12.04.09
LSE Dumped Windows for GNU/Linux; Microsoft Should Do the Same (Bing Crashes)
Summary: Reliability issues with high-demand servers hit Microsoft’s very own clusters, not just LSE’s
THE London Stock Exchange (LSE) last crashed about a week ago, so we recently reminisced the pattern of failures accompanying the selection of Windows [1, 2]. The LSE decided to dump Windows and so should Microsoft’s search engine, which has just crashed according to the BBC.
Microsoft has apologised for a brief outage which saw its search site Bing disappear from the internet.
The outage lasted for nearly 30 minutes between in the early hours of 3 December. At that time anyone visiting the site got an error message.
This is good news to Free software not just because it demonstrates the weakness of Windows and the rest of the Microsoft stack; Microsoft’s presence online is poisonous because its search results are hostile towards Free software (by design) and Microsoft again uses its “MSN” portal to attack GNU/Linux and Free software. We gave many examples like this before, but this one is brand new.
Microsoft is also hooking standards-hostile software onto its Web presence, as this new article reminds us:
Today at their Bing Fall Release event, Microsoft showed off some nice updates to their search engine, including further information about how the much anticipated Twitter and Facebook data integration will work. But by far the most interesting thing they showed was the new beta version of Bing Maps. While it looked very nice, the real reason why it was so interesting is what it requires: Silverlight.
The Microsoft-faithful crowd is fraudulently spinning this as “open”, as we noted yesterday.
It is worth adding that Google is no angel either and according to some new reports, “Google expands plan to run own internet.”
Google has launched Google Public DNS as an alternative domain name service for any Internet user. Designed to replace the DNS services provided by ISPs or companies, Google says that its DNS will be faster and more secure than many other DNSs, and won’t filter content.
Google has entered the domain name resolution business, part of its ongoing effort to control just about everything you do on the net.
This morning, the Mountain View Chocolate Factory unveiled the free Google Public DNS, a service that lets you resolve net domain names through Google-controlled servers.
In order for the Web to stay free as in freedom (Independence) and open as in accessible, it is highly important to ensure that no single vendor has too much power over it, not even Adobe. █
