Microsoft reorganizes their websites every now and then. The recent change to TechNet has vastly improved the URIs and UI both. But I think someone involved with the redesign must be a few cards short of a deck.
The security page, http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/, used to refresh into a god-awful mess of an URI that had something to do with a table of contents. Now the index page loads this:
<html>
<head>
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" />
<meta http-equiv=refresh content="0;URL=/technet/security/default.mspx">
<meta name="title" content="File has moved" />
<meta name="description" content="File has moved" />
<title>File has moved</title>
</head>
<center>
<font face="verdana, arial, helvetica" color="navy" size="2">
<b>The location of this page has been changed, please update your favorites.</b><br />
You will automatically be redirected in 3 seconds to <br />
<a href="/technet/security/default.mspx">http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/default.mspx</a>
</font></center>
<body>
</html>
Oh, good Lord! Why? Why not just use default.mspx as the DocumentIndex to begin with?
Other pages on microsoft.com use a somewhat less idiotic variation on this: a GET of http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/sp2/ results in a 302 redirection to http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/sp2/default.mspx.
I can’t help thinking that their security would be better if they knew that “content:0;” != “in 3 seconds”. Or does default.mspx enforce a 3 second wait before it displays anything?
So they have trouble with math as well as with how to use a web server. Must be all those doctorates in Philosophy.