technical issues
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Southwest Airlines' technical issues lead to 500 canceled flights
Southwest Airlines had thousands of delayed and canceled flights this week caused by a couple of technical problems that affected its systems.
Toys R Us: Lucario amiibo pre-orders not being canceled
Numerous Toys R Us customers received emails from the retailer this morning, seemingly canceling their pre-orders for the Lucario amiibo figure. As a Toys R Us spokesperson told Joystiq in a phone conversation today, the emails were part of a "technical issue," and pre-orders for the figure will not be canceled. Toys R Us added via email, "we apologize for any inconvenience that may have been caused pertaining to customers' amiibo pre-orders. Please know that we are working on an email communication to all customers effected, which will provide instructions on how we plan to fulfill their order." The Lucario amiibo was revealed in November as a Toys R Us-exclusive figure, though the retailer's listing for the figure is currently missing from its storefront. Toys R Us was unable to offer specific inventory data for amiibo, but assured that the issue was unrelated to its supply of the figures.
Urgent maintenance on all realms at 1 p.m. EDT
All realms are scheduled to be down for maintenance from 1 p.m. EDT (10 a.m. PDT) to 3 p.m. EDT (Noon PDT). Laetzin We will be performing urgent maintenance on all realms to resolve a technical issue Friday, September 28th. Maintenance will begin at 10:00 AM and conclude at approximately 12:00 PM PDT. source We don't know what the technical issue is, but we'll keep this post updated with any new information. Update: All realms are back online.
Drama Mamas: Vent troubles vs. That Guy
Drama Mamas Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are experienced gamers and real-life mamas -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of the checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your realm. The above video is not on topic. Anyway, let's talk about That Guy. He's always causing drama. Or is he? Dear Robin and Lisa, I recently found myself in an interesting situation: Running our guild second 10 man raid team. Or more accurately, finishing it off with two tanks, a healer and a DPS. Getting the DPS and the healer was fairly easy without going outside the guild or recruiting anyone. And I even convinced one of our officers to be the MT. This afternoon, at the spur of the moment, he (the MT guild officer) formed a Bastion of Twilight raid with most of the second team members in it, including me (shammy healer), along with a tank friend of his. So, we get there, join vent, mine is working fine (this is important) and we start the first pulls, things are going just fine and we get to the first boss. Halfus has 3 drakes available (twilight, slate and time) so after a short discussion in vent, a strategy is decided on and we attack the boss. Three wipes later, they down the boss, my first ever kill on Halfus. I even get this amulet drop which is a huge upgrade for me, so I am happy.
Patch 3.3.3a should fix issues for some Mac users
A heads-up for our Mac users, although there's a good chance you've already been painfully aware of this if you play on one of the affected systems -- patch 3.3.3 has been causing major issues for some PowerPC and Tiger users, which have (hopefully) been fixed by the mini-patch 3.3.3a. S4d1K -- 3.3.3 Known Issues for Mac players We are aware of 2 critical bugs that are affecting users with specific configurations. #1 PowerPC G4/G5 users get disconnected after login. #2 Users with a MacBook Pro GeForce 8600M and 10.4.11 crashes after entering the world. We are very sorry and we are working on these issues and hope to fix them as soon as possible. UPDATE 5:10pm: We have a fix for both issues but it will require a client patch. We don't have an ETA for now. UPDATE 3/24 12:15pm: We are currently testing a patch. We want to make sure that we do not break the game for another group of people. We are doing everything to release this patch as soon as possible. source The patch in question is (we think) 3.3.3a. With the patch, many of the affected users are now reporting that WoW is playable again, but while monitoring the official thread on the issue, it's apparent that a lot of players are still having problems. We had several people drop comments on Adam's earlier post on the mini-patch -- did 3.3.3a work for you?
Apple 'fesses up to 7200 RPM HDD issues, aims to dispatch a fix forthwith
MacBook Pro owners suffering from 7200 RPM noise pollution and performance issues, Apple has acknowledged your pain and wants you to know that it's working hard to remedy the situation. According to CNET, the problem seems to be restricted to 500GB / 7200 RPM hard drives, with the likely culprit being code that's somehow "causing the drive to sleep during use." No word yet on a release date for the patch, but you'll know as soon as we do. As you know, we'll pretty much take any opportunity we can find to run a Lloyd Dobler Photoshop.[Via Register Hardware]
MacBook Pros with 7200RPM HDDs getting a touch too noisy?
MacBook Pro hard disk storage really seem to be down on its luck this generation. First was the 3Gbps SATA transfers (now fixed), which honestly didn't affected but a marginal percentage of users upgrading to SSD themselves. Now comes word from a number of irate users on the Apple support forums that claim their HDDs, specifically those spec'd at 7200RPM, are suffering from performance issues and some audible clicking / beeping sounds. The folks at Other World Computing chimed in to say that it might have something to do with the Seagate Momentus 7200.4 G-Force drives, which takes anti-shock precautions that are possibly causing both noise and extra strain. If you're not hearing anything now, we wouldn't suggest you start getting hyper paranoid over the issue -- it's the internet, where things often get blown way out of proportion, in case you haven't noticed. If you're still worried / curious, hit up the read link for the full collection of anecdotes.[Via Engadget Spanish and MacNN]
NXE audio issues continue to fire up forum users, Microsoft still working on a fix
When the switch was flipped to release the New Xbox Experience (NXE) everyone at X3F HQ was huddled around a candle, hoping that Xbox Live wouldn't ... you know, explode! Thankfully, the NXE was released and the Live service continued to run strong, for the most part. However, not everyone had a rosy experience. Some Xbox users connected throughout HDMI noticed an issue, the NXE would not play audio via an HDMI connection. While this isn't news, users that have been hit with the audio issue have taken to the Xbox.com forum, now threatening to take the issue to the the Better Business Bureau and contact consumer advocacy groups due to Microsoft's refusal to address the problems. Only, Microsoft did address the NXE/HDMI problem. On December 2, X3F reported that Microsoft admitted the NXE had caused the HDMI audio issue for some users and are currently working on a fix in a story on ShackNews. While they don't get points for speed -- actually, maybe they do ... we don't know how long it takes to fix these things -- Microsoft has admitted the problem and aren't leaving anyone out in the cold. Get it? 'Cuz it's December. Never mind, you seem upset.[Ed. Note: Story edited to clarify the audio issue has only hit some HDMI users]
Player vs. Everything: Singing the praises of Vanguard
I have a confession to make: While I was waiting for the Age of Conan launch, I decided to dip my toes back into Vanguard for a bit. It wasn't as crazy of a proposition as you might think. I've always liked Vanguard. It was never the design that was flawed -- it was the execution. Vanguard failed not because it was a bad game, but because when it launched it was a horrible, buggy, crashing, slow, unplayable mess. I know this because I was in late-stage beta, and that experience made me pass over the game when the launch date finally rolled around. However, a crack SOE development team picked up the pieces of the broken dream of "the Vision," as McQuaid called it, and they've been working feverishly to stitch them together into something both exciting and stable over the last year. Last week, spurred by a desire to just have some fun, I dusted off the copy of the game I bought this fall and rolled up a Necromancer. I didn't expect much. I was just killing time until the Age of Conan launch started. Surprisingly, Vanguard grabbed me. Without really intending to, I was having more fun in an MMOG than I had had in a long time -- so much fun that when the AoC servers finally came up, I was still playing Vanguard. All this week, while logged into AoC, I've been thinking about Vanguard. I'm seriously contemplating putting Age of Conan on ice for a while to go play Vanguard some more. I was enjoying myself that much. What's so great about this allegedly terrible game that I'm willing to play it over the brand new blockbuster flavor-of-the-month?
Pirates of the Burning Sea experiencing a bad spot of weather
SOE has been having technical issues with its Station game portal today. The issues particularly affect the Pirates of the Burning Sea community. According to a post on the game's official community site, "fans may experience challenges submitting User Content, posting on the Pirates of the Burning Sea forums, as well as difficulties logging into beta."They assure us that the technicians are working hard to fix the problem, though, and that we can expect things to be fine and dandy again soon enough. But until then, beware ye landlubbers, there be harsh weather upon the burning sea today. Arrr!
