domain went on hold for failure to pay the domain registration renewal fee.
Don't ask how I found out... don't want to give away info for domain speculators
I had no problem with Hotmail this morning. Then again who cares?
Geez... I and thought that typing fetchmail followed by pine was easy enough. Webmail is so slow anyhow. I don't know why people bother. It's not any easier that configuring fetchmail and pine, which is probalby quicker than signing up for crappy webmail service, and the only limit on your mailbox size is your HD. Flipping web mail. Educate people so they can run their own MX if they want. Long live DSL! Long live Sendmail! It aint that hard, honest guv.
Everyone is living in a personal delusion, just some are more delusional than others.
BTW, my Netscape, coincidentally or not, went into hyperspace during my testing.
New Jersey, USA 11:49am and it works fine.
I remember when I had a problem with my domain, it took over 1 month to get it resolved due to Network Solutions' lack of responsiveness. This goes to show that NSI is not really overburdened, but complacent because they have no real competition. They have the resources to fix things on time - they just don't give a $#!+ because "where are you going to go?"...
As you all like to mention, hotmail uses BSD. Since when does slashdot report failures of their own pet OS's? It wasn't that long ago that slashdot itself was down all the time. I don't remember seeing stories about it.
It's Microsoft! Why would anyone reading this site (presumably a reasonably intelligent person) use a microsoft product when they can get better service from any number of free mail servers? Let Microsoft do themselves in - we don't need to help them. *snicker* Just my thoughts.
---cut here---
---cut here---
--
Hotmail really isn't down, it's only that the domain name returns a bad address. If you really need to log in, save the following as an HTML file on your computer and open it with a browser. Should work with any javascript-enabled browser. Tested with Netscape, IE, and Opera. Needless to say, that this is very insecure, and you shouldn't leave this file lying around.
---cut here---
<html>
<head>
<noscript>
<meta http-equiv=Refresh content="0; url=http://www.hotmail.com">
</noscript>
</head>
<body onload="document.pform.submit(); ">
<form name="pform" action="http://www.hotmail.com/cgi-bin/dologin" method="POST">
<input type="hidden" name="login" value="[yourlogin]">
<input type="hidden" name="passwd" value="[yourpass]">
<input type="hidden" name="rru" value="/cgi-bin/folders">
<input type="hidden" name="js" value="yes">
</form>
</body>
</html>
---cut here---
--
If there ever was a need for a "no content" choice in moderation, I think this post would fit the bill. :)
_________________________
enjoy the outage!
_________________________
Microsoft Passport consists of two services: a ?single sign-in? service that allows you to use a single name and password at a growing number of participating Web sites, and a ?wallet? service that you can use to make fast online purchases. It?s easy. There?s only one name and password to remember, and after you sign in to one participating site, you can sign in to others with just one click. It?s fast. You can store information about yourself in your Passport profile and wallet, so you won?t have to retype it when you visit or make online purchases at participating sites. It?s secure. Your personal information is protected by powerful encryption technology and strict privacy policies, and you?re always in control over which sites have access to it-including your e-mail and mailing addresses. And, when you sign out, all of your Passport-related personal information is deleted from the computer, which means it?s safe to use on public or shared computers.
hotmail.com works fine.
passport works fine.
MSN-M works fine.
I just wanted to let you folks know, that www.hotmail.com (Microsoft) is down, because Microsoft didn't pay a $35 bill to Network Solutions. Hotmail uses "passport" services that reside within microsoft's "passport.com", which is no longer resolving from the Internet Root Servers, because of non-bill pay. Proof of this glitch can be found by going to https://payments.networksolutions.com/ and typing in "passport.com". It seems Amount Due is Amount Due, and even the big guys can't get away without paying their bills.
Yahoo is real good. 100% uptime.
Hey, i use yourmom.com mail- http://www.yourmom.com and it is working fine! I keep accounts on netscape webmail- always takes a long time to load, but always does-- and yahoo (i've been very happy with it) Also- i've noticed that for the past month or two hotmail has just sucked! mail me (It's my junkmail box anyway)
If you have IE 5.0, open Outlook Express and go to the Tools menu and select the Accounts... option. Add your hotmail account and voila... You've got mail. Use the Send and Receive option on the Tools menu to download/send mail. I've been using that exclusively to send mail for so long I had totally forgotten that hotmail has a web address.
Merry Xmas. Hope that I was of help.
PS: Does anyone know if slashdot cause this?
turns out that my lynx on the machine I run DNS on was not using itself for DNS
It is a DNS problem for lookups on lc2.law5.hotmail.passport.com
Best free email I've used is SoftHome. Very reliable and fast. I found it at www.emailaddresses.com. Check it out.
A few people have asked abpout alternatives, well, I get my web hosting from some nice Linux geeks over at DreamHost. Well, they let us switch our email provider over to a custom provider, one of which is Big MailBox. I haven't used it, but I have a friend who runs his collage radio station's web page with DreamHost and the email with this Big MailBox deal, and he raves about it. Hope this is useful, I hate webmail, so I have never paid it much heed.
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
As of Christmas morning, passport.com is not in the root servers.
The only reason you can still access it (and for what it's worth, I can still access it too) is because the old record is still cached in your DNS name server.
Major screwup. You'll be reading about it in wired.com or news.com, maybe you'll believe it then.
You can filter based on recipient addresses, which means you can filter out anybody who doesn't address you personally.
That cuts out 98% of the spam..
Hotmail is crap. I tried suggesting that filter method to them more than 2 years back and they never responded, did it many times too. So I gave up on them and switched to Yahoo.
Sorry to say this but I can't help it... Are you an idiot or just lazy?
The post you responded to not only has a URL to go to, but instructions on how to check the facts yourself.
Maybe you need it to be hyperlinked to make it easier for you so you don't have to strain yourself with cutting and pasting the URL into your browser.
Click here and type passport.com. It will show that there is a $35 fee due on the domain name. Twit.
Odd, though, that not one of them is located in a non-WIPO country? Coincidence or big gov't/corporate conspiracy?
If you've indeed payed the bill, I beg you, please get a hold of someone in the media. This could be such a fantastic headline. and be sure to refer to yourself as a linux user. please please. If you really payed it. use the publicity.
_________________________
(FWIW: I'm sure primenet's DNS has been used by ppl w/hotmail accounts and mercenary probably hasn't)
$ nslookup lc2.law5.hotmail.passport.com
Server: dns2.primenet.net
Address: 206.165.50.10
Name: lc2.law5.hotmail.passport.com
Address: 209.185.243.135
$ nslookup lc2.law5.hotmail.passport.com mercenary.vntech.com
Server: mercenary.vntech.com
Address: 206.147.237.3
*** mercenary.vntech.com can't find lc2.law5.hotmail.passport.com: Non-existent host/domain
$ nslookup 209.185.243.135
Server: dns2.primenet.net
Address: 206.165.50.10
Name: lc2.law5.hotmail.com
Address: 209.185.243.135
$ nslookup 209.185.243.135 mercenary.vntech.com
Server: mercenary.vntech.com
Address: 206.147.237.3
Name: lc2.law5.hotmail.com
Address: 209.185.243.135
--
So hotmail.com -> hotmail.passport.com, somebody did a change all and everything didn't timeout yet? The reverse? Why not just alias (CNAME) all
the machines for a smooth transition?
KICK ASS! thanks so much. this is the first i've been able to check my email in 3 days.
Chances are the IPs for those sites have been cached my your ISP. Just because you can access it doesn't mean the DNS server isn't down.
I use web mail because my I can't telnet into my pop3 account due to firewall restrictions. It's really lame but it's the only choice I've got. I know a lot of people are working on webmail interefaces into pop3 accounts that way you get the best of both worlds.
Well, you want to know the truth??? You can't handle the truth...
I hope all of you Linux-loving, Windows-hating, console-using, hackers are happy. I've run out of money, and can't afford the passport domain any longer at this time.
You may wonder why the richest man in the world can't afford it right??? Well, you remember that email I sent out regarding our email tracking software??? Well, needless to say, more people actually believed it than I thought would. It actually got onto our Hotmail servers, and seemed to take a life of its own from there. Nobody had to forward it, it just 'spread'.
Anyway, after having paid out to all recipients and forwarders of the email, I'm a little short. It seemed like such a good idea at the time.
Oh well, if nothing else, this is a great excuse to finally scrap those blasted BSD servers, and put in Windows 2000 Premium. You thought service was bad now??? Muwaahahahahahahaaaa........
This is not the last of me...
Sincerely,
Bill Gates
Real programmers use MH. It is completely pluggable. Once you've used it, you can't understand why anyone would ever go back to a more primitive and useless system. You end up writing little script plugins to enhance and extend and configure everything you can dream of. It's wonderful.
And this whole e-craze is going to die away. It's marketing CRAP. People will drop the leading e- and simply use the regular words, allowing the context to provide understanding.
You get what you pay for, I guess, but I figure I've been paying quite a bit in time waiting for those dang lc* subdomains to resolve :)
The whole passport thing sounds iffy, too...
--------
Oscarfish.com: tropical fish with attitude. Way t
Well, he could have tried typing in www.hotmail.com to his browser.... you don't have to be a windows or hotmail user to do that.
When i tried, it does indeed get redirected to lc2.law5.hotmail.passport.com and claim that it can't be found.
Juln
I have no idea what will come of it. But I assure you, Linux is my bread and butter, and as such, it will be mentioned wherever possible.
Do you have ESP?
hey! does this mean that all e-mails sent to me are being trashed?
two things may arise from this:
1) lose the christmas letters sent from all the nice ladies...and the all the devel lists i'm signed up for...
2) won't have to sift through the junk that i would've got
bye,
-jimbo
They do have subfolders... All in all, it's a pretty nice service... Really.
Also earge(mailto:mdchaney@doublewide.net) Michael to contact someone in the media regarding this story. It would make a wonderful headline.
"Generous Linux user pays past-due domain fee"
..the list goes on. .
"Bill Gates recieves charity from generous Linux user"
"Worlds richest man doesn't pay his bills"
_________________________
Would you mind if I conteacted a few friends in the media regarding this touching holiday tech story?
awaiting your response
_________________________
I haven't read all of the messages posted but I'm surprised that no one has mentioned workspot.net. Not only is it free but it's linux! Lot's of other features as well. Check it out
Every time I've seen a domain go on hold, the updated time gets changed. This domain was updated on the 23rd, and as other people have noted, you can see that there is $35 due on Network Solutions' online payment page. This makes it seem fairly certain that Microsoft just forgot to pay.
The root server updates aren't in synch with the whois updates, which explains why it didn't disappear from the root servers until later.
Registrant:
Microsoft Corporation (PASSPORT6-DOM)
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052-6399
US
Domain Name: PASSPORT.COM
...
Record last updated on 23-Dec-1999.
Record created on 02-Oct-1996.
And from nslookup:
> server a.root-servers.net
> passport.com.
Server: a.root-servers.net
Address: 198.41.0.4
*** a.root-servers.net can't find passport.com.: Non-existent host/domain
What the hell is that?
Hotmail is down and everyone in the world seems to be annoyed. I think it's quite sad that slowly but surely, webmail replaces pop3/imap mail.
;)
Five years ago, when I began using the Internet, only pop3 mail was available. These pop3 accounts were quite costy, but they worked. My university "gave" me my first pop3 mail for free, though.
Then, several companies began to give pop3 accounts for free, in exchange of some data for their files. They were slightly slower than those costy accounts (the bandwith was very weak), but, hey... that was free.
Then came Hotmail & Co. Banners, ads, mail stored only on the servers, poor functionality (filters, and all 'advanced' functions of any pop3 mail client are missing). But above all, a phenomenal waste of bandwith due to the ads, the fact that everytime you want to consult a mail or your address book, the data must be reloaded, etc. I hate wasting bandwith. I hate when my mother checks her webmail on my computer !
With pop3 mail, sending a mail takes 3 or 4 KB for the entire process. How many KB does it take with webmail ?
Now, it's more or less impossible to find free pop3 accounts. Even Internet access provider begin to give webmail instead of real mail to their customers. Does it mean that, in a few years, every mail account will be a webmail account ?
P.S. : I can't understand why so many people believe that webmail is easier to use than pop3/imap mail. When traveling, it's so easy to use a simple telnet (every dumb Win95+ machine has a telnet client which works well with pine) or, even easier, a web gateway like Endymion MailMan. Same layout than hotmail, without the ads !
Stéphane
Instant Karma's gonna get you, Gonna knock you right on the head (John Lennon, 1970)
The account down in Cali (which is my personal email account, and not posted here) is one that I have to reach by telnet/ssh.
It's pretty nice, and I don't ever fsck with my friends settings. Sometimes Mutt renders poorly in a telnet window, but I've got pine as a back up (and since I can remember some simple keybindings, I can still grab the new mail off of the pop account, and then look at it through pine). Anyway, I'm satisfied with the setup.
Jeff
Now that you've payed it, Squat it!
_________________________
After a Hotmail crash some months back John Dvorak started this rumor (that MS deliberately brought Hotmail down). It was one of his more humorous pieces at the time; it's kinda stale now. BTW Now that Linux is on the ZD radar I'm looking for Dvorak to write some really funny stuff about our little revolution. "Transmeta is Paul Allen's (& Bill's) way to *buy* Linus" "The secret code in RedHat" "LinuxOne to be bigger than TurboLinux" Oh, I can't wait.
1000 SlashDot sigs
I'm on the west coast of the US and haven't been able to access hotmail for the past 3 days due to DNS errors. I am extremely UNHAPPY with MS/Hotmail as I am out of town and it is the only way I can check my email. I also happen to be expecting some important email which makes it all the more frustrating. I am suprised that MS/Hotmail hasn't fixed this by now, or at least put a news item about it on MSN.com... Yes, Hotmail is free but the fact is, there is a LOT of competition for free web based email, a fuck up like this is gonna cost them a lot of users. Why does microsoft always fuck up so bad?
Would you mind if I conteacted a few friends in the media regarding this touching holiday tech story? awaiting your response
Sure, that'd be cool. This is actually kind of fun.
Do you have ESP?
Jeff
I could still resolve the addresses via:
/etc/hosts file:
lcX.lawX.hotmail.com
Just resolve the addresses, eg. lc3.law5.hotmail.com is 216.33.151.7
Then put in your
216.33.151.7 lc3.law5.hotmail.passport.com
Checking mail under Win, *nix or Mac isn't hard with a mail client. God knows there are SEVERAL!! It's got nothing to do with telnet or IP addresses.
Get some facts before you spout.........
Dave
Screamin' through your Brain
Whats my name?
Zain.
it works when i use outlook but when i use the browser i get nothing kinda odd don't u think
http://charade.hypermart.net/hotmail.html
So it's quite unlikely.
Why would they put someone new on the books who's good with FreeBSD just to replace it with NT/Win2K?
Yep, Their DNS records are incorrect. However those of us who use and write DNS for a living do the following: Run BIND 8.x on your local UN*X box and make yourself authoritative for passport.com (in /etc/named.conf put the lines zone "passport.com" { type master; file "named.passport"; } and then add the file named.passport into your namedb directory (often /var/named/ it's in the options { directory "???"; } section of /etc/named.conf). Here's the db file @ IN SOA firewall root.firewall ( 1999101600 ; Serial 28800 ; Refresh 14400 ; Retry 3600000 ; Expire 86400 ) ; Minimum IN NS firewall firewall IN A 192.168.0.254 lc2.law5.hotmail IN CNAME lc2.law5.hotmail.com. This links lc2.law.hotmail.passport.com to lc2.law.hotmail.com the server everyone's really trying to get to. Works for me.
Actually since yesterday i have troubles emailing freinds at hotmail. :
... while talking to mc2.law5.hotmail.com.:
Pretty much everything that I sent comes back like this
The original message was received at Fri, 24 Dec 1999 21:15:22 +0200 (IST)
from ntn-xxx-xxx.inter.net.il [212.68.xxx.xxx] (may be forged)
----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
<xxxxxxxxxx@hotmail.com>
----- Transcript of session follows -----
>>> RCPT To:<xxxxxxxxxx@hotmail.com>
<<< 554 Transaction failed
554 <xxxxxxxxxx@hotmail.com>... Service unavailable
451 reply: read error from mc2.law5.hotmail.com
AussiePenguin
Melbourne, Australia
ICQ 19255837
Jeremy
Melbourne, Australia
Jabber Australia
This sounds like an NSI botched run, not something Hotmail may have done (however much we like to point fingers).
Needless to say, I was really irritated by the confusion. Who do you call on Christmas Eve to fix a problem with NSI?
Well I just feel like being a dick and pointing out that with all of the problems with security and such with Hotmail, and especially since it is so highly publicized every time Hotmail/MS hiccups, you must be an absolute moron to continue using it. Geezus H Christ, spend $ 5.00 and go get a goddam personal email account at an ISP that doesn't include a dial up if mail is all you need. C'mon people, let's use our brains here.
"A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither. " Ben Franklin