Tag: Microsoft

The Day Computers Stopped

Posted on | by C. | Leave a Comment on The Day Computers Stopped

Over night on July 18-19, CrowdStrike quietly pushed out an update to Microsoft computers and servers. By 4 AM CDT, Help Desk Central at Texas A&M University was on alert of a problem campus wide. It seemed computers were stuck in a Blue Screen (of Death) restart loop, and Windows and Azure (cloud) servers were shutting down. Since nearly every Windows computer on campus – including classroom computers – were affected, the University’s President cancelled classes, and the IT professionals got to work identifying and fixing every computer they could find with the problem.

The CrowdStrike IT outage forced Texas A&M University to cancel classes Friday as IT professionals manually fixed thousands of impacted devices.

Source: KBTX.com

CrowdStrike is a global corporation, and their security software is in millions of computers world wide.

The global computer outage affecting airports, banks and other businesses on Friday appears to stem at least partly from a software update issued by major US cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, experts told CNN.

Source: CNN.com

How could such a small update do so much damage? That is the billion dollar question!

Outlook 2010 Social Connector

Posted on | by C. | Leave a Comment on Outlook 2010 Social Connector

I’m putting this in the journal just in case a year from now this works out. I could totally see us doing this with some services at my department:

I’m happy to announce that a new member has joined the Outlook platform family. The new arrival has a long and formal name known as Microsoft Outlook Social Connector Provider Extensibility, but the name shouldn’t stop you from getting acquainted with this exciting new extensibility feature for Outlook 2010!

Here’s what I wrote in an email to my colleagues:

Basically, we could expose – with permission of course – profile information e.g. photo, @exchange email address, etc. to Outlook/Exchange users. This may have already been shot down by the powers that be, but I thought I’d mention it in the spirit of social networking and the future redesign of our intranet.

I installed Outlook Social Connector and connected it to my Facebook account, but I don’t see my photo yet.

A Texas Budget Rider Would Bid ‘Hasta la vista’ to Windows Vista

Posted on | by C. | Leave a Comment on A Texas Budget Rider Would Bid ‘Hasta la vista’ to Windows Vista

AUSTIN – It could be “Hasta la vista, baby” to state agency purchases of Microsoft’s Windows Vista information technology under a proposed state budget provision.

The “rider” in the proposed two-year, $182.2 billion state budget – expected to be taken up Wednesday by the Texas Senate – would require state agencies to get written approval from the Legislative Budget Board before buying Vista technology related to an operating system, equipment or licenses.

Sen. Juan Hinojosa, D-McAllen, added the provision in committee and said it’s meant to block purchases of the technology, which has been targeted by criticism: “Don’t buy it, because it’s not worth it.” Source: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news

I would add while we’re at it, let’s require IE7 for their XP machines. I can’t tell you the number of work-arounds we’ve incorporated into websites to let older versions of IE work.

UPDATE March 11, 2010: At work we skipped Vista (per se) and went from XP to Windows 7 this year. I say per se because we bought computers with Vista pre-installed and installed XP images on them.

Flight Simulator X

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Just keep saying to yourself, “It’s only a virtual world. It’s only a virtual world..”

Flight Simulator 10 (FSX) was released on October 17, 2006, and like its predecessors – it’s as real as it gets.

Microsoft went back to a two version packaging: standard and deluxe. Of course the deluxe has more stuff. Of course everyone’s gonna want to get the deluxe – duh!

At last glance (about 60 seconds ago) the deluxe retails for $69.99. The best deal I saw was tigerdirect.com at $59.99.

Although MS didn’t say it won’t run great on XP systems, they do recommend a Vista PC – or one that is Vista compliant. (Vista hasn’t even officially been release yet!) For this reason I think it wise to hold off on FSX until I have a new screaming Vista to enjoy my VFR vistas.