Windows Azure — Microsoft’s cloud platform — went dark for nearly 24 hours last weekend. Let’s keep the darkness in perspective: Azure is not a production network yet; it’s merely a test cloud environment that Microsoft is still optimizing. But 22 hours of darkness doesn’t inspire peace of mind in cloud systems. And I’m starting to think that Amazon.com — backed by loads of open source applications — is the cloud to beat.
The Windows Azure team posted a blog describing what went wrong, what was affected, and how Microsoft plans to prevent similar outages. Rival clouds — from Google and Amazon — have also suffered outages, notes InformationWeek.
Read more at The VAR Guy
Uncategorized March 19th 2009
There are few things more exciting to a journalist than being among the first to report important news, and we here at LinuxInsider are no exception. So it was with great glee that we learned of recent rumors that Internet Explorer 8 could be the end of the line. Special thanks to Slashdot blogger hairyfeet for calling them to our attention! Yes, there were several such reports circulating on the virtual grapevine in recent days, including Randall Kennedy’s post at InfoWorld, Scott Fulton’s post at Beta News, iAurora’s post at JCXP and others.
Read more at LinuxInsider
Uncategorized March 16th 2009
What’s what with Microsoft’s patent claims, and a modest suggestion on how to avoid all this patent nonsense now, and in the future: Get the FAT out!
At first glance, Microsoft suing TomTom, the navigation device manufacturer, for patent violations, appeared to be patent business as usual. A closer look at the Microsoft/TomTom lawsuit (PDF Link) showed that three of Microsoft’s eight patents don’t concern navigation systems, but file system usage within TomTom’s Linux-powered devices.
Read more at Practical Technology
Uncategorized March 2nd 2009
