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Well Well Well: AOL Hell (2/25/98)
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Looks like we're not the only ones having server problems, lately... All of AOL apparently suffered a two and a half hour outage on Monday night, when electrical problems shut down their central servers in Virginia. Member email was inaccessible for over five hours. You can read more about it in a Wired article.
Strangely, Wired reports that AOL is reluctant to discuss the exact nature of the electrical problems with the press. While they seem to know exactly what happened, AOL spokesperson Wendy Goldberg would only give the vague answer that "it was a component malfunction in the electrical system, and that's all I can give you." The fuzziness of that response implies to us that the real cause was either quite a bit more serious than AOL's letting on, or maybe just a lot more embarrassing. Like a squirrel chewed through a line, or something. Either way, the outage is another potential reason for AOL members to consider switching to different providers.
When all's said and done, though, two and a half hours of downtime in a year or so is a pretty good track record-- we'd love to have downtime that low. Of course, when AtAT goes down, it miffs the 2000-odd soap fans who merely find their viewing schedule thrown into a mild level of disarray; when AOL goes down, they inconvenience their 11,000,000 paying customers, many of whom are presumably relying on AOL's service to get their work done. We suppose there's a slight difference of scale there...
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SceneLink (485)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 2/25/98 episode: February 25, 1998: Against all odds, Apple's January sales show that they can't be written out of the game yet. Meanwhile, they're still poker-facedly denying the upcoming price cuts and system announcements, while smoke rises from AOL after a junior accountant stuck a knife in the kitchenette toaster and fried the system for a few hours...
Other scenes from that episode: 483: Let the Good Times Roll (2/25/98) Much has been made of the recent Computer Retail Week article which showed that Apple's January sales revenue amounted to 11.9% of total retail PC revenue last month. That makes Apple the third largest computer manufacturer based on revenue percentage... 484: "We Deny Everything" (2/25/98) You've got to admit one thing about Apple: when it comes to publicly addressing leaks and rumors, they are consistent to the point of being obsessive-compulsive. Despite numerous sources reporting this weekend's G3 server introduction and price drops first revealed on MacInTouch a couple of weeks ago, Apple is sticking to their guns and denying that any of it is true...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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