Windows 7 RC Rush Crashes MSDN, TechNet Pages 186
CWmike writes "Microsoft Developers Network (MSDN) and TechNet paid subscribers were supposed to find the 32- and 64-bit editions of Windows 7 RC available for download today. But in a snafu reminiscent of the problems Microsoft had in January when it tried to launch Windows 7 Beta, the download pages for the release candidate were inaccessible, despite numerous attempts over an hour-long span up until about noon Eastern. TechNet and MSDN subscribers were not happy. 'Man, this stinks,' said a user identified as Lyle Pratt, on a TechNet message forum at 10 a.m. ET. 'I can't believe we can still bring MSDN to its knees!' said John Butler, a Microsoft partner. 'Surely, they should be able to deal with this? Not a good advert for Microsoft.' The Windows 7 RC is slated to be available for public download next Tuesday, May 5. Meanwhile, Microsoft said today that the RC would operate until June 2010, for 13 months of free use — a significantly longer time than it did with Vista's previews."
Torrent? (Score:5, Funny)
Torrent links anyone?
Re:Torrent? (Score:5, Interesting)
I suspected the end user alpha release being "slashdotted" was a lame marketing game but if MSDN goes down, MS can't really maintain it, for real. For obvious reasons, they won't do the logical choice of running light httpd (Unix, God forbid) or similar on download server, they won't even bother calling Akamai.
Nobody can blame them for not offering a torrent though. Thanks to MPAA/RIAA and various ISPs, P2P, especially torrent is an issue for large companies. If Apple used P2P to distribute very large OS updates (e.g. combo ones, XCode), we could blame MS for not using the option. Ask Apple why they don't use.
BTW lets say you find a torrent from 3rd party, did the MS post its checksum (whatever system they use) to the download page or somewhere at site? I mean it doesn't look very right to "pirate" an operating system which has a huge industry abusing it. People torrenting it should either get MD5 from a trusted friend or MS. There are several "trojaned" Windows out there. It is the easiest way to have your own zombie army.
Commercial torrent is CDN (Score:3, Interesting)
Nobody can blame them for not offering a torrent though. Thanks to MPAA/RIAA and various ISPs, P2P, especially torrent is an issue for large companies.
Steam uses torrents.
Most large companies do not use torrents because they are a little complex for most users - the equivilent is that they use a CDN to distribute the content across many servers, served locally to the user (I know it's not exactly the same but it has a similar effect of distributing load). I wonder if Microsoft was using a CDN or trying to
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Apple could embed libtorrent and use its functionality (just like rtorrent) in Software Update which is a dedicated GUI application. Perhaps they know all kinds of junk will happen to their customers such as throttling, letters and even "cable modem freeze" the day they use that system for such general purpose operating system updates.
It is not simplicity, we have a company which can pack Mach/NeXT/FreeBSD and Carbon, get Unix 03 certificate and sell it as "World's easiest operating system". They sure know
Re: (Score:2)
"cable modem freeze"
The main cause of this is having the number of concurrent connections too high. If you set the default pretty low (10-20?), then most users shouldn't see any issues.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree with the post, not with the tone though. Something more realistic when just some bittorrent client doing it's kung fu would be around the 300-500 connections mark. And if you share the internets with more people, which I do, 1000+
Another aspect, potential security... (Score:2)
Apple could embed libtorrent and use its functionality (just like rtorrent) in Software Update which is a dedicated GUI application.
True, since Steam also has basically an embedded torrent client... I think another possible reason might be they don't want the possibility of anyone injecting anything into the torrent. A CDN keeps things simple from their end and locks things down a little more.
Re: (Score:2)
If they do that without telling the user that they're going to be part of an upload network, I would be pretty damn pissed off. Say I'm on a connection which counts uploads, such as mobile (cell) broadband - I might be willing to eat the download hit, but I don't want the company to chew up my uploads.
These are big commercial companies - we pay them a lot of money to get these uploads, I don't want them stealing my bandwidth too.
Re:Commercial torrent is CDN (Score:5, Informative)
Steam uses a CDN, not torrents.
WoW uses bittorrent for the weekly patches though.
Re: (Score:2)
Since when has Steam used torrents? Blizzard does, but I was under the impression that Steam was using a traditional download protocol. Has this changed semi-recently?
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Yeah, but you can put that under the hood and the user never has to know the details. You give them a normal http link to download an executable "installer" which downloads the rest of the thing using whatever protocol you like. A few years ago most large software companies were doing this to distribute large freely-downloadable stuff. The protocol under the hood obviously wasn't BitTorrent at that time, but the
Re: (Score:2)
However, for someone like Microsoft distributing something like a Windows 7 beta build, you're still going to want to spread the load across multiple servers on multiple continents and so on and so forth, which, yeah, is sort of what services like Akamai are all about. If Microsoft doesn't want to contract out like that, they could probably just do something similar with their own resources. I'm pretty sure they're big enough to be able to handle that.
Microsoft (at least through the MSDN download site) uses their own transfer protocol and file transfer management tool (Microsoft File Transfer Manager) to access the content. They do indeed use Akamai to host and distribute the content.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I suspect there is something going on with the packet identification in regard to WoW updates. Large ISPs are running very advanced systems to do such "conspire torrent downloaders" tricks and they could be identifying the WoW updates. Or more basically, ISP could be shutting down "conspire P2P" switch when Blizzard does updates.
I have actually used (via VNC) an American friend's system since I had hard time believing that his connection loses its mind when he runs torrent. It was amazing thing to see and I
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Do you think the ISP has an army of nerds in direct contact with Blizzard to 'turn off' conspire p2p when WoW patches? Not likely.
Agree. One or two geared raid groups should be able to pull it off.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft and Akamai have a friendly relationship, but because they want to control the distribution they release everything on their site. That's something you really, truly, cannot do with torrents, because you can write your own torrent that ignores the tracker's rules on DHT.
No matter what your distribution method, you have to remember that they are distributing hundreds of terabytes of data over a tenuous and fragile internet infrastructure. It may not even be Microsoft's links that are failing when yo
Re: (Score:2)
That's something you really, truly, cannot do with torrents, because you can write your own torrent that ignores the tracker's rules on DHT.
Nobody would bother. This isn't like on private sites, where you can hack your client into reporting that you uploaded 2TB today to give you more credit, the only benefit from using a hacked client on MS's servers is a possibility that you'll acquire peers more quickly.
Re: (Score:2)
DHT allows trackerless distribution. That's why I mentioned it.
Re: (Score:2)
I suspect this is the case, but as with many bloated corporations ran by pointy haired mobs they don't have a clue. As soon as the bits are copied from their server to some other machine on the internet they no longer have control. The fact that they refuse to use available technology that was developed outside their labs shows corporate arrogance and ignorance.
Re: (Score:2)
"...I suspected the end user alpha release being "slashdotted" was a lame marketing game but if MSDN goes down,..."
Eh?
Surely, you are not suggesting that Microsoft intentionally brought down their own server to give the impression people were crowding in line to download the RC?
That would be like a politician, up for re-election, committing Seppuku to impress voters (Hey, we can dream, can we not?)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Why would Microsoft PAY to not have this happen? Everybody who wants the RC will get it, in time. And now they have free publicity too.
I am not MS-head, but from what I gather, the MSDN works just fine under normal load.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Nobody can blame them for not offering a torrent though
Microsoft could use their own customized download tool that leverages bittorrent, but does not require publishing a .torrent file to the web or to torrent search engines for use with a non-Microsoft download client. For example the tool could pick up the torrent file from authorized servers only. I think there is really little excuse other than not undermining the anti-piracy FUD engine
Re: (Score:2)
Nobody can blame them for not offering a torrent though. Thanks to MPAA/RIAA and various ISPs, P2P, especially torrent is an issue for large companies. If Apple used P2P to distribute very large OS updates (e.g. combo ones, XCode), we could blame MS for not using the option. Ask Apple why they don't use.
I don't want these companies to be using my Internet connection to distribute their software and enhancing their profits. I don't want my updates to be reliant on everyone else seeding properly.
What happens if I'm updating an old box and there's like, one seed running at microsoft or apple.com and I get 2kbytes/second because I'm in the middle of nowhere?!
Torrenting also has implications to their EULAs, many of which state you're not allowed to redistribute. Torrenting, imho, implies that you are granted a
Re: (Score:2)
they won't even bother calling Akamai
They do use Akamai.
Re: (Score:2)
"they won't even bother calling Akamai."
Tell me why then, when I just downloaded it through my TechNet subscription, it used the Akamai downloader...
MD5 Hash please? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Microsoft themselves publish the SHA1 on MSDN.. just run sha1sum on what you have.
Re: (Score:2)
File Name: en_windows_7_ultimate_rc_x86_dvd_349010.iso
Date Posted (UTC): 4/30/2009 6:00:41 AM
SHA1: 7D1F486CA569EFFFFB719CFB48355BB7BF499712
ISO/CRC: E8A1C394
File Name: en_windows_7_ultimate_rc_x64_dvd_347803.iso
Date Posted (UTC): 4/30/2009 6:00:41 AM
SHA1: FC867FE1AB2E0A9796F9E4D155B44EA6998F4874
ISO/CRC: 58FB2BE0
Since I have no access to MSDN, can someone please verify if the SHA1 hashes are indeed correct? If you ha
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Screen cap from MSDN [imgur.com]
en_windows_7_ultimate_rc_x86_dvd_349010.iso MD5 Hash: 8867c13330f56a93944bcd46dcd73590
en_windows_7_ultimate_rc_x64_dvd_347803.iso MD5 Hash: 98341af35655137966e382c4feaa282d
The x64 leak on mininova [mininova.org] has the same MD5
Re: (Score:2)
Not thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft releases Vista/2008 SP2 AND Windows 7 RC AND Windows 2008 R2 RC AND Virtual PC RC AND the Windows 7 SDK on the same day and they don't expect to have bandwidth problems?
Geez, what were they thinking? SP2 should have come out on RTM day, that would at least cut a few hundred mb downloads out of the picture.
Re:Not thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
It's called Content Delivery Network, and in this case, Microsoft are using Akamai. Bandwidth shouldn't be a problem. I'm downloading Win 7 right now. People need to get a life... so what if they can't download at this very moment an RC of an unreleased OS? This isn't story isn't news; move on.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In "consumer alpha" slashdotting issue, people found the file and posted its link, directly from Akamai. Sorry for forgetting it in my post. The link worked perfectly and they downloaded it very good speed.
You know what was the issue? Their Windows server processing, the "key generation" part and the "passport sign in" part. It could be similar issue today and if you ask me, if it is the issue, people trusting their scalability issues (win 2008 downloaders) should think again.
Re: (Score:2)
Ah yes - I couldn't help noticing that people were wanting to put a negative spin on this.
If this was say, Apple, it would be "Look how popular their product is, fans are rushing to download and they can't keep up with the demand!" No one would be picking at their inability to meet that demand.
An clear example would be the reporting of queues for the Iphone 3G - no one dared criticised them for not offering 3G sooner like other companies, or having better store distribution so people weren't having to queue
Re: (Score:1, Redundant)
They could use the same (or similar) system which Apple uses for OS X updates, HD Movie Downloads, Music Distribution and recently 1 billion hit App Store. It is Akamai/Edgesuite. Apple uses their own XServe for regular, dynamic content and offloads to Akamai (EdgeSuite) for big files. Nobody questions them for that decision as it is the logical thing to do. Just imagine the load of distributing 1 billion downloads in a completely random manner. It is just "app store". Now add HD Movies, World's most popula
Re:Not thinking (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft are using Akamai. Don't speculate, look at the URL in the Download Manager file that comes from the MSDN site, or look at the connections Download Manager has open during the download.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Not always.. many years ago they didn't (not sure if akamai even existed then). There were a dozen or so download servers on microsoft.com. If one was dead you switched to another.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh yeah... (Score:1)
Zomg have to have it the first day! (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
How 'bout you try running on Vista and then being told that the faster version of Vista is coming out today. You'll be willing to pay your ISP to get you more bandwidth just so you can begin installing it faster.
Re: (Score:2)
You laugh but it's a pattern that repeats over and over. In the early 20th century, the Mexicans developed a passion for Hellman's mayonnaise. Forget that you could make better at home, it had to be Hellman's. Only problem was, Hellman's was manufactured in England and so it had to be shipped. The Titanic was carrying tons of Hellman's when it went down. It was a national tragedy as the shipment was the entire month's supply for Mexico. The Mexicans were so shocked by the loss, that they've commemorated th
They should have provided a torrent (Score:5, Insightful)
No joke. They should have provided a torrent. This type of distribution is what bittorrent excels at. It would have provided everyone with a better experience and saved MS some bandwidth.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They probably have CONTRACTS with Akamai.
You know, CONTRACTS that state something along th elines of "You gotta give us ur moneys all teh time you do major content delivery.".
Re: (Score:2)
It would have provided everyone with a better experience and saved MS some bandwidth.
It's worth noting that it doesn't provide everyone with a better experience - just the people downloading.
Anyone playing online games or visiting websites might notice the internet is running slower - not a better experience.
Though I would rather see torrents being used for stuff like this, rather than *cough* other purposes. :P
But if it can be distributed via CDN, then that's even better.
Re: (Score:2)
How to not get fucked over by a bittorrent client internet connection wise:
1. Find your upload limit. If you aren't doing anything else on the internet limit it to around 80%. If you are limit it to 50%. Drop more if needed.
2. Limit your global and torrent connection numbers. You would never need more than 50 peers. 100 is pretty good too, but anything over is literally overkill. Also dead and slow connections are automatically killed.
3. Set your torrents to stop at 100% seeding. Or whatever you want
Re: (Score:2)
I remember reading that in Vancouver, BC (Canada), there's parts of the Shaw network that were 98% torrent traffic at various hours of the day.
This was before they implemented traffic throttling.
I can remember quite often I wouldn't be able to visit websites with servers in the US, presumably because the pipes through Seattle were choked. Any servers in Canada, the UK, etc. were fine.
But Verizon's solution was even better - connecting closer peers, so the whole damn network doesn't slow to a crawl.
Patience is a virtue (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny way to turn the pirates over to their side. (Score:4, Insightful)
Seems Microsoft might be trying to make the best of a bad situation when it comes to people pirating their software, but turning them into beta testers. Sure you have to give them something for free but in the end you'll get a whole lot of people who would just pirate your software anyway doing a whole lot of free QA for you. Pretty smart move if you ask me.
Funnily enough I didn't hear anything about Microsoft pursuing the Pirate Bay for hosting the torrent of their latest builds, which seems to support this theory. Anyone seen anything?
Re:Funny way to turn the pirates over to their sid (Score:2)
Forget everything, can you believe the lemmings download it from Pirate sites? An operating system? Give me an NSA SE Linux ISO and I can modify it (with my low knowledge) the best trojan, spying, listening, watching OS ever. You got the OS install image to modify, can it get easier? :)
Even the highest of highest end antiviruses which can still sell for money gives no guarantee if they are installed to an already trojaned/wormed/rootkit infected system. That is why they always want to do a complete low leve
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Well, when downloading Linux or other FOSS stuff you can check the md5 against the "official" md5 on the project site.
Re: (Score:2)
Well AC, this comment chain was about third party sites hosting modified ISOs claiming them to be legit. Not sites being totally hijacked.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Forget everything, can you believe the lemmings download it from Pirate sites? An operating system?
I downloaded a copy of Vista 64 from a demonoid.com torrent. Already had a legit key from MSDNAA, just didn't have a copy of the x64 version. Microsoft puts the SHA1 sum for the ISO file on their MSDN site, so you can verify that it's an untampered copy. A bit like that cheesy scene (one of many) from the movie Swordfish, where Travolta barks to one of his cronies "Verify this!" and, after a pause, the compute
Re: (Score:2)
Did you even read the wiki article you linked to? How exactly does the birthday attack help you generate a differing image with an identical SHA1 sum to that of the original?
Re:Funny way to turn the pirates over to their sid (Score:4, Informative)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/downloads/default.aspx?PV=36:350:DVD:en:x64 [microsoft.com]
SHA1: FC867FE1AB2E0A9796F9E4D155B44EA6998F4874
The brownouts have started! (Score:5, Funny)
Looks like this story [slashdot.org] was right!
Except my computer hasn't started to freeze and jitter. What's up with that?
Re: (Score:2)
I guess your ISP is very technical and you didn't see a "brownout". I have seen one, when the idiots (at billing) decided to give me IP but did not allow any data in or out. Some system parts were seriously shaken, frozen because they weren't coded with such possibility in mind. I reported all to my OS vendor and couple of apps vendors. One application became such a zombie that kill -9 didn't help. Reason? It was checking for updates. That is all! Some apps refused to display a GUI until I hand edited their
Is this the same one as on the tubes already? (Score:2)
The one the internets seemed to distribute (probably via Sweden) for a week now?
MS is doing it wrong.
Re: (Score:2)
That will happen naturally.
Let someone who doesn't like the bandwitdth issue post it as a torrent. Then if people start embedding Trojans MS can wash there hands of it.
got it from usenet a week ago (Score:2)
installed it a few days ago.
quite nice.
I know! (Score:2)
Maybe they need to upgrade their web servers [wikipedia.org]?
It is obvious... (Score:2)
Speaking of adverts... (Score:2)
Surely, they should be able to deal with this? Not a good advert for Microsoft
Or you could say that it's actually an excellent advert, because now MS can say that so many people suddenly wanted to download it.
Not Microsoft's Fault (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Good luck downloading anything from MSDN on a Mac...
Obligatory Nelson from the Simpsons: (Score:2)
Hah! Hah!!
Try Wubi.exe' [wikipedia.org]
Typical /. (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't paint a very pretty picture of the FOSS community.
Re:WTF? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because it's what 80% of the world will be running in about a year?
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
But that was the point of Vista: to make whatever came next look revolutionary.
Re: (Score:2)
No, what the GP said is true.
You just have to look at the reason why: it's pre-installed on new computers from the major brands (Dell, HP, etc...) by default.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Does your XP disc dissolve at some point in the next 13 months?
If you're smart enough to get the RC running, you know how to re-install XP.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Dell went through a phase of making you burn the CDs yourself (and my parents own a couple of dells from that era) but they seem to have gone back to shipping them now (and unlike some vendors it's a proper windows CD/DVD that they ship).
I think every other PC new PC i've seen came with some form of reinstall CD/DVDs. Sometimes it's only a "wipe everything and restore to factory stage" CD/DVD though :( (and one downgraded optiplex I ordered through uni for a project there only seemed to come with the vista
Re: (Score:2)
If you're smart enough to get the RC running, you know how to re-install XP.
Also, if you're smart enough to get the RC running, you know how to get your data off a hard drive with a disabled OS.
The OS isn't dead and all your data is intact... (Score:5, Funny)
Which part of "insert credit card to continue" is confusing you?
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes you can, but they strongly recommended against it. It tried it, and it worked on one out of three machines.
And the machine where it worked on, strange issues have cropped up.
So the recommendation to do a clean reinstall should be taken seriously.
Re: (Score:1)
If you ignore the zillions of warning messages you get between now and next year, you deserve to have a disabled OS.
Which, by the way won't be disabled, you'll still be able to boot up to copy files.
Re: (Score:2)
...you download and install the Win 7 RC OS, and you like it. So you keep it on your computer cuz hey its free, for now. 2010 comes around, windows 7 is officially launched, you boot up your computer and ... nothing. Now you have to pay $200 (or 300 or 400). Oops, probably should have kept XP around eh?
I'm pretty sure this is exactly what MS is counting on.
Re:Surprise Surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
How is this a screw up on their part again? They release a preview of the next os and there is so much interest in it that they can't keep up with demand. That sounds like they did something right to get that kind of attention. Also Vista was released 2 years ago. I know it's fashionable to complain about MS but a 2 year cycle doesn't sound like rushing it out.
Re: (Score:2)
Or they simply lowered some of priorities in their servers? I mean, yes, Windows 7 has generated a lot of talk around but this is MSDN we talk about. Do you know how much some companies, developers pay for premium access to that system? Ask a Windows developer, you may be very surprised.
Re: (Score:2)
MSDN is only expensive for people who buy it straight from Microsoft's web site. Any company with volume licensing agreement or individuals going through a reseller can get it for like 900$/year for the premium edition (Team System are more expensive, but are actually cheaper, but a LOT, than the non-MS commercial alternatives...)
And that gives you a support contract and a bunch of other things. Really, its peanuts.
Anyway, point is, MSDN's private servers are arguably slower than the public ones a lot of th
Re: (Score:2)
(If anyone, especially a company, buys a bunch of MSDN subscriptions for the downloads, they're doing it wrong)
Actually they are doing it right - the MSDN subscription not only gives you access to the download, it gives you a perpetual license to use the download. One MSDN license per company does not give each developer a license to use the download for development - each developer needs their own MSDN subscription to get the license.
So, if a company buys a bunch of MSDN subscriptions for the downloads, they are most certainly doing it right.
Re: (Score:2)
No, they are doing it wrong, because for development purpose software, companies can get better deals for bulk purchases. MSDN subscriptions are a package deal with pseudo-software insurance, support contract and other benefits, which are far more valuable than the software themselves. Actually, if you're good at convincing Microsoft its in their best interest, they'll give you the stuff free.
Re: (Score:1, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
What I find interesting on that page is the graph titled "directx 10 systems"
It shows that of the people who have DX10 capable GPUs only about half are using vista despite the fact that XP doesn't support DX10.
To me that says a lot of gamers are deliberately avoiding vista.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
a geforce 8XXX serie is DX10 compatible, and its starting to be kindda outdated. I have one and it still runs most games very well, but a 7XXX serie would seriously be pushing it.
So it basically just means that all videocards that don't suck have DX10...doesn't give you much choice here, hmm?
Re: (Score:2)
Screwed up? Would YOU be commenting on it if everything went smoothly?
There is no such thing as bad press. Or, so Hollywood would have me believe, anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
(unless it's just a Microsoft trick to make people believe exactly that...)
Re:Windows 7 will be successful (Score:5, Funny)
You can often count on MSFT to sell you a partial solution to a problem they sold you.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Oh, that's right, they sell anti-virus software [live.com] now, don't they?
The Crystal Ball (Score:2, Interesting)
If there is so much interest for the RC then it seems that Windows 7 will be VERY successful!
Windows 7 can already claim a 0.21% share of the desktop or about 1/5 that of Linux, all flavors. Operating System Market Share [hitslink.com]
Just a tad embarrassing for the geek should the RC overtake Linux over the next thirteen months.
I would like to see an XP VM in all OEM consumer versions of 64 bit Win 7.
That kind of double whammy - have your cake and eat it too - in the home and SOHO markets would be very tough to beat.
D
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Imbecile. It's common (nay, EXPECTED) in the software industry to use one's own products. It's referred to as "eating your own dog food". Fuck off with the "cool-aid" shit.
Also, the servers would be running on a server class OS. Windows 2008 Server, unless Windows 2010 Server has gone RC recently (it hasn't) - Microsoft actually does tend to use RCs of their own products on their servers, as most software companies do. I assume Apple does the same thing, and it wouldn't surprise me if Canonical updated
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Windows Server 2008 R2 (as the Windows 7 server equivalent is called) has RCd at the same time Windows 7 has.
Re: (Score:2)
Seeing as how there has been overwhelmingly more positive press than negative for Windows 7, could it be *gasp* that the issue is with your qemu emulator and samba PDC?
Re: (Score:2)
Lots of people. Millions, probably. This happens whenever there's a windows beta/rc.
Re: (Score:2)
yeah, especially since the download servers are handled by a third party that runs Linux across the board... :)