Unnoticed in this is that Windows update required each computer to be restarted. I'm disappointed that after all this time they still can't roll out a major patch without restarting the computer (because they nag you until you do).

It's too bad the Skype users lost service, but how is their qa team going to simulate the effect of all of their users logging in at once?

more arrogance from Microsoft

They're MS boxes. They love to be rebooted. The only problem I see with the whole process is that somebody hasn't figured how to make the reboot process quicker.

ROFLMAO! Us old-timers remember a similar phenomenon back in the '60s. Not with computers, obviously, but with water. Immediately after The Beatles' first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, all the folks 'goin to the can' at the same time caused a drastic drop in New York City water pressure. According to this 'urban legend' fire hydrants didn't have usable pressure for two hours.

I'm sorry, but if I read between the lines, the blame lies squarely at the feet of Skype. Microsoft, whom I'm inclined to believe this time, did nothing out of the ordinary with this patch release.

Something obviously changed with respect to Skype. Either their number of users changed dramatically since the last "patch Tuesday", or they made a software change since then. I suspect the latter to be the case.

The SANS ISC diary has an interesting discussion of this:

http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=3292

"... The patch Tuesday theory doesn't add up. Why did it take 'so long' to have the failure? Why not last month? What about this [DDoS] Proof-of-concept? ..."

Why does Microsoft's bad karma have to hit innocent people?

@Hmmm: the underbody of NT will not allow tampering with disk images of processes. The only way to update these images is to put them in queue for the next boot. You can discuss ways around this until we're all ready for bed but any which way you turn you're going to have a really shaky idea probably tripping over its own feet in no time. Say you kill certain processes in order to update their images and restart them again: can this be done across the board? And if these images represent services or drivers? OS X doesn't work like this but NT has always worked like this. Get over it - it's the way the system's security was designed from the get-go.

That story seems bogus to me. How has this month been any different than any other month of patches? Combined with that 'exploit' code from that russian page, this smells like a DoS to me.

Sorry, I think this one's on Skype. If they aren't ready for this, they aren't ready for prime time. I also think the headline for this piece should have been a question instead of a statement. And as far as I know, the reason you have to reboot after MS updates is so that the 'Malicious Software Removal Tool' can run on reboot.

Since Skype was aware that the problem they face is too many users trying to log at the same time, it is rather strange that they had a recommendation posted at their site that users should keep Skype started and let it keep trying to connect to the network.
Wouldn't it be more logical to recommend that users stop trying for couple of hours until everything gets sorted out?

Ed Felten has an interesting post about this today:

http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1190

My laptop would not restart after the MS install and I had to return home from a business trip and reinstall my system. Naturally MS would not accept any responsibility or admit the patch caused it. Thanks a lot.

"Hats off" to Microsoft for making your system problematic again! The problems with re-booting the system may very well be rooted in the "malicious software removal program" which I stopped using months ago. It was at that time that I stopped having all of the problems with each update! Customizing your updates is the only way to go, unless one wishes to use Firefox!