The motto of the United States Postal Service is not "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds"--that's an inscription on New York City's James Farley Post Office--but that doesn't keep people from expecting their postal workers to climb volcanoes, walk headlong into hurricane-force winds, and do battle with Rodents of Unusual Size if it means getting the mail to its destination in a timely fashion.

Unfortunately, the Postal Service is just as susceptible to Web site outages as the rest of us.

Some folks at eBay probably thought they had a really clever idea with the $1 Holiday Doorbusters promotion. The basic premise is that, for the holidays, the company puts items up for sale for $1 to the first bidder. These items range from an electric scooter to an Oscar de la Renta dress, jewelry, GPS devices, and even a new Chevy Corvette.

The $1 promotion items were swept up quickly--as soon as they could be posted to the site. Faster than anyone could visit the item pages, actually.

 There's an "underlying vulnerability" in Internet Explorer (IE) that has led some security experts to go so far as to recommend that users find an alternate Web browser until the threat passes. On the other hand, in a BBC News article on the subject, the head of Microsoft UK's Windows Group is quoted as saying, "I cannot recommend people switch due to this one flaw."