Here’s why Windows Live ID (ne Passport) sucks:

Fundamentally, a login service is amazingly simple… an ID and password are presented, and the system responds with some credentials authenticating the user or denying the user. Yeah, there’s some state, but that’s fairly easily replicated, so there should be tons of boxes with said state so if one goes down, another can pick things up.

The above error was hit at about 1:30 AM on a Saturday (yeah, whatever), and I submitted the request twice. Sigh. And to think I was trying to log in to HealthVault, Microsoft’s newest release to store Health information, to check it out. Oh well.

Come on guys… Passport has been around for what, ten years now? You’re not going to beat anyone in services if you can’t ensure that simple services don’t block people from getting access because they’re down!

OK… so in general, I have a fairly low opinion of Comcast, my cable provider. In general, I find that they provide commodity services at high prices, but operate as a near-monopoly, thus I’m stuck with them. Blech.

One of the random features we get with our cable is the digital music package. For the most part, these are just throw-in channels of music, and we listen to them occasionally. Usually, we listen to the Sound of the Seasons during Christmas, where they put on various Christmas carols.

Today, I had a small Octoberfest party, and I wondered if, perhaps, just maybe, Comcast might have something apropriate on Sound of the Seasons. So, I turned on the TV, found the channel, and was greeted with…

German Beer Drinking Songs.

And that is just Comcastic!