I'm not surprised by anything coming out of Redmond. After recently learning that Gates messed over the actual inventor of the first operating system, along with historic reports about them buying up whatever software they needed, I don't expect they have anyone on campus able to build software from scratch but have to hire it out. 🤷♂️ Frankly, with the whole industry going to a subscription model, I hope this outage and the cost to the companies that trusted MS will kill that concept. And the company. There are enough variants of UNIX with their more stable kernels that critical infrastructure should be running that instead.
Sorry. I've had a dislike for MS since working IT in the 90s. I tend to go on a rant at the mention of them. 🤷♂️
My understanding, which may well be wrong, is that this was not Microsoft's fault (or at least not directly), but that of another company, CrowdStrike, which makes corporate antivirus-type software. It was their release that did this.
Oh, I can see that, but when you have an unsteady core, like MS has, you get a lot of crashes, no matter who caused it.
When I worked IT, I had to deal with a lot of BSODs, with the usual response of FFR (Fdisk, Format, and Reinstall). Running the MS kernel was a lot like playing jenga. The OS is shakey, so it's time for the annual FFR. Never had to do that with BSD or the Mac. 🤷♂️
The "thin veneer of civilization", specifically "tech" in this case, is a concept that far too many people can't seem to grasp. Always have cash on hand. We keep a stash in the gun safe. Oh, and no electronic safes, thanks. There's a lot of "this is the USA, things like that don't happen here" mentality around, too. Well, "things like that" just happened. I think it's going to get worse before it gets better. Doesn't mean we stop doing all the things and hunker down, but I'd like to see more of my friends and family thinking proactively about this stuff.
As it happens both Mrs. B and I were traveling yesterday, separately. I was heading from Midway to Albuquerque; she was heading from Denver to Indianapolis. We compared notes yesterday after we both got to our respective destinations.
- I was unable to check out of my hotel, as all of their computer systems were down. (IHG group.)
- At Midway and Albuquerque, airport operations seemed more-or-less normal. At Denver, Mrs. B reports that only one out of four "repeater boards" actually had flight information listed; the rest were blank. Unsure of whether Indy was okay; but at least the baggage claim ops worked.
- From what we heard from airport staff, Southwest operations were mostly unaffected, but good luck if you were flying on United or Delta.
- Lastly, I got a rather nice note from my car rental agency saying all reservations would be held / extended for another 24 hours if needed, as people tried to deal with travel-related issues.
Re carrying at least some cash, I always do, especially when on travel. Thing is, though, if the systems back-ending the points of sale go down, most places can't even open the cash registers. If they even take cash any more, that is; and let's not go into whether the person behind the counter can do enough math to make change, let alone calculate sales tax!
But by all means, let's go to digital currency cause there's no way THAT can go wrong.
Yeah, right!
I'm not surprised by anything coming out of Redmond. After recently learning that Gates messed over the actual inventor of the first operating system, along with historic reports about them buying up whatever software they needed, I don't expect they have anyone on campus able to build software from scratch but have to hire it out. 🤷♂️ Frankly, with the whole industry going to a subscription model, I hope this outage and the cost to the companies that trusted MS will kill that concept. And the company. There are enough variants of UNIX with their more stable kernels that critical infrastructure should be running that instead.
Sorry. I've had a dislike for MS since working IT in the 90s. I tend to go on a rant at the mention of them. 🤷♂️
My understanding, which may well be wrong, is that this was not Microsoft's fault (or at least not directly), but that of another company, CrowdStrike, which makes corporate antivirus-type software. It was their release that did this.
Oh, I can see that, but when you have an unsteady core, like MS has, you get a lot of crashes, no matter who caused it.
When I worked IT, I had to deal with a lot of BSODs, with the usual response of FFR (Fdisk, Format, and Reinstall). Running the MS kernel was a lot like playing jenga. The OS is shakey, so it's time for the annual FFR. Never had to do that with BSD or the Mac. 🤷♂️
The "thin veneer of civilization", specifically "tech" in this case, is a concept that far too many people can't seem to grasp. Always have cash on hand. We keep a stash in the gun safe. Oh, and no electronic safes, thanks. There's a lot of "this is the USA, things like that don't happen here" mentality around, too. Well, "things like that" just happened. I think it's going to get worse before it gets better. Doesn't mean we stop doing all the things and hunker down, but I'd like to see more of my friends and family thinking proactively about this stuff.
Agreed, and yes, it DOES happen here!
As it happens both Mrs. B and I were traveling yesterday, separately. I was heading from Midway to Albuquerque; she was heading from Denver to Indianapolis. We compared notes yesterday after we both got to our respective destinations.
- I was unable to check out of my hotel, as all of their computer systems were down. (IHG group.)
- At Midway and Albuquerque, airport operations seemed more-or-less normal. At Denver, Mrs. B reports that only one out of four "repeater boards" actually had flight information listed; the rest were blank. Unsure of whether Indy was okay; but at least the baggage claim ops worked.
- From what we heard from airport staff, Southwest operations were mostly unaffected, but good luck if you were flying on United or Delta.
- Lastly, I got a rather nice note from my car rental agency saying all reservations would be held / extended for another 24 hours if needed, as people tried to deal with travel-related issues.
Re carrying at least some cash, I always do, especially when on travel. Thing is, though, if the systems back-ending the points of sale go down, most places can't even open the cash registers. If they even take cash any more, that is; and let's not go into whether the person behind the counter can do enough math to make change, let alone calculate sales tax!
The timing troubles me. Imagine this happening after a *successful* assassination of Trump, and a RNC in disarray.