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Total War: Warhammer servers took a hit in the first few hours of launch, but The Creative Assembly has issued a hotfix. A hotfix has been issued to the strategy title, which suffered from some server issues earlier this morning. This was due in part to "unexpected server load" and the way the game handles it. This was causing the game to hang too long on start-up and the multiplayer server list to become unresponsive. To fix the issues, the developers updated the Steam build with a hotfix to solve these issues. For the hotfix to be applied, save your game quit to desktop, and restart Steam for the download to start. Check the entry for Total War: Warhammer in your Steam Library upon restarting and you should see the 10MB download being applied. If this doesn't happen, force the download by right-clicking the game in your Steam Library. Then, click properties->Local Files->Verify integrity of game cache. "Once you've got the hotfix, and if you w...

Patience is key. By Matt Porter We're a few hours into the launch of Total War: Warhammer, but its servers are apparently experiencing some teething problems. "Due to server load the multiplayer server is having trouble keeping up. If you click around it will crash - please have patience and wait," reads a statement from the official Total War Twitter account. A post on the game's Steam forum also has a possible fix if you're having issues with crashing. You're advised to let the game load for up to 10 minutes the first time you launch the game. If it's still not working, you should take the following steps: Set Steam to Offline and try running again. If that fails then verify your Steam Cache, and if that fails try updating your graphics drivers. Once it does start working for you, you're in for a treat, as IGN's review says "Total War: Warhammer brims with exciting ideas, awesome characters, and delightful units and facti...

A Romanian computer hacker who revealed the existence of a private email server used by Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state is expected to plead guilty to hacking-related offenses, a U.S. law enforcement official said on Tuesday. Accused hacker Marcel Lazar, who used the alias "Guccifer," is scheduled to enter a guilty plea at a hearing early on Wednesday before Judge James Cacheris in U.S. District Court, Alexandria, Virginia, said the official. He was indicted on charges including wire fraud, unauthorized access of protected computer, aggravated identity theft, cyberstalking and obstruction of justice. The official and another person familiar with the Guccifer investigation, who asked not to be named ahead of the proceedings, said Lazar's plea would not validate claims he has made in recent media interviews about successfully hacking the email server Clinton installed at her home in Chappaqua, New York. She used it to handle both official ...

SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER NBC News has its own interview with Marcel Lehel Lazar, aka "Guccifer" — the hacker who raided Hillary Clinton's henchman Sidney Blumenthal, and who now claims he penetrated her illicit email server stuffed with classified documents. It appears NBC's interview is older than the one Fox News broke yesterday, because it was conducted in a prison in Bucharest, while Fox spoke with Lazar after he was extradited to Virginia. NBC sat on their interview until after Fox News dropped its bombshell, ostensibly because they wanted it to be part of the debut of reporter Cynthia McFadden's new series "On Assignment." SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER That was a risky move, because NBC had no way of ensuring that Guccifer wouldn't give other interviews, allowing rival networks to scoop them. He was extradited from Romania at the end of March, making his first appearance in a Virginia courtroom on April 1, so NBC ha...

The Romanian hacker known as Guccifer, who claims that he got into Hillary Clinton's private server, is set to change his plea from not guilty in his federal case, according to court records. Marcel Lehel Lazar will appear in a Virginia courtroom on Wednesday for what's described in the court docket as a change of plea hearing. Lazar had pleaded not guilty when he was extradited last month to face charges of hacking American political elites — including Gen. Colin Powell, a member of the Bush family, and former Clinton advisor Sidney Blumenthal. It was not clear which counts the plea will cover. Lazar is not charged with any crimes in connection with his claims about Clinton's server. Lazar's defense lawyer and federal prosecutors could not be reached for immediate comment on whether the change of plea means he has struck a cooperation deal with the government. In an exclusive interview before his extradition, Lazar told NBC News that after hacking int...

Lazar allegedly hacked into longtime Clinton adviser and friend Sidney Blumenthal's AOL email account, then published correspondence between Blumenthal and Clinton that revealed the existence of a private email address used by the former secretary of state. The news of the plea was first reported by Fox News. Lazar will appear in federal court in Virginia on Wednesday for a change of plea hearing. He currently faces nine counts of unauthorized access of a protected computer, identity theft, cyberstalking, and obstruction of justice. The charges are unrelated to the Clinton server, but he boasted of the hacking during the course of the unrelated investigation. CNN has reached out to a public defender representing Lazar in court but has not received a response. Law enforcement officials have previously told CNN that Lazar's claim of accessing Clinton's server are unfounded. According to court documents, "Guccifer" hacked into multiple email and s...

In SQL Server 2016 we have introduced a number of new Query Optimizer improvements. This article summarizes some them and explains you can leverage the benefits of the new enhancements. Expect deep dive follow up articles for some of the enhancements. Here is the short list: Compatibility Level Guarantees Query Optimizer Improvements under Trace Flag 4199 New Referential Integrity Operator Parallel Update of Sampled Statistics Sublinear Threshold for Update of Statistics Additions to the New Cardinality Estimator (New CE) Misc. Enhancements Compatibility Level Guarantees Starting SQL Server 2016, we promise that after upgrades there will be no plan changes if you stick with the old compatibility levels, like 120 or 110. New features and improvements will be available under the latest compatibility level only. This will make the upgrade experience much smoother. For example, when upgrading from a database from SQL Server 2014 (compatibility level 120) to SQL Se...

 IT Brand Pulse, a trusted source for research, data and analysis about data center infrastructure, has released this year's Embedded Blade Server Networking survey results. Participating IT pros have named HPE as Market, Performance, and Innovation Leader in the Embedded Blade Server Networking category. HPE Virtual Connect is the most flexible way to connect server blades to any network. Since its introduction, HPE Virtual connect continues to be the popular and innovative approach to embedded networking for HPE BladeSystem. The reason for this success is that HPE Virtual Connect streamlines network connectivity delivering multiple virtualized physical network ports and a software-driven change-ready architecture. HPE Virtual Connect eli minates up to 95% of network ports over a rack-based server environment 1 . HPE Virtual Connect has been the leader in redefining blade networking, for both LAN and SAN, at the server edge. HPE Virtual Connect FlexFabric modules provid...

Introduction While doing performance troubleshooting, have you ever wished for a process that was easier and faster to follow, especially when your system had slowed down and business is being impacted? Did you wish you could compare the execution plans for a query from a different time frame easily and quickly? Did you wish you could regress the query plan easily and quickly instead of going through a lengthy process of using a plan guide to do that? Did you wish execution plans for the queries didn't get lost even after a server restart or upgrade? If your answers to the above questions are yes, you will be happy to know that the SQL Server 2016 Query Store feature greatly simplifies performance troubleshooting, helps you in the scenarios mentioned above and many more. In this article series, I am going to talk about this new feature and how it greatly simplifies the performance troubleshooting process. Query Store – What Is It and What are Its Advantages Query Store is a n...

  The Romanian hacker who claimed he easily breached Hillary Clinton's personal email server is finalizing a plea deal with the FBI and U.S. attorney, Fox News has learned. Marcel Lehel Lazar, the 44-year-old hacker also known as "Guccifer," first gave indications he wanted to cooperate with the U.S. government in mid-April, during an interview with Fox News. Lazar, in a subsequent discussion, said he was working on a plea deal – he then suspended media contact earlier this month. On Monday, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia confirmed that a change of plea hearing is now scheduled for Lazar on Wednesday morning. He originally had pleaded not guilty to the nine-count indictment when he was extradited to the U.S. He is now expected to plead guilty to some charges.   It is not publicly known whether the deal being worked out has a provision for cooperating with federal authorities – and whether that has anything to do w...

In this Thursday, Oct. 6, 2011 file photo Robert M. Gates greets cadets.  (Photo: Lee Ferris, AP) Robert Gates thinks that Hillary Clinton's email scandal "is really a concern." The former secretary of defense was asked about the temperaments of Donald Trump and Clinton and which one would be better fit to be president, in an interview with Yahoo News on Wednesday, Gates — who worked in both the Bush and Obama administrations and worked closely with Clinton — declined to weigh in. He said that while he had worked closely with the former secretary of state he didn't know what Trump was like beyond his public persona. But when pressed further on what he thought about Clinton, Gates brought up the investigation over her private email server. "There's the whole email thing, which I think is really a concern in terms of judgement," Gates said. "I don't know what originally prompted her to think that was a good idea." "Usin...

How often do servers really fail? If Backblaze's 61,523 operational hard drives are any indication, not often. On average, Backblaze reports its drives have a fail rate of 1.84 percent in Q1 2016. That's 266 failures with over 5 million days in operation. F**k it, we'll do it live! Our biggest ever edition of TNW Conference is fast approaching! Join 10,000 tech leaders this May in Amsterdam. Cumulatively, Backblaze drives have over one billion hours of operation to date. Its most used drive was a 4TB Seagate, while the 2 and 3TB HGST have a slightly better lifespan. Western Digital drives failed the most, while Seagate and Toshiba have roughly the same drop-dead ratio. HGST was far and away the best drive on Backblaze's test; it routinely hovers around one percent failure rate. Backblaze notes it uses three components when considering failure: a drive that won't spin ...

Q. Why are their Nano Server Package cmdlets? A. Normally when building your Nano Server images you have the Windows Server 2016 media and all the optional features are available locally however there may be scenarios where source media is not available and you wish to add features either online or offline. Consider a cloud deployment where there is a very small Nano server image that does not have the optional packages available nor media easily available to install from and another example would be for a running Nano server deployment where you wish to add a feature and avoids the need to find the media, copy the cab file then add via DISM. With the NanoServerPackage cmdlets those optional packages normally found on the Windows Server 2016 media can be pulled down from Microsoft and used. These cmdlets use the PackageManagement (OneGet) PowerShell module. To use the Nano Server package library use: Install-PackageProvider NanoServerPackage Import-PackageProvider NanoServerPack...

By Teresa Rivas Morgan Stanley's Katy Huberty her team and write that they expect enterprise server shipments to slow, thanks to increasing virtualization and the cloud. Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg News This comes after several years of 3% to 5% growth in this area, and these trends will be compounded by tough comparisons following the Grantley cycle and the expiation of Microsoft (MSFT) Windows Server 2003 support last year. As a result, they write that they're more cautious on Levono and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) in the near-term. Huberty writes that the trends in storage provide a good roadmap: Growth for external storage systems dissipated last year as flash-based products and the cloud ate into business, a time when enterprise server shipments were still growing at 7% year over year.  "Over time, we expect spending on storage and servers to experience a more consistent trend and therefore see more downside to enterprise server growth in 2016....

By ERIC LICHTBLAU May 18, 2016 WASHINGTON — A former aide to Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state testified behind closed doors for two hours Wednesday in the first in a series of depositions that are likely to raise more questions about Mrs. Clinton's use of a private email server just as she prepares for an election campaign against Donald J. Trump. The former aide, Lewis A. Lukens, testified under oath about his knowledge of Mrs. Clinton's private email system as part of a lawsuit brought against the State Department by a conservative legal advocacy group, Judicial Watch. At least five other officials — including two of Mrs. Clinton's top aides at the State Department, Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin — are also scheduled to testify in the lawsuit over the next six weeks in what promises to be an unwelcome distraction for the Clinton campaign. The last deposition is set for June 29 — less than a month before the start of the Democratic Na...

Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation's 'server down' issue brought to the fore its E-misgovernance with residents of Ranip and Vadaj being at the receiving end at civic centres on the last day of the advance tax payment on Monday. The residents wanted to avail 10% rebate on payment for civic services. After an internet issue at Vadaj civic centre, AMC sent a mobile tax collection van here to collect advance tax, a source said. Ranip resident Roshan Shah was left hassled. "I went to Ranip civic centre around 9.45 am for payment. I was told the server was down and I was made to wait for more than an hour but no one took my payment. What kind of service is AMC giving amid talks of 'Digital India'?" According to Manoj Patel of Balolnagar in Ranip, "I went to pay my advance tax to get rebate of 10% at Ranip civic centre. But the server was down. This is pathetic as people want to pay for the services but AMC fails to provide facilities." The AMC E-Governan...

Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 5 is available from the TechNet Evaluation Centre.  While that's great to download the bits and get the OS running in your test lab, please do not update the OS on your Exchange servers right now or introduce 2016 DCs into production.  This post is just a quick reminder about what is *NOT* currently in the Exchange team's support matrix. Over the years there have been issues and lots of posts in the TechNet forums where people have run into some challenges when they have either: Upgraded the OS in place to a new version Windows Server Tried to install Exchange onto an unsupported version of Windows Server Unfortunately there is not much that can be done to help apart from digging out backups as this is not a supported solution at this time. Walking The Supported Path TechNet documents the Exchange Product Group's supported OS for each version of Exchange.  Here are the links for your convenience: Note that the sup...

Last month Blizzard announced that they would be shutting down a rogue World of Warcraft server that ran the vanilla copy of the game. The project wasn't so much about pirating the game, but rather giving veteran players a chance to relive the glory days before everything was handed out on silver spoons to players. The reaction was unexpected as many took issue with the shutting down of the servers, so much so that Blizzard actually acknowledged their claims and even announced that they would be contacting the folks behind the Nostalrius servers and seeing if they could open up discussions for a favorable outcome for everyone, which according to the team is expected to take place next month. According to the update posted in the forums, "As announced previously, we are also in contact with Blizzard representatives. We are excited to announce that the meeting date has been decided: it will occur at the beginning of June at Blizzard HQ, Irvine. No precise date nor schedule...

Skype for Business Server 2015 (S4BS) has numerous codecs that can be leveraged in different types of communication, depending on the workload that the end users are engaged with; everything from peer-to- peer calls to conference calls leverage various codecs ranging from G.711 to Siren.  Depending on the type of  codec that is leveraged can end up changing how you design your S4BS infrastructure and can also help you plan going forward on what to expect with regards to bandwidth consumption.   We will take a look at the various different codecs that are involved with S4BS and what scenarios they are used with. Session Description Protocol  Before we get into the codecs that are used, let's take a look at the Session Description Protocol (SDP) as seen from a snooper trace in figure 1 below.  The SDP capture shows what codecs are available for the client will be used for the communication; in this case I happened to take the capture from a Lync 2013 client instead of a Skype cli...

The worldwide server virtualization market is reaching its peak, according to a new report from Gartner Inc. The global x86 server virtualization market is expected to reach $5.6 billion in 2016, an increase of 6% from 2015, the firm says. Despite the overall market increase, new software licenses have declined for the first time since the market became mainstream more than a decade ago. Growth in the market is now being driven by maintenance revenue, which indicates a rapidly maturing software market segment, the report says. "The market has matured rapidly over the last few years, with many organizations having server virtualization rates that exceed 75%, illustrating the high level of penetration," says Michael Warrilow, research director at Gartner. The server virtualization market continues to be dominated by VMw are, although Microsoft has worked its way in as a mainstream contender for enterprise deployments, Gartner says. There are also several niche players includi...

A hacker going by the name of Revolver (aka 1x0123) claims to have hacked Pornhub and offered to sell access to the website's server for $1,000 on Twitter. The hacker posted two images on Twitter as proof of having accessed the Pornhub server and claimed that he made use of vulnerability within the user profile scrip to upload the shell access. Pornhub has since investigated and denied the claims of the website's server being hacked. "The Pornhub team investigated the claim from the hacker named 1x0123. Our investigation proved that while those screenshot might look realistic to people without knowledge of the underlying infrastructure, the attack as described by the hacker is not technically possible. This incident was merely a hoax and no Pornhub systems were breached during those recent events," the adult entertainment site said. More from IBTimes UK However, the hacker confirmed to CSOnline on 15 May that he sold access to Pornhub servers to three people. Th...

A photo of a server's bloody feet that is circulating around social media is not portraying the uniform policy of Joey Restaurants in a favorable light. Make-up artist Nicola Gavins, a resident of Alberta, Canada, posted a photo of her friend's feet after working a shift where she was forced to wear high heels while doing her job. The photo shows in graphic detail that her feet are bloodied and blistered from the experience and that she also lost a toenail from the rigors of working in the high-heeled shoes. [Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images] According to Mashable , Gavins says that even when her injuries were brought to the attention of her manager, her friend was told that she would have to continue wearing the high-heeled pumps or she would lose her job. The specific Joey Restaurant in question is located on Jasper Avenue in Edmonton. In her now widely circulated Facebook post, Gavins wrote that female servers have to wear heels unless medically restricted. To mak...