The problems accessing Microsoft's FTP site appear to have been fixed. Hurray!

If you had trouble in the past, my guess is that it was because Microsoft's FTP server was operating in Active Mode. I personally tried Mozilla, Netscape, and several command line FTP clients in my efforts to access the site, generally with dismal results.

More recently, however, I tried using a Passive Mode client from behind my home firewall--and it worked! So did the aforementioned browsers. Cool.

To the unnamed person at Microsoft who fixed it: Thanks!