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My direct personal experience differs from your speculation.

So there really is such a thing as a software engineer.

"He could have gotten a LOT MORE MONEY for selling out. He could have gotten over a BILLION dollars. Instead, he settled for a couple hundred million and the death of Novell."

Well AC, now you understand my reaction. Still think I'm wrong?

"He could have gotten a LOT MORE MONEY for selling out. He could have gotten over a BILLION dollars. Instead, he settled for a couple hundred million and the death of Novell."

Well AC, now you understand my reaction. Still think I'm wrong?

"He could have gotten a LOT MORE MONEY for selling out. He could have gotten over a BILLION dollars. Instead, he settled for a couple hundred million and the death of Novell."

Well AC, now you understand my reaction. Still think I'm wrong?

In hindsight, it would have been fair to mention that Microsoft is doing more and more to cooperate with the F/OSS community, both in the interests of its customers (who face the challenge of integrating Microsoft and OSS software stacks), its own public image, good old-fashioned opportunity and (I suspect anyway) a fundamental desire on behalf of some of its employees to be a part of something bigger.

I 2nd this statement. In fact, Mark Shuttleworth and Ubuntu have already begun doing things that undermine the idea of free software. For example, Ubuntu now ships with binary blobs in the kernel, non-free wireless drivers, and proprietary nvidia drivers (for which free alternatives readily exist.) See Scott James Remnant's blog for details. Likewise, it's been reported and substantiated that Mark Shuttleworth is preventing the Debian GNOME maintainer (who also works for Canonical) from updating GNOME packages until after Ubuntu LSO had shipped. Of the two top committees governing Ubuntu, the Ubuntu Community Council and the Technical Board, are both made up of Mark Shuttleworth and people he employs, and Shuttleworth has been given "benevolent dictator for life" status within the project. A lot of people do not trust Shuttleworth either, and some, such as Debian Developer, Otavio Salvador, have made comments like, "what he says and what he does are different." You should be wary of supporting Shuttleworth's efforts as there's good reason to question his commitment to the ideals of free software and to the interests of the rest of the community.

Birmingham's expenditure averaged over 2,500 pounds per PC.

That is just total bs. 2,500 pounds for 200 pc's? Get real. With the help of one other skilled person and a couple weeks of planning I could have rolled 200 pc's in one night. What could be on library PC's that couldn't be replaced or framed to run as a network application? That's just absurd.

Here's a story from 2004 where a library rolled 200 workstations over to Linux and that included public kiosks!

I've seen development projects send millions down a hole when managed poorly. Now we see the same thing is possible when desktop migrations are run poorly. The operating system isn't the core issue here. Bah!

I'd also suggest you user a lighter window manager than gnome (you can still have the useful gnome applications installed) (eg. OpenBox). Not pushing one over the other btw - just googled it.

When's the last time you heard of a bug in Linux forcing a reinstall?

Hey Bright Boy, you must not pay attention to Linux news nor how many different distributions there are. Allow me to enlighten you a bit.

Mandrake 9.2 may kill LG CD-ROM drives | Fedora Core 6 release date pushed back | Kernel Newsflash (Do a quick search for this section of the page and the old production kernels) | ReiserFS and filesystem corruption issues -- how to fix them, etc (Has to do with an old known issue between Gentoo and ReiserFS | ext3 corruption issue in 2.6.18 found by RedHat

Also try running something like Rawhide, Gentoo unstable branch (Which I do), Debian unstable, or any plethora of other systems out there which include software that's not extensively tested. While it is true that it is rare to find incredible bugs that create a big headache for end-users in a Linux distribution release, it's not impossible and there have been many occurrences of these bugs in release Linux kernels themselves. Let's not kid ourselves, shit happens on both sides of the fence, and it's not only unfair but naive to hold Microsoft to some golden standard because they have a large bankroll. Throwing money at a problem is the worst way to solve it, especially when it comes to QA.

P.S. -- Even in the stable branches of distros breakage can happen and it can be difficult or impossible to recover vital data from the system. I'm running reiser4 on my ~amd64 Gentoo and I keep hoping I don't end up with filesystem corruption that would hit me quite often in the past when I was pretty much forced to use a vanilla kernel with reiser4 or the -mm patchset, which is about as unstable as they come. Plenty of other people get hit by random difficult to reproduce bugs for any filesystem, daily. ext3, jfs, xfs, reiserfs, you name it. I dunno about ext2 though, but since they're so closely related (ext2/3), I'd figure most things that ail one ail the other. Also, you were speaking directly on a bug forcing a reinstall of the system, which usually means a gross configuration error or some other form of data loss. The Mandrake link is the only one which diverts from this train of thought, but it most certainly was a big hitter if you can remember when the story hit, as I do.

Another P.S. -- You say they've had all this time to iron Vista out as if they started out with "This is what Vista is going to be, period. Get there and release it." Sorry buddy, that's not how development goes, especially when competitors are around introducing new ideas all the time, never mind your own R&D department.

There also appears to be a summary at newsforge. A discussion on someone's mailing list. Mentioned in the LKML.

Better download just the paper itself instead of the full proceedings.

BTW, newsforge has a report about the presentation as well.

--
Ademar http://www.ademar.org/

"I tried to address that myth -- the "Fedora is just a trial ground for RHEL" statement"

It's only it is *not* a myth.

I really like Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier's assertion at http://os.newsforge.com/print.pl?sid=06/04/10/2156 233 : "Fedora founder Warren Togami's "Welcome to Fedora" talk dealt with the history of Fedora, and how Fedora operates. Togami spent a fair amount of time emphasizing how important Fedora is to Red Hat's business, and trying to dispel the notion that Fedora is only a "perpetual beta" for Red Hat's enterprise products. This was tricky, since Fedora _is_ a perpetual beta for Red Hat's enterprise products."

Indeed, the fact that you are trying to hide Red Hat's track on this it's fastly changing my mind about the project: I am one of those that time after time goes with the "Fedora is just a trial ground for RHEL" statement, well, not exactly, since I say "Fedora is THE trial ground for RHEL" (the difference albeit subtile is VERY important), trying to avoid bad temper derivated from the fact that Fedora badly fails at people that approach it under wrong assumptions (you just have to see the comments on this article) and expecting to help those looking at Fedora to take out most benefit from it, but now, I'm seeing you are trying to take advantage after the fact that so much people is using Fedora for the wrong reasons to enwiden your user-base, so expect me counter-acting by saying that Fedora is (partly, at least) a fraud. It still *IS* the trial ground for RHEL but now I have to add: beware, it is a lockin strategy from Red Hat Inc. so newcomers get used on a redhatish platform that will NEVER acomplish production-grade quality so, once you are tied to it you must move into RHEL products for whatever serious enterprises you attempt in the future.

Just a pill:
"In addition to the nine board members, there is also a chairman appointed by Red Hat, who has veto power over any decision." (from http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Board)

That's a *fact*, anything else (...but we will try not to use our veto-power, we are good guys, etc.) are just words.

Do you expect Fedora going in ANY MANNER against Red Hat Inc.'s best interests (like... making it lose the sell of any single RHEL license)?

Anyway, that's really an old thread. I can certainly be wrong, but we can go back to jun 2003 to say what my opinions were back then here http://barrapunto.com/comments.pl?sid=35398&cid=19 9047 or here http://barrapunto.com/comments.pl?sid=41775&cid=30 8108 . Both links are from the Spanish Slashdot "brother". Anyone can judge how wrong I were/am.

Will Woods, the new test lead for the Fedora Project, has only been in his position a few weeks, but already he has a clear goal in mind. Whenever Fedora is mentioned on Slashdot, he notes, "There's always someone who will comment that Fedora is just Red Hat's beta test for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). It's not true, and I want no one to have cause to say that ever again."

Wow, a piece of software (In this case the WGA servers) had a glitch, I am totally amazed. When are we going to finally get software that never ever screws up and affects a large amount of people and companies? This never happens with F/OSS! There are plenty of bugs that are hunted and eliminated on a daily basis in many projects. I'm not saying Linux or F/OSS sucks, because quite frankly I'm eagerly awaiting my next purchase of a hard drive so I can get my Gentoo installed again (Maybe even take a look at the latest Slackware since it's been a while, but probably Gentoo). I'm just saying you can't expect software to be perfect. In Microsoft's case though, if they don't patch bugs people bitch. If they do patch bugs people bitch even more. Bart Simpson said it best, " Well... You're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't.".

As an aside, people running rolling distributions like Gentoo that don't have as tight a security/stability screening process that, say, Debian does, are at even greater risk than most other Linux users of royally screwing their computer if they end up getting bit by a nasty bug in some random piece of software. I always tell people looking for filesystem choice advice, for example, to avoid finding their answers in something like the Gentoo Forums (Great for many other things though), since it's pretty easy to FUBAR things when you think you're a hotshot putting all your critical data on bleeding edge code, then calling a project crap because you got cut.

By and large, though, if you don't steal, the measures don't bother you. And if you do steal, the measures don't bother you, unless you are noobcake.

For one, you won't be donating CPU cycles to your VMWare. Then also it'll run with much smaller requirements. Since you would actually have to run the entire Windows(tm)(r)(c) suite with VMWare or Xen. Ofcaurse it integrates much more nicely with your host OS without the use of Shared folders (VMWare feature to share files between Host VM). The big drawback being that most Windows virii seem to have trouble getting that whole Wine thing running. Or, as to quote something I saw somewhere:
"Oh sure, I could manually forward these viruses to the folks in my address book, but where's the fun in that?"

Then last but not least it's always nice to help the CrossOver guys with your support to make sure they go to make something, or apparently a crud load of stuff, that does actually run on linux.

Ahh, now I finally understand this headline: Linux thrives in left-leaning Kerala

It's like saying nobody should steal, so I won't lock my car/house/whatever.

Sure, in the long term, and a perfect world, you might want to get rid of software patents. Right now however they are real and are here and measure that combat them face to face have some merit.

IMHO, a closer analogy to Stallman's position would be: "it's like saying people shouldn't spend money on wireless home security cameras if it makes them neglect securing their windows and doors, and particularly if it will make them even less secure when burglars pick up the wireless signal to monitor their potential targets from a safe distance".

Stallman himself preempted your thoughts:

"If the worst thing about the project were its inability to solve the whole problem, it would still be better than nothing. But given that it can also backfire, it can be worse than nothing."

Please see: http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/09/03/2 041231&tid=11 The paragaraph that starts with "Just...". I guess some people had their head burried in the sand when the events unfolded.

I though google was opening up their own open source repository http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=06/07/27/1 833251

See, here is the problem. If you read the newsforge article they said "Security researchers Dave Maynor of ISS and Johnny Cache -- a.k.a. Jon Ellch -- demonstrated an exploit that allowed them to install a rootkit on an Apple laptop in less than a minute." In fact, Ellch's new company publically flaunts this. So, is it a real thing? Now, Ellch is backtracking, saying new things. Whatever. He's a Bullshit artist.

Can you please show us all where Linux is eating Microsofts lunch? I have yet to see a report showing linux eating anything other than college hobbyists and a very small server markets left overs. At best Linux is eating into Unix market share, specifically the small scraps Windows doesn't consume as it grows.

Even OsX has over taken linux as a desktop OS.

As for there being more linux developers than windows... thats great, let me know when they write something other than yet another version of minesweeper (or some other crappy knockoff game), the 32nd chat client that sucks, the 200th+ text editor we don't need. Better yet, the 50th crappy desktop shell. Quality over quantity here. Sad to say, Microsoft has better quality (clearly not security, but in every other way, they have quality).

Before you bitch about bloat and blue screens (the common misinformed linux answer), lets look at KDE and emacs for bloat, and find me a knowledgeable computer person that ever gets blue screens anymore. Yes they happen, but with linux they actually patch IN blue screens. I know I don't get them and haven't seen one since XP was released(other than with beta drivers or intentional bad configurations).

You already can install on os on you flash drive. SLAX would definitely be my favorite, since it has KDE, rather than one of the "light" window managers in Puppy, DSL, and the other small live distros use. I even found some directions so you can leave it as Fat.

You can have SLAX load to ram if you have about 512mb available. As for writing files, I believe that all writes are writen to RAM and when you shut down you are given the option of making writes permanent.

1. This is a dupe.
2. In the original slashdot story I posted a link to an article on newsforge which gives better background context to this decision by the Kerala government. The article has some flaws i.e. "open source guru Richard Stallman", but still makes interesting reading.

A much more comprehensive article about this decision and its background context is on Newsforge.

"Distributing software as a service to the public is just like distributing software. You just do not give them a floppy anymore. It is 2006, not 1991... People are distributing software as a service more and more.
???
Frankly, the more I read this thread, the more I wonder how much the initial idea is both flawed and not enforceable in the real world:

1. People are NOT distributing software "as a service" (unless it's javascript applets, of course): honestly, I am amazed that this is being said with a straight face: people are running software on their own hw to offer a public service, just like they are using paper. Running a modified copy of, say, Drupal on your server is NOT distributing that sw as a service. It may be anti-FOSS, but certainly is not being distributed. And SW is just a tool.
2. I also agree with the idea that what I do only on/with my own computer, without telling others what to do on theirs, should be nobody else's business, even if it's a (legal, of course) public service: among other things, being able to do this is exactly what enables good programmers to get recognition (monetary or otherwise) above the others and make a living without forcing proprietary licenses: like good, honest sysadmins who get more customers because they can run an ISP better than others.
3. What does "offer a service to the public" mean? What If I hack OpenOffice to run much faster, and only run that copy on the NON NETWORKED computers of my Internet Cafè or public library, which are there just as a service to the public? What about terminals inside banks? When do you stop defining public?
4. Besides looking intrinsically wrong, this clause seems to me very, very, very easy to fool legally. RPC, anyone? Instead of hacking, again, Drupal, to perform function X I can simply hack it to only call an external program to do the same function for it. A separate program which I write and run on the same server, but never (have to) release. You'd only force me to release that Drupal change which remains useless to everybody else. Basically, you piss developers off by making them work one hour more and live with some often negligible performance hit... to have nothing back. Or are you saying that anything that can be piped to grep must be gpl because grep itself is gpl?

I am confused, really.
Marco F."

http://trends.newsforge.com/comments.pl?sid=58221& cid=130033

"This reply is meant for all you people defending your current right to leech off GPLv2 code as an ASP

I'm not an ASP, nor I plan to become one right now.

As far as I'm concerned, if you're using my GPL(v3)/HPL code (hypothetically), and you're so much as using it to send a single packet to anyone who asks, you better expect to lose your license

So if I hack your GPLvX email autoresponder for my own personal use and run it ONLY on my PC to answer email from others, I MUST release the patch? ...don't think for a minute that the code is meant for you to use as...

The code is meant to use as its license SPECIFICALLY and EXPLICITLY says. Any speculation or assumption are worthless.

It doesn't appear to me that those doing that really actually grasp what the GPL is and what it's meant to be.

See above.

Do you think that library is not public somehow

Of course I think it is public. Byt I used that as an example of why the proposed license seems to me incomplete and counterproductive. Ditto for the "sweet OpenOffice hack"

About your sweet OpenOffice hack, as long as it's not being used as part of a service you offer to the public (like allowing a member of the general public to come in and write documents), there's no problem. Hack away. Happens all the time. Otherwise, the terms are not being followed.

N

"The FREEDOM to actually run the program that you have modified on the hardware that ran the original program."

So basically the GPL is now covering (dictating to?) patented hardware instead of copy(left/)righted firmware.* So were's the patent right to run whatever software you want?

Plus the GPL is getting into web services. Another thorny area that's going to get the FSF into trouble.

*Good thing content providers aren't doing anything like that.

Here's the newsforge story ("Torvalds' comments on GPLv3 committees refuted").

I blogged about this and added more info about the committees.

One last think I want to point at is a side-by-side diff with the changes highlighted from draft 1 to draft 2 so everyone can see the responses to the public process that the committees talk about in the Newsforge article.

By choosing not to ship any proprietary or binary drivers, Fedora does differ from other distributions. Ubuntu is one example, as there is very strong language about their commitment to Free and open source software, right up until the line stating that they include binary-only drivers on their CDs and in their repositories.

Aye, and Windows is almost ready for the desktop as well:

http://os.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/05/18/20 33216

Depending on the license that they choose, OSS purists can now utilize Java in their programs. OpenOffice.org ran into some issues when it began using Java to power some of its components. Hopefully the license under which this is released will be acceptable.

So now This project is dead?

While browsing a search for porn I found this:

24824393 free porn 2006-05-29 19:41:35
19539506 free porn 2006-04-09 10:56:40
19254818 6-12 kiddie porn 2006-05-22 00:24:52 http://business.newsforge.com/
21595924 family guy porn 2006-04-19 23:05:46 http://www.midon.com/
21595924 naruto porn 2006-04-19 19:58:44 http://www.freenarutohentai.com/

Is there something the editors of Newsforge need to tell us?

This article, Fedora Board chair looks ahead asserted, apparently incorrectly, that you were interested in better package management, Conary in particular. Is it possible that Red Hat will swallow its pride and adopt a package management system that looks more like a distributed SCM?

Yes! Oh, the humanity!

First a minor point which keeps getting overlooked. With DRM hardware, you cannot verify GPL compliance. The only way to verify that a set of source code purporting to represent the binary that is running, is really the binary that is running, is to compile from that source and run the new binary. Any hardware that requires signed binaries prevents this unless signature capability is given to anyone who wants it. Thus without GPLv3, there cannot be public verification that any vendor of supposedly-GPL software for "trusted" hardware really is complying with the GPL. So another way to characterize the anti-DRM provision would be to call it verifiability.

Now, DrJimbo in parent post:

"Without the DRM provisions in the GPLv3 that Linus is complaining about, we could eventually face a situation where it is literally impossible to develop FOSS for the latest generation of computers. Worse, those computers could be running the GPLv2 software we wrote even though we have lost all of our rights to further modify it and we've lost the right to even choose what software we run on our own computers."

Right, exactly - And this is what Torvalds consistently refuses to address. He snipes at GPLv3 with invective and complaints about the process (and if he really was the poster in the Groklaw thread, about the definition of source code), etc.. But on the hardware issue he just flippiantly declares that if you don't like the inability to run modified GPL code on the same device, get some other device.

This obviously ignores the "trusted computing" initiative that is intended to make all PCs slave devices, and is progressing like an onrushing freight train while DRM apologists quibble on the tracks and say "let's wait and see what it really turns out to be" or "how it is used" - then of course it will be too late.

This makes me wonder of a darker possibility which I do not like to think of ,but it fits the facts: Has Linus sold out? This is suggested by another poster below and in this post at the Newsforge thread:

"You need to understand why Torvalds opposes this. Torvalds sits behind a wall of IBM/HP (and other companies) lawyers. They pay his wages and defend him from the SCOs of the world. In return, he spouts their views... and in this case, these technology companies want this hardware in every PC very very badly. To get the level of control over the user that they want, they must be able to use a "trusted" kernel (the kernel/bios/boot loader are critical components in a trusted system).
"Basically, Torvalds has turned into a mouthpiece for technology companies. "

Otherwise why does Linus fail to address the real and appropriate concerns about TC hardware becoming exclusively available?

Thanks for the heads-up. Apparently some people complained, some LUGs got involved, and the government actually responded. Linux support was added three days before the filing deadline. Almost restores ones faith in government, eh? Maybe I'll be able to file my details online with no trip-ups in 2011 when they take the next census. Here's hoping.

Ian

Relevant Newsforge links:

• First article
• Second article
• Announcement that Linux support has been added

Thanks for the heads-up. Apparently some people complained, some LUGs got involved, and the government actually responded. Linux support was added three days before the filing deadline. Almost restores ones faith in government, eh? Maybe I'll be able to file my details online with no trip-ups in 2011 when they take the next census. Here's hoping.

Ian

Relevant Newsforge links:

• First article
• Second article
• Announcement that Linux support has been added

Thanks for the heads-up. Apparently some people complained, some LUGs got involved, and the government actually responded. Linux support was added three days before the filing deadline. Almost restores ones faith in government, eh? Maybe I'll be able to file my details online with no trip-ups in 2011 when they take the next census. Here's hoping.

Ian

Relevant Newsforge links:

• First article
• Second article
• Announcement that Linux support has been added

Originally Firefox didn't work, but then it did.

Originally Firefox didn't work, but then it did.

It may initially seem that introducing federal regulation for the purpose of preserving net neutrality would effectively mean, 'regulating the Internet'. Not doing so will result in more regulation however.

Recently, the article below was posted on Slashdot. It describes the situation that a servide provider, wishing to serve customers over the cellular network, would find themselves in:

http://business.newsforge.com/business/06/07/19/20 6209.shtml?tid=138&tid=3

Regulations are regarded with suspicion by economists, because regulations force providers to jump through hoops and work their way through red-tape in order to provide their service to customers. There is little *government* regulation of cellular network services, however, the cellular network companies themselves have introduced *plenty* of regulation to make up for that. In order to have access to customers, a potential service provider must comply to all the regulations that each different network provider stipulates (no chat services, for one network, no games on another for example), in addition to paying huge sums of money to even connect to the system, often some 10 times the amount that is required to operate a web service on the Internet. The regulation issue is a nightmare as the rules and regulations are different for each network; in order to operate a service on the cellular system, you must comply with several different sets of network regulations at the same time.

Information is one of the most valuable commodities in the 21st century. The Internet is a vital transport network for information, just as the road network is a vital transport network for physical goods. The anti-net-neutrality lobby has stated that the changes to the Internet proposed by the communications companies are somewhat similar building new toll-roads. Toll-roads can work well, however, the comparison is flawed. The Internet is already akin to a toll-road system; a high bandwidth Internet connection costs more than a low bandwidth one, just as driving an articulated lorry on some toll-roads costs more than driving a car (due to increased wear and tear on the road). Removing net-neutrality however, is more akin to determining the road toll based on the destination of the vehicle; you would pay less to drive to Wal-mart than to a small independent store, even though the distance to either is similar. Alternatively, going to the independent store could mean being forced to drive on a dirt track as opposed to a highway, it could also mean being prevented from going to the independent store at all; you would be re-directed to Walmart. This would all be dependent upon which company provides your 'road-service'.

Cheers

Brittix

Ok, I'm tired of getting modded 0 and 1 this post will be 100% serious for the TFA solely because my jokes weren't funny enough. Here it goes: Useful Info~ If you're interested in getting involved with kernel development please visit: http://kernelnewbies.org/ which is run by Kroah-Hartman. An interview with Guido van Rossum, the creator of Python: http://www.newsforge.com/blob.pl?id=1a2eb8656310db 65fa03461a41a91866 and finally Jeff Waugh, the creator of Ubuntu and the newest edition which will be talked about in this interview: http://www.newsforge.com/blob.pl?id=7e977d3c0eafee a86808086c275e87cf

Ok, I'm tired of getting modded 0 and 1 this post will be 100% serious for the TFA solely because my jokes weren't funny enough. Here it goes: Useful Info~ If you're interested in getting involved with kernel development please visit: http://kernelnewbies.org/ which is run by Kroah-Hartman. An interview with Guido van Rossum, the creator of Python: http://www.newsforge.com/blob.pl?id=1a2eb8656310db 65fa03461a41a91866 and finally Jeff Waugh, the creator of Ubuntu and the newest edition which will be talked about in this interview: http://www.newsforge.com/blob.pl?id=7e977d3c0eafee a86808086c275e87cf

And what choice do we currently have?

DaVinci is Texas Instruments single chip solution for mobile phones and multimedia rich embedded devices. They mixed a TI DSP chip in with the ARM core( anyone remember OMAP ) for a high performance single chip solution. Prior to this, smartphones used one processor for the radio and one processor for the GUI/applications. The holy grail here is one processor for everything significantly reduces cost. Intel DSPs are not near as popular as TI's and so it's a no-brainer to use TI's stuff in this case.

http://hardware.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=06/01 /05/163242&from=rss
and
http://www.ti.com/corp/docs/landing/davinci/firstp roducts.html?DCMP=DSP_DaVinciCatalog&HQS=Other+PR+ thedavincieffectpr

LoB

Agreed. I found an interesting article here that supports your statements. In it Mark Shuttleworth himself says that Ubuntu isn't ready for the server enterprise market, citing a lack of management tools for Ubuntu. But they do seem to be taking the steps towards the enterprise market with the release of Ubuntu for SPARC systems and starting commercial support.

Just in case ISVs want to develop efficiently cross-platform application there's a helpful article at NewsForge (http://software.newsforge.com/software/05/04/22/1 859243.shtml?tid=89).

O. Wyss

I believe Open BSD has a live monowall distro, and Free BSD has one here.

I'm sure there are others.

The approximately 4.5 million domains that moved are, after all, inactive parked domains -- meaning few people are pointing their browsers at them. As for domains that actually do get Web traffic, plenty of those still remain on Linux at GoDaddy.com, something Microsoft failed to mention in its press release last month touting the domain transfer.

The obvious question is, did Microsoft pay Go Daddy or offer any incentive to move its parked domains to Windows? Adelman declined to clear up that issue one way or the other. "We can't discuss the technical aspects of our industry relationships."