Yesterday, three quarters of Microsoft’s MSN & Live services were up and down for around twelve hours.  There was no news about the incident.

     Tonight, Twitter has had intermittent connectivity, also with no news.

     The Truth Laid Bear, a well-past-its-expiry-date blog ranking site, has had numerous issues for some time with no apparent plans to fix anything:

Access denied for user 'nzbear_ttlb'@'63.247.140.96'
to database 'nzbear_repdb'

     The outage that seems to be causing the most blatant angst for users, however, has occurred on MySpace, where their Applications platform, MySpace Apps, has been down for two days.  While MySpace has left over two hundred million users unable to use the Applications platform with little explanation as to why, users have taken to posting bulletins with everything from conspiracy theories to all out rage against the ad-driven site.  

     The vast majority of MySpace applications are immensely simple, session-based games, most of which are based off of a much more simplified model of the archaic Solar Realms Elite-style BBS games of the early 1980’s.  However, the outrage at being denied the privilege to play these games is very real.  Some users have reported that a Lawsuit against MySpace has closed the applications.  Others have conjectured that it is due to rampant cheating on a points-for-cash system which doesn’t exist.  Some have found more sinister motives, claiming that MySpace’s creator, Tom Anderson, is pulling a coup d’etat against its media mogul owner, Rupert Murdoch.

     Still others blame the spirit of a deceased Tom Anderson as he posts bulletins from the grave, lame-duck President George W. Bush, Lucky the Dog, and an illegal alien named Urinous Hatte, who claims to be from an extra-solar planet in the vicinity of Beta Orionis.

     I would like to address these particular MySpace users directly:

     While MySpace upgrades their OpenSocial platform to v0.8, this leaves many of you with a great deal of free time.  However, this outage has a silver lining.  This is time that could better spent dealing with emotional trauma, finding girl/boyfriends, educating yourselves, raising your children correctly, or any number of other worthwhile objectives which may actually prove that you can do something for your own, or the greater, good.

     In other words:

     Please remove your heads from your asses and get out from in front of the damn computer.

     Thank you, drive through…