Glitches of the Week: Communications Satellite Goes Dark Following Failure of Backup Control Processor-

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Tuesday, November 28 6:09 AM SGT

Glitches of the Week MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA, U.S.A., 2000 NOV 27 (NB) -- By Leonard Lee, Newsbytes. This is a weekly column from Newsbytes featuring the latest in the weird, bizarre, and unfortunate when it comes to technology.

Communications Satellite Goes Dark

The Galaxy VII communications satellite, owned by PanAmSat Corp, stopped transmitting early last week due to failure of an onboard system. According to a PanAmSat statement, the satellite, is not expected to return to service. Galaxy VII had primarily been used as a backup satellite for television and other communications transmissions to the Western Hemisphere, including the United States. According to the statement, "Galaxy VII, a Boeing 601 spacecraft built by Boeing Satellite Systems Inc., experienced the failure of its backup spacecraft control processor (SCP) at 1:29 p.m. Eastern time on November 22." The onboard system that failed was responsible for controlling the spacecraft and maintaining its position relative to earth. According to the statement, "PanAmSat intends to file an insurance claim on the satellite, which is fully insured at a value of approximately $130 million." "PanAmSat took decisive action early on to assure the highest levels of service and reliability across our fleet. As a result, none of our full-time customers will be affected by the Galaxy VII failure," said R. Douglas Kahn, PanAmSat's president and chief executive officer in a prepared statement. PanAmSat said that it doesn't expect the equipment failure of the Galaxy VII to affect its projected fiscal 2000 revenue of about $1 billion.

Amazon.com Experiences Outage

On Friday, Nov. 25, generally considered the biggest shopping day of the year, the online retailer Amazon.com shut down for about 30 minutes. According to Bill Curry, an Amazon.com spokesperson, the outage began at about 8:30 a.m. Pacific time and lasted for about a half hour. "The problem was completely internal," said Curry. "We had a bug in our system, we identified it and exterminated it." While Amazon does not generally give details regarding site outages, Curry did say that the outage was not related to the amount of traffic the site experienced. During the half-hour glitch, the entire retail portion of the site was down and unable to process orders. Visitors who tried to access the site were greeted with a message stating that the site would be up shortly. Amazon's non-retail branches, including auctions, as well as its international sites, were still accessible during the time.

BestBuy.com Experiences Heavy Traffic Problems

Best Buy, a retailer of consumer electronics, experienced problems accommodating the droves of people who flocked to its web site, BestBuy.com the night of Thursday, Nov. 24. According to Laurie Bauer, a Best Buy spokesperson, the enormous traffic came partially due to rumors on the site's bulletin board that BestBuy.com would be carrying the popular, hard-to-find Sony PlayStation 2 game console. In reality, the site did not have any of the game systems available. Although BestBuy.com workers prepared the site for extra holiday shoppers, they didn't anticipate the traffic from users seeking the PlayStation 2. Bauer also attributes the increased traffic to bargain hunters awaiting updates to Friday's sale prices on certain items. "The site was never completely down," said Bauer. "There were intermittent errors on Friday and Saturday during which site was slowed down and certain functions were inaccessible until we could correct them." The site was repaired on Sunday, Nov. 26 and by the following day it was working normally again.

http://asia.dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/technology/article.html?s=asia/headlines/001128/technology/newsbytes/Glitches_of_the_Week.html

-- Carl Jenkins (somewherepress@aol.com), November 28, 2000


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