Status Problems Break Skype For Many Users; Quick Fix Promised 64
Many Skype users have been affected this morning by a glitch which has rendered the service unusable or only semi-usable. The BBC says that problems have been reported in Japan, the UK, and Australia, and that Skype support staff have promised a "quick fix." A message on the Skype page says "f you're signed in to Skype, you will not be able to change your status and your contacts will all show as offline even if they are online. As a result, you won't be able to start Skype calls to them.. A small number of messages to group chats are not being delivered, but in most cases you can still instant message your contacts.. If you aren't signed in to Skype, you may be experiencing difficulty when attempting to sign in. Any changes to your Skype account such as your Credit balance or your profile details might take a little while to be displayed."
Yeah i already noticed (Score:1)
that the internet was broken today.
Broken since 09:00 UTC (Score:4, Informative)
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Damn, their uptime this year will be less than 99,94%!
http://www.wolframalpha.com/in... [wolframalpha.com]
http://www.wolframalpha.com/in... [wolframalpha.com]
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Damn, their uptime this year will be less than 99,94%!
Three nines. Whoop-de-doo. I'm just glad I was able to easily derail the suggestion that "We should just use Skype for all of the business phones..." If I hadn't, I'd still get to say, "I told you it was a bad idea", but there's always that look that says, "Well, you should have told us harder", when the IT prophecy cometh true. Ya know?
Setting aside the mobile networks (who still do a pretty good job when it comes to availability), I'll wager that the PSTN has an uptime of 5 nines, at least.
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I'll wager that the PSTN has an uptime of 5 nines, at least.
Sure. But at what cost. Check out what they bill you for even just a simple 8 lines into a small business office. That runs hundreds even thousands of dollars.
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Classic phone reliability is deemed acceptable if the they have 5 nines. Less is seen as something that needs fixing.
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Skype has been broken since 09:00 UTC. That's about 5 hours now. I think we can safely say that the quick fix didn't happen.
Its very, very annoying! It's the third time this month that I have problems with Skype.
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5 hours is a long time to find, fix, test, and deploy a fix in your mind? Seriously?.
If I recall correctly, Gmail once went down due to some kind of a severe bug. The fix took 5 minutes.
No, fix to the main issue was not made in 5 minutes, but the service was back and operational in 5 minutes. Their automated malfunction detection reverted to a previous software version.
The end result is still the same: only 5 minutes of downtime for users, which qualifies as "fixed".
I think we can safely say that you don't develop software for a living, or at least that if you do then you are completely incompetent.
Or perhaps he just is familiar with system administration.
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Yes it is very long time and yes he might be developing for a living. You are probably not doing your job well if you think a service like this can be crippled for few hours and think its normal.
Re:Broken since 09:00 UTC (Score:5, Insightful)
No, but it is a long time to fail over to the redundant systems, roll back whatever configuration change you did last, or that kind of thing.
Everything about this is wrong.
First of all, the issue is operations, not development. Even if development screwed up, it shouldn't matter because the deployment would be rolled back. (Actually, ideally the deployment wouldn't happen in the first place because QA would have found the issue first and told development to go back and fix their shit.)
Second, if you're in operations and you don't think 5 hours is a long time to get the service back up then you are completely incompetent!
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In most cases*, the redundant system won't have the same software bug because the ops people weren't so stupid that they tried to upgrade it at the same time. That means any issue that causes downtime is almost always an operations issue, because if it were a development issue then the devs could fix it at their leisure while the old version of the service stayed up.
(*the exception, of course, are preexisting bugs that are tr
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Keep thinking. If you really have a clue what you are talking about you will realize that you have listed just two items on a very long list. Your assumption that most bugs are immediately evident and expo
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No, Skype has been broken since Microsoft bought it and "improved" it.
Small mercies the Linux version of Skype hasn't been "fixed" the same way the PC, Mac, Andorid versions have.
Confirm broken in Norway (Score:2)
Tested on two computers + 1 android phone (on a separate connection). Unable to see anyone online (Even Echo / Sound Test Service is offline). A few users appeared online until attempting to call them (including Echo).
Tried signing out on one of the computers, and signing back in appears broken. (takes forever and fails with wrong credentials error. I *might* be misremembering my password, but I doubt it.)
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Hangouts works great, I'm trying to break the iPhone / Facetime habit those locked ecosystem people seem to be suffering on.
From what I can tell Hangouts works rather well on that ecosystem too.
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Sure it's a bit locked, but it's at least cross-platform.
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Either of them is more accessible than Facetime.
I can SMS with Hangouts.
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Its not just that. Of course, skype has developed one of the best NAT hole punching algorithms on this planet, but it provides more than just a "dumb wire", like providing friends lists for every user, general state of the user "online, not online, doesn't want to be disturbed, etc", and chat.
Bullshit (Score:2, Funny)
Skype is not only preventing status updates and showing users offline.
Both me and my girlfriend, from different points in the country and different ISPs, are actually UNABLE TO CONNECT.
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I went to bed with skype connected, woke up to it trying to connect, so, once again, bullshit. I was connected.
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Gosh, makes you wonder if changing it from encrypted peer to peer to unencrypted in the middle for NSA client-server was a good idea.
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It prevents your status update from "Offline" to "Online". That shows up as "connecting", but if you try it, it will pass IMs still.
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I went to bed with it connected, woke up to it trying to connect.
I tried sending messages anyway, both before the news came out and after. No luck.
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You're repeating yourself, and yes, we get it, you're very excited about finally having found a girlfriend over the internet.
FWIW, what you're complaining about is right in TFS. It says
As a result, you won't be able to start Skype calls to them.
Try reading more than what you want to read next time. You probably still get to point out that you have a girlfriend!! somewhere.
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Correction: It appears you have only read the first two words of the headline. Sigh.
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My point was, it does not affect only those who are trying to connect. It affected those who were connected as well, as I leave my computer and skype always on. The summary says that if you were connected, you won't be able to see or change the status but that the messages to individual users would pass. Which is untrue/impossible to test, because every machine I had access to that had skype connected all night long lost connection to skype and any attempt to send messages directly user to user has failed.
A
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Well, let's practice reading comprehension a bit, shall we?
TFS says
f(sic) you're signed in to Skype, you will not be able to change your status and your contacts will all show as offline even if they are online. As a result, you won't be able to start Skype calls to them
And now you're complaining that you can't sign in in the first place. Well guess what, /if/ you managed to sign in, you'd in turn be ... signed in. Let's see what TFS has to say about that:
f(sic) you're signed in to Skype, you will not be able to change your status and your contacts will all show as offline even if they are online. As a result, you won't be able to start Skype calls to them
So your complaint is meaningless and obvious to people remotely computer-literate.
(Also, note that the statement starts with "if". Do you understand that "if it is raining today, i'll visit the museum" does not imply that i wouldn't visit the museum wer
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"Is a "no, you!"-kind of reply all you can come up with for a proper comeback?"
He/she probably decided a dick like you that lashes out at random and clearly has huge issues about relationships wouldn't be worth the effort.
I've seen people be all sorts of idiots on here, this is about the most unjustified and personal attack ever.
PS before you ask I'm married AND know where my wife is. Is that OK with you?
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"Is a "no, you!"-kind of reply all you can come up with for a proper comeback?"
He/she probably decided a dick like you that lashes out at random and clearly has huge issues about relationships wouldn't be worth the effort.
Odd that it was worth the effort to reply at all then, wouldn't you think?
I've seen people be all sorts of idiots on here, this is about the most unjustified and personal attack ever.
It was justified by the stupidity of the initial post, which starts boldly with "Bullshit" and then goes on to
Skype is not only preventing status updates and showing users offline...Both me and my girlfriend, from different points in the country and different ISPs, are actually UNABLE TO CONNECT.
If you don't see the stupidity of this, let me rephrase it for you:
Skype is not only preventing status updates [...] [b]oth me and my girlfriend [...] are actually UNABLE TO [change our status from offline to online].
Well duh. Heck, it is currently mismodded at +2, Funny; Maybe people are granting him the benefit of the doubt, I don't know.
PS before you ask I'm married AND know where my wife is. Is that OK with you?
Why would you believe i would have asked that? It seems you require some practice in reading comprehension as well, given that you app
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Yes, just as it says in the summary.
Distributed realtime chat .. (Score:2)
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It has not been distributed peer-to-peer for a while.
Microsoft turned it into a easy backdoor for NSA years ago.
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The login and status change part needs always some central components. The comunication between two users, however, needs not.
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SSL Added and removed here :-) (Score:2)
A small number (Score:2)
Not happy (Score:1)
Affected in the USA (Score:2)
The company I work at uses Skype for internal communications for when email is considered too slow. I'm unable to connect this morning, and I'm in the USA - not one of the countries listed as being affected by the BBC.
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Why are people using this already? (Score:1)
Skype isn't an open protocol, so there's zero competition for implementations and The One implementation is impossible to audit for security. Given that, it's not a good idea to be using it, except perhaps as a curiosity.
Maybe Skype will come out of beta some day, but if you're using it in 2015: too soon!
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Of course, they TTS the communications, its not storage which is the problem.
A glitch?!!? (Score:2)