MS UK kills mystery 'Live to Code' site
Misconfigured marketing offshoot pulled
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Microsoft has pulled an apparently rogue internal marketing project that sat quietly, but not unnoticed, on the same servers as its main UK website for at least a fortnight.
For at least two weeks leading up to Tuesday (6 May) surfers visiting http://microsoft.co.uk got a somewhat minimalist "Live to Code" page, rather than the main UK website they might have expected to see. The main www.microsoft.co.uk site worked normally throughout.

Live to Code - rogue marketing offshoot pulled.
The "Live to Code" page, by contrast, displayed a list of sub-directories linking to pictures of what appeared to be marketing collateral on sites such as Flickr and YouTube.
This microsoft.co.uk page had the same CNAME as the main site, indicating it was on the same server. Furthermore, www.theeducationcommunity.com, resolved to the same IP address (http://217.64.231.177), until Microsoft sorted out the confusion on Tuesday night.
Reg reader Ian notified us of the Live To Code site on 23 April, prompting our initial inquiries. He thought the site was the result of a DNS hack.
Not so.
Another reader, Simon, came up with a much better theory, when he contacted us on 1 May. "My guess is that someone tried to set up the latter [Live to Code] using MS UK's existing servers, but changed the default website in IIS instead of creating one specifically," he said. "It seems someone might have made a boo boo at Microsoft UK."
Microsoft pulled the Live to Code site, following repeated inquiries from El Reg, on Tuesday. It is yet to explain what was going on. Microsoft's UK site is administered from the US and this factor has made it more difficult to uncover what was going on.
In a statement, Microsoft said the Live to Code site is "legitimately associated with Microsoft and is not serving malware", without explaining its purpose. ®
COMMENTS
@Pheet
>"AC, you must be a manager, or other form of PHB."
Nope, I'm a coder. I just have a life and a sense of perspective.
>"Real IT pros (programmers, sys admins, etc.) know that small details are important, and can have an asymmetrical effect."
[Pardon. I wrote this before checking back in the thread history for your name, and see that you aren't one of the earlier posters, at least as far as I can tell. Please understand what follows as directed at the posters whose posts I was addressing originally; I can't explain myself to anyone else, because I wasn't having a beef at anyone else.]:-
Well, yes, but that's not what you're posting about. You're just trying to show how you're very clever and they're very stupid for using ever-so-slightly loose terminology, by pointing out some minor detail about how what they said could be seen as wrong if you look at it from just the right angle...
See, this is why you're a pedant: you missed the actual *point* of the story because of your obsessional focus on tiny details. The story, since you need reminding, is about how Microsoft have some interesting kind of project or launch or marketing scheme that they've inadvertently leaked details of the existence of, and what it could mean or imply for them, us, their future strategy and the development of the software industry, and all you want to do is quibble about the relation between hostnames, IP addresses, and actual machines.
[Uh. Now, this bit *is* about you, because it refers to your "must be a PHB" comment, and the smug and contemptuous attitude that comment implies.]:-
You also totally missed the point about why I was picking up on this, and in that geeky-autistic-Aspergers-y sort of way so typical of pedants everywhere, assumed that I must just not be as clever as you and not understand the technical detail of what you were talking about, rather than for one second consider the possibility that I did understand what you were obsessing about but thought it was irrelevant!
@pedantry
"Real IT pros (programmers, sys admins, etc.) know that small details are important, and can have an asymmetrical effect."
Besides, nitpicking can be very interesting for the bystanders. I didn't know you could do this so I just learned something. What's wrong with that?
They think calling programmers work mules is good PR?
Fuck, I code to live (as in "make a living"), not the oposite.
What kind of marketing fuckwit (pleonastic, I know) came up with that?

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