Here's what I just got when I went to http://www.technetmagazine.com:
Here's the kicker: it's not TechNet Magazine that is down, nor even TechNet. It is Microsoft Live Sign-in, nee Passport. To get to TechNet it attempts to sign you in to Passport/Live sign-in. Accounts are apparently distributed across servers, and the one holding my account is down, so I can't get to anything that uses it, including the Microsoft.com homepage!
If you want to decrease the uptime on your web site, take a run-time dependency on an unreliable and unnecessary service.