A Bad Day In Mudville

Today's fast moving and interconnected world presents truly amazing opportunities to screw up on a grand scale and Skype did just that a couple of weeks ago with the collaboration system many of us use daily disappearing for 24 hours or more. It's been challenging to understand exactly what happened. Skype points to a Windows update that restarted an unexpectedly large number of systems at one time that in turn broke a key Skype membership algorithm (it's like everyone in a large dorm flushing the toilets at exactly the same time). Only Microsoft insists that there was nothing unusual about this update cycle. Skype says they fixed the problem (and Skype is certainly up and running again). But if you ever worried about the robustness of all this infrastructure, you were justified!