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Microsoft had scheduled the meeting with security companies to discuss part of the changes it has promised to make to Windows Vista in response to competitive concerns. But the conference, which used Microsoft's Live Meeting technology, crashed about 15 minutes after it started, and both Symantec and McAfee were unable to log back in.
"Microsoft hosted an online meeting this morning, but it never really got started," said Siobhan MacDermott, a McAfee spokeswoman. "Despite numerous attempts to reconnect, we were never able to get back into the meeting. However, we were notified that the meeting had ended."
Symantec had a similar experience, said Cris Paden, a company spokesman. "Our team was shut out, and only one person was able to get back in," he said.
There were some "technical difficulties" with Live Meeting, a Microsoft representative said. Those issues were resolved and the meeting resumed, the representative said.
"More than 20 partners successfully signed on and participated in the meeting," the Microsoft representative said. "To ensure that all partners are able to listen, this is the first of many meetings to come."
The meeting problems were "no big deal," Alex Eckelberry, president of anti-spyware toolmaker Sunbelt Software, wrote on his company's blog.
Microsoft accidentally sent out the wrong meeting invites, and as a result, participants signed on as presenters. "Which, if you've ever used Live Meeting, is an invitation to chaos," Eckelberry wrote.
After recognizing the error, Microsoft rescheduled the meeting for half-an-hour later. However, that didn't go well either because the meeting had been set up to end an hour after its original start. "So we were promptly all kicked off," Eckelberry wrote. "Finally, at 12:45 EDT, the meeting went as planned."
"It was a case of a few honest mistakes made by well-intentioned people, probably working under a tremendous amount of stress," Eckelberry wrote. "While I have my serious disagreements with Microsoft on the PatchGuard issue, I must defend them in this instance."
Other meetings are scheduled for later today, including one at 5 p.m. PDT, which Symantec and McAfee say they will try to join.
"But if the link didn't work to the Live Meeting this morning, who is going to say it is going to work this afternoon?" Paden asked. "It begs the question how sincere this outreach is, if they are not even able to put this together."
The meeting was to discuss how third-party protective software can interact with the innards of 64-bit versions of Windows Vista. Security companies had requested that capability, but Microsoft denied it until last week, when it made concessions in response to European antitrust concerns.
Access to the Vista kernel is one of two concessions Microsoft made. The Redmond, Wash., software giant also is providing security companies with a way to disable alerts sent out by the Windows Security Center, if their third-party protective software is installed.
Symantec, McAfee and others had charged that Microsoft was hurting competition and creating an unfair advantage for its own products through the kernel protection and Windows Security Center features.
See more CNET content tagged:
Microsoft Office Live Meeting, McAfee Inc., online meeting, security company, Symantec Corp.
technology to work.....especially in volume and especially as a
non-MS site.
Articles like this are what make me think CNET is often at the bottom rung of journalism, just below that tabloid with the Alien Baby headlines.
This sounds like they are not ready to release and they know it but don't want the security companies to have insight to this OR they just don't want to conduct business with them.
Don't you wait for all parties to reconnect before you carry on with a conference?
I can so easily see why this problem happened - it happens a lot where I work also... and you just need to recreate the meeting and send out the new links.
Not sure why Symantec and McAfee couldn't get back in (although one employee from Symantec could). Sounds like they simply gave up - it would make for better press anyways.
Live Meeting is a good product - and the fact that an admin. screws it up and sends out the wrong type of invites isn't Microsoft's problem.
Our business runs just fine using this product - and it's definitely not 'unstable'... and certainly not 'legacy' lol... it's all web based and smart client based.
My issue was Mcafee firewall, after telling me 100 times that Live Meeting needed to be allowed I finally gave up! Trouble is its still telling me that I need to allow it with popups after popups?
My other friend had trendmicro and he was able to get right in?
mmm I guess go figure
Looking at the list of companies involved, I would guess the problem was related to a virus.
But this isn't news. I cannot tell you how many times I've been in meetings like this (using different software from raindance and webex) that connections have been dropped or the meeting ended before it got started good. It all boiled down to the person setting the meeting up wasn't up to snuff on how to do it.
As for Norton and McCaffee... Stop crying guys, you are starting to look very silly.
In short, the problem is not that Microsoft had a technical problem (apparently through an administrative mistake), but that attendees were unable to successfully rejoin after the problem was supposedly resolved. The issue with the commenter saying that security conflicts prevented two others from attending is also disturbing.
Finally, it is interesting to ask if this could have been resolved more easily with a different product design? As one example, WebEx keeps multiple presenters from messing with the presentation space and the meeting host could have reset their authority levels.
What a coincidence.
The software is simply unstable and unfinished, like most of the crappy code the company shoves out the door.
Sumatra-Bosch went the 2nd route. But he should be more agressive: are you sure LiveMeeting just crashed and burned, are you sure it didn't explode and burst into flames seriously hurting 253 people? I mean, you talk like you use that software everyday, tell us about it. How bad is it, don't be naive?
Last time I checked, developing an OS for more than 90% of the computers used everyday around the world required that and perhaps even a little more, so there goes your statement. And I'd love to hear you explain me how does software "burn" exactly (if you have the time, prfessor). Maybe the only reason it got press is because it is news that LiveMeeting crashes, if it's not and they just reported this because of Symantec and McAfee, where did you get that data from, do you work in these companies, is it? Finally, I'd like to read more about your review of LiveMeeting (you seem to use it everyday, which is rather interesting, maybe to do conferences with planet "Apple" or planet "Linux", no?), maybe you have a word on Microsoft Dynamics or SharePoint or any other typical consumer software, maybe? Where did you get it from? Oh, and just because you don't know how to work with something, it doesn't always mean that "something" is wrong and not something else... ;)
- Biased article
- by godam_registration October 21, 2006 5:28 PM PDT
- I know everyone's pissed off at MS, but I'm still gonna say this. This article makes it sound as if the crash was engineered.
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(20 Comments)Maybe it was, but that's for the public to decide, not the journalists.