Microsoft Forgets To Renew Hotmail.co.uk

Saint Aardvark writes "The Register is reporting that Microsoft forgot to renew their hotmail.co.uk domain. A Good Samaritan renewed it for them, but was unable to get a response from anyone at Microsoft. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it."

Comments

Good Samaritan..

[epiphani]

Good Samaritan my foot.

"Hey, I save this domain for you. It'll only cost you $60,000".

Re:Good Samaritan..

[Rude Turnip]

That, or the individual has a Hotmail account and couldn't afford to lose access to his mail.

Re:Good Samaritan..

[EMH_Mark3]

So he pays for a domain but he's too cheap to pay for a POP3 address? Right.

Re:Good Samaritan..

[powerlord]

I wouldn't be surprised if he's paying for hotmail also, considering how much they (hotmail) keeps pestering my wife to "pay" for a bigger mailbox (don't get me started, I've offered her a free POP3 with web access, but she keeps saying no).

Re:Good Samaritan..

[QuackQuack]

$60,000? That's pennies to MS.

Re:Good Samaritan..

[lucabrasi999]

That, or the individual has a Hotmail account and couldn't afford to lose access to his mail.

So, what you are saying is that this person LOVES spam?

Re:Good Samaritan..

[ConceptJunkie]

Yeah, they probably lose that much money a day in wages spent for employees stuck with a blue screen of death.

Re:Good Samaritan..

[daveashcroft]

Hey! If it wasnt for hotmail i would have NEVER managed to increase my penise size 3-6 inches guaranteed. Thank GOD for generic V!AGRA ;-)

You'd think..

[rylin]

You'd think MS would be clever enough to use a registrar that supports auto-renewal. Like any tucows reseller.

Re:You'd think..

[nucal]

Or they could pay for it outright for 50 years or so ... that'd cost maybe $ 1-2 K per domain name.

Re:You'd think..

[donnyspi]

you can't. I think 10 years is the limit

Re:You'd think..

[tom.allender]

You'd think that Microsoft would be bright enough to give hotmail.co.uk an MX record so that it actually works.

The present situation:

• User enters hotmail.co.uk into browser and it redirects to hotmail.com.
  
• User believes that their e-mail address is bleh@hotmail.co.uk and tells people so.
  
• Person sends e-mail to bleh@hotmail.co.uk and it bounces.
  

Bit annoying.

hotmail.co.uk doesn't have any DNS records ATM...

Re:You'd think..

[Ruis]

You'd think MS would be a registrar.

Re:You'd think..

[real bio]

Hotmail is younger than 10 anyway...

Re:You'd think..

[whoever57]

Or they could pay for it outright for 50 years or so ... that'd cost maybe $ 1-2 K per domain name.

Actually *.co.uk domain names can be registered for a mere UK Pounds 2.59 per year. Max 10 years. What's that: less than $40 for 10 years?

Re:You'd think..

[ItsIllak]

the .uk registry (Nominet) went to positive renewals across the board recently. I'm not actually sure how tucows are managing this, but they're SUPPOSED to specifically get a renewal on all the domains or they'll expire.

Remembering their system, you could set it to auto as an option, but default was to expire (after complaining LOTS to you!)

Re:You'd think..

[rifter]

You'd think MS would be a registrar.

They will be when they buy out Verisign.

Re:You'd think..

[rifter]

You'd think *someone* at Microsoft would be able to setup a reminder in Outlook, for fuck's sake.

They probably did but then it lost the reminder. Outlook loses meetings, email and reminders all the time. Maybe the paperclip eats them. Honestly vi would be more useful than that!

Re:You'd think..

[ciroknight]

DONT GIVE THEM IDEAS!!!!!! and you thought verisign was bad... sheesh..

Re:You'd think..

[Phantom_newbie]

Its all about ms and their so called automation. Maybe up to now, ms may realise that not too many people who prefer the open source has not chosen windows as their choice :D

In the words of Nelson from the Simpsons...

[192939495969798999]

HA HA!
That's awesome. Whoever renewed that domain should get a medal from Microsoft. That and a huge smack upside the head for not temporarily posting something humorous... like a huge image of Bill Gates's pie incident.
DOH!

They're very lucky

[JoshuaDFranklin]

They are very lucky that it's not a porn site now, like russianhistory.org (not href for obvious reasons) and many others.

Or maybe the porn squatters wouldn't touch it, considering that there might be a public outcry.

Re:They're very lucky

[anonymous loser]

How could you pass up a name like hotmail for a gay porn site?

Re:They're very lucky

[nate1138]

Eh, I imagine the "arbitration" process would have put it back in Microsoft's hands in record time.

Re:They're very lucky

[admbws]

Or maybe because Microsoft would easily crush them in court - registration in bad faith, just like the (new) owner of that domain, russianhistory.org, could be sued for using it in bad faith.

Re:They're very lucky

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently you haven't been to hotmale.com Don't ask how I know this.

Re:They're very lucky

[Tim C]

Apparently you haven't been to hotmale.com Don't ask how I know this.

That's okay - these days, there's very little shame associated with not being able to type...

Re:They're very lucky

[prof187]

Yeah, I have a friend who wanted to buy some rollerblades from Dick's Sporting Goods online. So naturally he goes to www.dicks.com. I think he's still scarred to this day.

Re:They're very lucky

[jd]

Depends on how long it too Microsoft to notice. In turn, that depends on how long it'd take Hotmail users to notice, and (after that) how long it took them to realise they couldn't use hotmail.co.uk to e-mail Microsoft to complain.

Re:They're very lucky

[shadow_slicer]

Last time I went to hotmale.com it was an Aryan dating service. (listings of straight men without pictures, guaranteed white, "for the purity of the race" with contact info--it's been about 6 years since I saw the site (It was a dare at school))

Re:They're very lucky

[lee7guy]

I am not that sure american law applies to UK citizens (yet).

Re:They're very lucky

[geekoid]

akes you want to get www.freepornsexhereforyou.com and use it as a non-adult site.
that will teach them.

Re:They're very lucky

[danila]

What's the problem? You can create a frame page. Top frame is a [porn] banner, bottom one leads to hotmail.com. :)

Re:They're very lucky

[darxyde]

On sale now : Fuck Fuckers Fucking Fuckfest : Volume Fuck.

Re:They're very lucky

[scottj]

these days, there's very little shame associated with not being able to type...

Same goes for not knowing how to spell. Especially if you are a Slashdot "editor".

Re:They're very lucky

[LarsWestergren]

Yeah...or when I wanted to download Apache Tomcat for the first time and typed in www.tomcat.com (or maybe tomcat.org, forgot which) at work. Nice thing with all the explicit pop-ups and pop-unders too... bastards.

Re:They're very lucky

[NoInfo]

And all this time I thought it was spelled "edix0r".

Re:They're very lucky

[darxyde]

Unfortunately my familiarity with illicit substances is rather limited, so comments on the validity of your claim are somewhat... jejune. However, the tenuous logical basis on which you form your opinions has already been proven in this forum to be nought more than the rants of a raging simpleton; So lets say for the sake of argument (and in the name of reality) that your claim I am a 'drug addict' is entirely unfounded, nescient, and for all purposes incorrect. As a point of fact, I don't believe 9-tetrahydrocannabinol has ever been publicly linked with a case of 'brain melt'. Where did you get this idea from? I'm genuinely interested.

Biggotry works for you; It adds the nuance of jingoism to your already loathsome collection of characteristics, namely ignorance, hypocricy, puerility, attenuation and swainishness... and i've only just met you.

If you would like to furthur discuss this matter, I await your progression from Anonymous Coward to Certified Pundit with much anticipation.

Best regards,

xoxo .D. xoxo

Re:They're very lucky

[darxyde]

I'm far too busy to spare time enough to 'thumb through' dictionaries for your sake. Unfortunate that the proper use of language has caused you such offence. I was not claiming eloquence, merely what was on my mind. On a personal note, being a linguistic perfectionist has not hindered my success as a developer.

Quite the contrary.

Hopefully we can both be adults and move past this. I'd like to avoid effort in conversing with you in future, as my obvious wit, talent and view of the 'hacker' culture has offended you. Unfortunately I find your sparkling repartee less than stimulating; And while I genuinely appreciate the obsessive time you must have taken to stalk me and add your 'special touch' to my postings; Our relationship can no longer continue as it has in the past.

I'm sure you understand how genuinely saddened I am by our break-up; But i think it is time to move on.

Regrettably the nature of the internet (read: reality) infers that you can not be everything to everyone, and that certain views and opinions you hold are likely to cause offense. That's life; and I understand this. Please do not expect any furthur correspondence from me. If you wish to continue this aimless matinee, you are perfectly welcome; though I will not be spending any more time justifying myself to half-wits.

Apologies friend, but at the end of the day I couldn't care less of your opinion.

Goodbye and good luck.

.D.

How nice

[pvt_medic]

I would have kept it and sold it back at a price. Microsoft apparently is being rather childish in how they are responding to this by saying nothing, and for a while not even responding to the guy who bought it back for them.

Re:How nice

[Anonymous Coward]

Not childish. Probably just extremely embarrassed. This happened before in 1999 with the U.S. Hotmail. When that happened, Microsoft graciously cut a check to Michael Chaney (who helped them out by renewing it with his own money).

Later on, Mr. Chaney decided that the check was worth some money, so he put it up on Ebay for auction, promising to donate the proceeds to a charity of the buyer's choice.

My company won that auction and we purchased the check for $7000 which was then immediately donated to the Sisters of the Road Cafe in Portland, Oregon. We've still got the check, a check for $500.

Microsoft paid Mr. Chaney $500 dollars as a gesture of good will. They didn't have to do that, you know.

MS is not being childish, they probably are too busy throwing ice water all over themselves to cool off their extreme embarrassment that this has happened twice now.

(posting anonymously so that nobody can associate my username with the company I work for)

Re:How nice

[squiggleslash]

You could do the Altavista.com thing. Back when the net was young, men were real men, women were real women, and small furry creatures from Silicon Valley were real small furry creatures from Silicon valley, the good people at Digital Equipment Corporation (now a subsidary of HPaq-U-Mart) created a search engine, christened it "Altavista", and gave it a nice, memorable, domain name:

www.altavista.digital.com

From DEC's point of view, Altavista was both a nice toy, and a cool technology demo. DEC would make the money from people knowing it was a DEC product and buying DEC software and hardware.

Then along came a third party, and registered "altavista.com". They set up a site that looked exactly like Altavista.digital.com, except for adverts and a disclaimer at the bottom saying that it wasn't actually the Altavista at www.altavista.digital.com. When a user searched using altavista.com, it redirected the search query to the real thing.

Digital finally bought the domain after a year or so of confusion and complaints.

This sort of behaviour is why we can't have nice things.

Re:How nice

[Mr_Silver]

My company won that auction and we purchased the check for $7000 which was then immediately donated to the Sisters of the Road Cafe in Portland, Oregon. We've still got the check, a check for $500.

Proof that not all people who post as Anonymous Coward talk bollocks can be found here courtsey of CNet.

The winning bid was $7,100 by John Corrigan, founder of SwiftView.

Re:How nice

[kevin_conaway]

FYI, your name and company is on Mr. Chaneys website

Re:How nice

[TheRaven64]

we purchased the check for $7000 ... We've still got the check, a check for $500.

...

(posting anonymously so that nobody can associate my username with the company I work for)

That's a good idea. I can't imagine letting your shareholders know you spent $7000 on a $500 cheque would do much good for your stock price...

Re:How nice

[HoldenCaulfield]

Why is everyone assuming that just because he said "my company" that he's the owner of said company? When I first read the parent post, I assumed that he was an employee . . .

Re:How nice

[palad1]

to the replyers: guys, which part of (posting anonymously so that nobody can associate my username with the company I work for) don't you understand? Of course his company is SwiftView, now, what's his /. username please?

Palad1, karmawhoring as the rest of us :)

Re:How nice

[kabocox]

You thought www.altavista.digital.com was a nice thing, or that www.altavista.com was better? I used them over yahoo in the beginning, but it was so hard to spell! I can type www.yahoo.com or www.google.com really easily, there were just to many was to mistype altavista. Thank goodness that google came along. You just don't get much easier to spell than that.

Re:How nice

[pclminion]

BTW, I am not John Corrigan (my boss, cofounder of the company, and purchaser of the check). I'm merely a drone :-)

Re:How nice

[/dev/trash]

That's illegal.

Re:How nice

[multipartmixed]

> what's his /. username please?

pclminion?

Re:How nice

[John_Sauter]

Since you still have the check, Microsoft didn't actually pay anything.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)

Re:How nice

[Digital11]

And I'll be just a little boastful for a moment and tell you that we are rolling in so much dough that $7000 is basically pocket change.

Lol... So the real question is, are you hiring? :P

Re:How nice

[Some Bitch]

Oops, guess posting as AC was a little pointless now :D

Re:How nice

[Nuroman]

This isn't exactly true. Altavista.com did not look exactly like altavista.digital.com. Altavista.com came online shortly after or about the same time as altavista.digital.com. This seems hardly enough time to cash in on a brand name that had not really been noticed yet.

Not to mention the fact that altavista.com actually hosted a legitimate organization of the same name, or rather Altavista Technologies who provided web media software. It seems to me the inclusion of the redirect to Altavista.digital.com's search from their main page was a service to users who mistakenly typed their URL rather than the correct Digital one, rather than an attempt to trick users into buying their product. I know I did this at least once and was thankful they even bothered to let me know I was in the wrong place.

This seems especially true due to the fact that their URL reflected their organization's name. You also have to take in to account that Alta Vista is not exactly a proprietary or even unusual name.

http://www.altavistaflowers.com/ or http://www.altavistachamber.org/ or http://www.altavistapress.com/ or any other number of companies or places whose name are Altavista or Alta Vista might have been first to register the URL in question, but Altavista Technologies beat them all to it.

Re:How nice

[ShinmaWa]

Lol... So the real question is, are you hiring? :P

I think his position might become available soon.

Re:How nice

[usurper_ii]

My company won that auction and we purchased the check for $7000 which was then immediately donated to the Sisters of the Road Cafe in Portland, Oregon. We've still got the check, a check for $500

What I don't understand is how your company still has the check if it was "immediately donated to the Sisters of the Road Cafe?"

Are you saying the guy who held the ebay auction donated the 7000.00 to Sisters of the Road Cafe...and your company still has the check?

That whole deal sounds fishy to me, as I fail to see why anyone would pay 7000.00 for a check worth 500.00, with no guarantee at all that the person who held the Ebay auction would really donate the money to charity.

It seems to me that if your company just wanted to be charitable, it would have been better just to pick out a charity and donate to it. At least that way you knew where the money would go AND been able to take it as a tax deduction. (Can you deduct spending 7000.00 for a 500.00 check from your income tax?)

And as someone else already pointed out, Microsoft saved 500.00 bucks because the check was never cashed!!!

Usurper_ii

Re:How nice

[pclminion]

I'm not posting anonymously at this point since I already screwed up below, so there's not much point.

What I don't understand is how your company still has the check if it was "immediately donated to the Sisters of the Road Cafe?"

We still have the check MS sent to Chaney. What was donated to SotR was the $7100 purchase price, along with $2500 matched by Chaney. We encouraged MS to also contribute but they didn't.

Are you saying the guy who held the ebay auction donated the 7000.00 to Sisters of the Road Cafe...and your company still has the check?

As far as I know, he never sent the money to Chaney but donated it directly. I actually went down to SotR with a few other people later that day and got my face in the newspaper :-)

That whole deal sounds fishy to me, as I fail to see why anyone would pay 7000.00 for a check worth 500.00, with no guarantee at all that the person who held the Ebay auction would really donate the money to charity.

Mr. Chaney's name was well known, he is a consultant of some kind, and we didn't see any reason that he would risk destroying his professional reputation to get $7000.

It seems to me that if your company just wanted to be charitable, it would have been better just to pick out a charity and donate to it. At least that way you knew where the money would go AND been able to take it as a tax deduction.

We wanted to be charitable but let's not kid ourselves here, we got a lot of PR for a relatively low price. CNet was on the phone literally within seconds of the auction close. The reason we selected SotR for the donation is because one of the company cofounders already knew about that particular charity, and I assume he's made donations to them in the past. Whether or not it was tax deductible wasn't an issue. I don't think anyone was even thinking about that.

And as someone else already pointed out, Microsoft saved 500.00 bucks because the check was never cashed!!!

We couldn't have cashed it even if we wanted to since the check was never endorsed and it was made out to Michael Chaney, not us.

Re:How nice

[unborn]

Not quite - checks have expiration dates, you know.

Re:How nice

[Anonymous Coward]

The irony of course being that that the word actually spelled googol.

Re:How nice

[Psychotext]

That's superb, I just wish that I had some mod points right now!

Re:How nice

[1u3hr]

You thought www.altavista.digital.com was a nice thing, or that www.altavista.com was better? I used them over yahoo in the beginning, but it was so hard to spell! I can type www.yahoo.com or www.google.com really easily, there were just to many was to mistype altavista.

Now they have one of the shortest URLs I know: http://av.com.

Re:How nice

[bjb]

Actually, while I don't use Altavista too often anymore, I still enter www.altavista.digital.com as the URL when typed in manually. Still works.

Also still have the habit of punching in babelfish.altavista.digital.com as well.

Maybe I should change that habit... oh wait, I already did.. its "google.com".

Is somebody gonna lose their job???

[mesach]

It seems to me that the has happened at least 2 times. I hope someone loses their jjob over this.

Then maybe I can find one, I can make sure that all the domains that microsoft owns are renewed every time they are due, I bet they own a large enough number to make it a full time job too.

Re:Is somebody gonna lose their job???

[eatdave13]

gnu.org, duh.

Re:Is somebody gonna lose their job???

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

I hope someone loses their jjob over this.

I hope not. Makeing such a mistake would be a very good way to learn to be more carefull with your job. If they hire some one new, he might make the same mistake.

Re:Is somebody gonna lose their job???

[mesach]

well considering that this is the SECOND time this has happened, I don't believe that the person responsible learned the first time...

Time for me to step in... you would think that they would use Outlook with a appointment reminder a week or so before the domain became due for every domain they have... but I suppose its to bogged down transmitting virii for them.

Such an opportunity

[freerangegeek]

It's too bad the individuals who legally registered these domains (hotmail.co.uk and passport.com) didnt' see fit to turn them over to the EFF or FSF. Even if only $35 was paid by Microsoft to retrieve them, the irony of making Microsoft pay those organizations would have been rich and wonderous.

Re:Such an opportunity

[skidv]

No, just because you pay doesn't mean that you've taken ownership. Most registrars now have a cooling down/grace period where the domain is off-line, but still waiting for the user to reclaim their domain. All they do is pay on the owner's behalf. The registrar doesn't care who's money pays for the renewal.

Re:Such an opportunity

[N.R. Ballard]

They were also named last year's "Linux Contributor of the Year" by Linux Format.

Doesn't anyone there have a brain?

[WIAKywbfatw]

Is it really that hard to assign one person the task of being responsible for domain renewals?

Jeez, even if that's all somebody did it would be worth paying someone $20,000/year just to avoid serious cock-ups like this one.

Re:Doesn't anyone there have a brain?

[dboyles]

Jeez, even if that's all somebody did it would be worth paying someone $20,000/year just to avoid serious cock-ups like this one.

This marks the second time I've seen the word/phrase "cock-ups" used in a sentence. The first time was when I read the article this morning.

Is that some sort of across the pond thing? Because I can tell you what it means on this side of the Atlantic...

Re:Doesn't anyone there have a brain?

[awx]

It's the same as a f**k-up, only more palatable.

Re:Doesn't anyone there have a brain?

[fyonn]

Is that some sort of across the pond thing? Because I can tell you what it means on this side of the Atlantic...

assuming that you're on the american side of the atlantic (you don't say), the phrase "cock up" in the UK refers to an embarrassing mistake. it's a little rude but not overly so.

dave

Re:Doesn't anyone there have a brain?

[kidlinux]

Better yet, why don't they just use a form of automated payment. I'm sure the domain registrar must have that option.

Though if the domains were registered say, 10 years ago, whoever was responsible for that task has probably moved on, and/or it was otherwise forgotten.

Re:Doesn't anyone there have a brain?

[jareds]

Is it really that hard to assign one person the task of being responsible for domain renewals?

Jeez, even if that's all somebody did it would be worth paying someone $20,000/year just to avoid serious cock-ups like this one.

Hell, I'll keep all their domains renewed for only $15,000 a year.

Re:Doesn't anyone there have a brain?

[cybercuzco]

Jeez, even if that's all somebody did it would be worth paying someone $20,000/year just to avoid serious cock-ups like this one.

Maybe they do, but that person just surfs the net looking at porn all day, which would explain why Microsoft always has such a serious cock-up

Re:Doesn't anyone there have a brain?

[NanoGator]

"Is it really that hard to assign one person the task of being responsible for domain renewals?"

That's an awfully presumptuous bit of +5 Interesting babble.

How do you know a bill just wasn't lost somewhere? That kind of thing happens here in the real world, you know.

Re:Doesn't anyone there have a brain?

[retinaburn]

The problem is the task is an infrequent one for an employee. Often when they leave their job and transition their projects its often easy to forget something you do once a year over the last x years you have worked.

Re:Doesn't anyone there have a brain?

[ckaminski]

I guess it has something to do with it's dictionary definition: bundle of sticks.

In Europe, a pack of cigarettes is called a faggot.
In America (U.S.) a homosexual man is derogatorily referred to as a faggot, put two gay men together, and voila... bundle of sticks...

Stupid really, but hey, not my fault!

Re:Doesn't anyone there have a brain?

[milkman_matt]

How do you know a bill just wasn't lost somewhere? That kind of thing happens here in the real world, you know.

Yeah, that kind of thing happens, but that's the second time it's happened to a -very- major domain of theirs... There have been a couple of times customers of ours forgot to renew domains and got screwed for at least the amount of time it took to repropagate. In order to avoid this, we've got all of our company's domains on auto-renew, but in order to protect the customer, we've created a perl script to read our list of domains and generate a spreadsheet listing the domain name, the expiration date, and the registrar it's with to make it very easy to know when something's coming up for renewal soon and give us the ability to double check and remind the customer if we see a domain on there that hasn't been renewed.

-matt

Re:Doesn't anyone there have a brain?

[poot_rootbeer]

Is it really that hard to assign one person the task of being responsible for domain renewals?

Problem is, the renewal notices are being sent to a Hotmail account, and the mailbox overflows with junk before anyone at Microsoft can get to it...

Re:Doesn't anyone there have a brain?

[thoth]

Okay, that sounds valid, but how do you explain the fact Microsoft has dropped the ball twice, while we haven't seen anything about any other company doing it?

Re:Doesn't anyone there have a brain?

[TomV]

If the renewal was by post, bear in mind that Nominet are here in Oxford, which was one of the hotspots in the postal strike, so the renewal could easily be caught in the backlog at the Oxpens sorting office.

Re:Doesn't anyone there have a brain?

[jmoriarty]

This marks the second time I've seen the word/phrase "cock-ups" used in a sentence. The first time was when I read the article this morning.

That's because "cock-ups" is what was displayed on the site until it got transferred back to Microsoft.

Re:Doesn't anyone there have a brain?

[theLOUDroom]

That's an awfully presumptuous bit of +5 Interesting babble. How do you know a bill just wasn't lost somewhere? That kind of thing happens here in the real world, you know

The regulations almost definately call for more than one notice. It's just like any other bill you get. If you don't pay your electric bill, they don't cut off your electricity, they send you another notice. People realize that a letter might get lost once, but multiple times?

It's pretty obvious that this is yet another MS screw-up.

Re:Doesn't anyone there have a brain?

[Li0n]

I really didn't need to know you found cock-ups palatable. Really...

Re:Doesn't anyone there have a brain?

[TKinias]

scripsit dboyles:

Is that some sort of across the pond thing? Because I can tell you what it means on this side of the Atlantic...

It is indeed a Britishism (or more generally Commonwealth perhaps? -- I don't recall if Aussies say it...). I'm curious, though, since I'm on the same side of the pond you seem to be on: WTF does it mean where you live? Around here it means fuck-all if not the British meaning...

I assure you if I said ``there was a real cock-up at school'' no one would think I was discussing male arousal...

Don't you mean

[pheared]

a (soon-to-be) Rich samaritan?

Reward

[IWorkForMorons]

I didn't see if there was any kind of reward offered for returning the domain. I noticed the article mentioned that this happened to Passport.com, and that the person who picked it up for $35 returned it shortly after. But still no mention of a reward. Technically (and this is a stretch considering the M$ legal team) they could tell them to f*ck off, but no one seems to have done that. Are they getting compensated for their generous nature?

Re:Reward

[tolan's my name]

They gave him a cheque for $500 (which he gave to charity) and a copy of visual studio (which he wanted for its dss libraries IIRC).

Also its easy to be anti-microsoft but not giving back hotmail.co.uk would screw up a lot of peoples email for no good reason.

I think i'd want about $10,000 if i'd bought it thought...

Re:Reward

[Noren]

His site says he got a check for $500 and a copy of Visual Studio 6.0.

Re:Reward

[finkployd]

The guy who registered passport.com got a $500 reward. It went to charity.

Finkployd

Re:Reward

[ericspinder]

Well according to that guy's page...

On January 15, 2000, I received the check from Microsoft for $500, in addition to a new copy of Visual Studio 6.0 (which I need to compile and run the decss program to decode my DVD's so that I can play them under Linux). I put the check up on ebay to raise money for charity.

Re:Reward

[IWorkForMorons]

Also its easy to be anti-microsoft but not giving back hotmail.co.uk would screw up a lot of peoples email for no good reason.

You're right, it would screw up a lot of people's email for no good reason. My question to Microsoft would be: Exactly how much is this worth to your business? Sorry, but $500 and a copy of Studio wouldn't cut it for me. $10,000 wouldn't cut it for me. Call it extortion, but it's all legal...

Re:Reward

[Dr. Evil]

I'd want a personal hand-signed cheque from Bill Gates for $35. Hey, he's not the CEO, but he's the founder and all that rot.

And hey, by not cashing it, it might mess up the accounting systems as Bill waits for his $35 expense to be processed. :-)

Re:Reward

[tolan's my name]

Thing is it probably isn't legal, as in they'd get the name bak if they went to court. They'd also probably get tempory "custoody" after a few days.

So its more how much do you want to avoid the short service outage / bad publicity. 10k would do me.

Also it seems that he migh have just payed to reregister in MS's name rather than reregistered in his own, so it's a little moot.

Re:Reward

[IM6100]

Actually, the guy who got the $500 reward sold the check on eBay for $7000. He then donated the $7000 to charity, which, if he did his taxes correctly, translates into at least a $500 savings in his taxes.

And the poor suckers who paid the $7000 got a piece of paper for the corporate lobby, and their 15 minutes of fame in the anti-M$ zealot community.

Re:Reward

[Dudio]

Actually, I believe the tax situation would be as follows:

1. Michael Chaney reports income from Microsoft in the amount of ($500 + FMV of Visual Studio 6 - $35).
2. Michael takes a $500 deduction for his donation of the check to charity.
3. SwiftView pays $7,000 for the check, of which it deducts $6,500 ($7,000 - $500 FMV of property received) as a charitable contribution.

Michael, then, ends up owing additional taxes in the amount of ((FMV of VS6 - $35) * Michael's marginal tax rate), assuming he actually followed the letter of the law and reported the income.

Re:Reward

[IM6100]

My understanding is that he got the check from Microsoft, then sold it on eBay. Received the $7000 and donated it to charity.
I might be wrong, of course, but your scenario makes less sense.

Re:Reward

[tenton]

He didn't pick it up, he just renewed it for Microsoft (it wasn't under his name); that is, he saw the bill was due and paid for it with his credit card.

Re:Reward

[Dudio]

I believe the tax situation would be the same whether SwiftView gave the money directly to charity or to Michael, who then forwarded it to charity, as long as the auction specifically stated that proceeds would go to charity. If the auction didn't mention charity and Michael unilaterally donated the proceeds after the fact, then Michael would deduct the full amount, but since the donation was known up front, SwiftView was bidding in a charitable benefit auction, meaning they can deduct the excess of their winning bid over the FMV of the check.

The only way I can think of in which Michael would come out ahead financially would be if he were successfully to argue that the check has inherent novelty value that raises its FMV above the $500 face value. In this case, he would deduct the estimated FMV of the check, which if it were high enough would offset the value of the copy of Visual Studio he received.

In any event, it appears that SwiftView gave the money directly to the charity. See this post by a guy who works there.

Why, oh, why didn't they redirect to

[Anonymous Coward]

Goatse.cx?

I mean, that would guarantee a response from Micro$oft....

Why Should they renew?

[dnoyeb]

The major organizations have shown that major companies like MS are 'entitled' to domain names similar to their company name, bar none. Thus, their is no need to register for it, no one can take it anyway...

Re:Why Should they renew?

[forsetti]

But Hotmail is not similar to their company name......

Re:Why Should they renew?

[reimero]

Actually, I wonder about this. Since they failed to renew, they demonstrated a lack of interest in protecting that aspect of their name and trademark, effectively relinquishing all claimed rights to that domain. It's one thing to deal with a squatter who is trying to make a buck off your good name, it's another entirely to demonstrate a lack of interest.

Is there any legal precedent here?

Re:Why Should they renew?

[Dudio]

It is, however, very similar to a registered trademark of theirs.

Re:Why Should they renew?

[howlingfrog]

Is there any legal precedent here?

Yes there is.

Hmm...

[JoeLinux]

I say it should have been redirected to the goatsecx guy...that'd be an interesting turn of events for some 8-year-old trying to check his mail, eh?

When the rights to microsoft.com expire, ...

[burgburgburg]

can we all agree that whoever snaps it up just keeps it for as long as we can? Put up a big Bill the Borg picture. I'd like that.

Re:microsoft.com a few years back?

[grandmofftarkin]

No it was passport.com. Did you even click on the links?

What am I saying of course you didn't. This is slashdot after all!

Right/left?

[grasshoppa]

Right hand, this is left hand, come in, over.

Re:Right/left?

[mesach]

Can you hear me now? over... hello... hello?

Re:Right/left?

[hal9000]

Right hand is busy tending to that bullet hole in right foot.

Re:WHAT THE F$%!

[wankledot]

Paying to renew it is much different than transfering ownership, or changing the name servers for it. It would have been a lot harder for the person to re-register it for themselves.

Plus they would have been torn apart later in court. remember, you can only legally steal domain names if you're a bunch of Tree huggin' hippies

Microsoft trying to dump hotmail

[tokul]

But people don't let them to do that. :)

why did he renew it?

[js3]

wouldn't it be better to let the site just not resolve or display an expired domain error until someone at microsoft figured out what was happening? btw I don't think renewing it gave him ownership of the domain. it takes a while for expired domains to be resold to give the original owner a little more time to claim it

Re:why did he renew it?

[pclminion]

I don't know why he renewed it this time, but back in 1999 when this happened before, Michael Chaney renewed it because he had a Hotmail email account and dammit, he needed to check his email!

Makes sense to me!

Re:why did he renew it?

[Pommpie]

The irony is that it would probably cost less to get a POP3 account than to renew passport.com.

But, of course, the guy was just using it as a spam trap. And I'm sure you don't need me to tell you this, but Hotmail is the universe's ultimate spam trap.

Re:why did he renew it?

[pclminion]

I dunno, was that true back in 1999 though? It's already ancient history by now.

Life without Hotmail

[Nom du Keyboard]

Would life without Hotmail mean less spam?

Re:Life without Hotmail

[praedor]

Actually, I think your butterfly flapping its wings will only cancel out my butterfly if it is flapping 180 degrees out of phase with mine. Otherwise, me thinks that your butterfly and my butterfly may be additive, at least during various flapping cycles (if you are slightly out of phase with mine). YOU, with your flapping butterfly's wings, mis-timed in relation to mine is causing the drought in the Western USA and leading to the wildfire danger.

I had my butterfly timed so as to increase the precipitation this year and through the winter but you went and dicked it up in an attempt to cancel mine out (leading to a normal precip year). Instead, YOU are inducing an especially dry spell.

Shut down your butterfly dickweed!

Re:Life without Hotmail

[Nom du Keyboard]

Actually, I think your butterfly flapping its wings will only cancel out my butterfly...

My butterfly is a quantum butterfly. You cannot know what my butterfly is doing until you observe it, at which point you've changed its actions by that act of observation.

Therefore your conclusions about my butterfly are obviously and completely wrong Q.E.D. (Quite Easily Demonstrated).

So there!

Re:Life without Hotmail

[danielsfca2]

> butterfly butterfly butterfly etc.

Butterfly. MSN. Hotmail. Heh.

Weird

[Yarn]

I was under the impression that Nominet don't allow re-registration if a domain expires, only if it's explicitly released. My domain lapsed a year or so ago (registrar didn't renew it for me in time) but is still in my name, if inactive. They charge about 80 to reactivate a domain, such a money making exercise.

Re:Weird

[Richard_at_work]

Yes that is what I thought, the domain is "detagged" for god knows how many years after it expires, and only then is put back into the pool.

It is very very strange and suspicious that this was put back into the registration pool on the day it expired, when I am still waiting for domains I registered 3 years ago to drop out of detag status and become available for registration. (cypheria.co.uk, registered august 2000, expired aug 2003, still listed as detagged, cant detag it as I have lost the cert and cant be arsed to do up a letter headed bit of paper).

When I queried nominet on this, they stated that to move a domain from detag to registration pool, it either had to have a signed corporate headed letter from the owner stating so, or be detagged for at least a year.

Re:Weird

[Yarn]

I tried that. They snail mailed me back:

On 10 March 2003 Nominet UK launched a new online tag change mechanism that replaces the older manual system of faxing tag change requests to Nominet. You will need to complete the online form to initiated your tag change request. Full details can be found online at http://www.nominet.org.uk under the section 'Making changes to your domain name' and select 'Changing your registration agent (ISP)'

I went through the forms and they asked for my CC# with an 80 quid bill.

Non-profit doesn't mean that some of the costs are excessive.

No need to renew....

[3seas]

for when fools will do it for you.....

hotmale

[rf0]

Prehaps someone should just register hotmale.co.uk and point it to them

Rus

MSs internal domain database?

[perler]

how difficult is it for a company to have database for all domainnames they have, and a field "exp_date"? or do they have one and it's accesss based, written in VB?

PAT

Re:MSs internal domain database?

[RetroGeek]

how difficult is it for a company to have database for all domainnames they have, and a field "exp_date"? or do they have one and it's accesss based, written in VB?

They probably do.

But the expiry search only looks for today's date....

Re:MSs internal domain database?

[tomhudson]

Poster wrote:

how difficult is it for a company to have database for all domainnames they have, and a field "exp_date"? or do they have one and it's accesss based, written in VB?

Ah, there's the problem. That's probably what they have, and it BSODed on them.

... 'Cause we all know how hard it is to have a cron job that just does a "select domain_name from domain_names where expiry_date = date() + 1".

Re:MSs internal domain database?

[Snowdrake]

Well honestly I'd make it more like

SELECT domain_name,expiry_date FROM t_domains WHERE expiry_date <= now() + interval '60 days';

but that's just because in their place I'd want to make damn good and sure there's no lapse. (BTW, yes, that's valid pgsql.)

Trusted Computing

[mr_tommy]

Trusted Computing from a trusted company. Come on guys, you can take these people seriously. Its clear to me, that microsoft did this by design. After all, its never, ever a bug. Its a feature. Or maybe, someone wrote about this on their weblog? Bah. Who cares - hes probably fired by now. Tool.

Re:hotmail

[beady]

Who on earth modded this interesting... I swear, you people!

Webservices and XSD

[boatboy]

I've often wondered about this as a potential problem for webservices and to a lesser degree, XSD specs and XML namespaces. Take for example MapPoint.NET - a pretty cool (if overpriced) service that benefits from a webservice model. But say MapPoint.net rolls back- even temporarily-to somewhere else. First, there's a potential security issue: the lucky individual would get tons of requests, possibly including security info. Second, any mission critical apps- would flop until things got squared away. I guess these could all be overcome by good design, such as creating fall-back domains that the client knows to use, but I've yet to hear much talk of doing this.

Re:Webservices and XSD

[Delirium Tremens]

Any mission critical app would use dual authentication for conducting business over the web. X509 certificates delivered by trusted CAs come to mind.

Re:Webservices and XSD

[boatboy]

True, and this is what I do in my webservice apps, where our own client talks to our own server. That resolves the security issue- or at least makes it harder to hack- but I still get nervous thinking about an app that is dependent on another company keeping servers up and DNS registered. Then again, I suppose it's no different from managing suppliers of other services.

You'd buy "trusted computing" from these guys?!!

[Thud457]

DUPE

Oh, wait, that's Microsoft's fault, not Simoniker's. My bad...

maximum renewal length

[NotAnotherReboot]

Is there some kind of maximum renewal length on these domains? It's not like Microsoft doesn't have the money to pay for 20 years (or longer) of the domain, and not worry about it expiring.

The microsoft.com domain expires in May of 2012, hotmail.com in March of 2010, so why aren't they purchasing all of their domains for long periods?

Re:maximum renewal length

[Neophytus]

Registration seems to last for a maximum of 10 years at a time before renewal is needed.

Re:maximum renewal length

[Xophmeister]

IIRC .co.uk domains can only be registered in two year blocks. When the time is up, you pay up for another two years (this I'm not quite sure about), or you loose your domain.

Re:maximum renewal length

[Xophmeister]

[lose]

Remember

[djrisk]

Now, I understand this is a real mess up, but there is no "one guy" or one team within Microsoft to handle this kind of thing (I would think). Even though that would be the best way to go about things, it's not practical.

Services like MSN, Hotmail, and I'm sure even the Passport stuff are separate subsidiaries of MS, and are not controlled/overseen by one group or person.

I would guess that even Hotmail's UK service is separate from the main Hotmail (the .com people), as is common with most corporations.

Granted none of this is an excuse, but, it's only fair to point this out. I mean, it's happened to many companies in recent times, and is seen both large and small companies; and I would put money that it's only a matter of tmie until it happens to a "friend" site.

The moral of the story ... this serves as a good reminder to renew that precious domain for the max (is it ten years?) right now. :)

Just because the domain expired...

[jea6]

...doesn't mean it's up for grabs. There is, at minimum, a 40 day period after the domain expires before it is actually made available for registration. It is usually 14 days after the expiration that the domain is deleted from the root servers and this is when outages can occur.

Re:Just because the domain expired...

[pdhenry]

Just because the domain expired doesn't mean it's up for grabs.

According to the linked article, it was up for grabs:

A spokeswoman for Nominet UK - the registry for all .uk domains - confirmed that hotmail.co.uk had failed to be renewed and was placed back into pool of available domains.

For Nominet's part, she confirmed that "all the standard renewal procedures were followed regarding hotmail.co.uk".

"I would like to remind companies and their agents that it is their responsibility to renew their domains," she said.

Re:Just because the domain expired...

[sporty]

Uh.. that depends on the registrar. Last I checked, netsol/verisign didnt' run .co.uk.

It also depends if the registrar in question decides to ignore the expiration of the domain and makes it available, not by checking the registry but their own local db.

Just 'cause it doesn't get deleted till 54 days later doesn't mean the registrar can't sell the rights away.

Re:Just because the domain expired...

[horza]

From the article:
A spokeswoman for Nominet UK - the registry for all .uk domains - confirmed that hotmail.co.uk had failed to be renewed and was placed back into pool of available domains.

For Nominet's part, she confirmed that "all the standard renewal procedures were followed regarding hotmail.co.uk".

ie it was up for grabs.

Phillip.

Re:You girls are getting desperate

[pclminion]

You're the one who brought up the term "Anti-MS."

I was not aware that reporting the news counts as bashing. I suppose if the President of the U.S. was arrested for drunk driving and CNN decided to report on it, that that would be "pathetic" and "anti-Bush?"

You're an idiot.

Registering a misspelled domain name

[Baron_Yam]

Honestly, I sometimes think about registering Hotmial.com because when I manually enter the url, about 1 in 20 times that's what I end up typing.

Then I think about how many other people with Hotmail accounts might be doing the same thing and how much smoke might start rising from my server, slap myself, and forget the idea for a while.

Re:Registering a misspelled domain name

[IWorkForMorons]

Or you could do what everyone else who registers mis-spelled domains does...point them to a site with tons of banners ads and popups. At least a few idiots will be tempted to click something. And you aren't going to find more perfect idiots then the ones who use Hotmail...

Re:Registering a misspelled domain name

[TintinX]

Yeah, not to mention the problems you would have trying to register something that is already owned!

Obligitory Simpson's quote...

[Chuck Bucket]

Nelson: Ha, ha!

P

Anyone have any idea why this happened?

[Hackie_Chan]

Anyone have any idea why the worlds biggest and worlds most influental company forgot to pay a simple check?

Re:Anyone have any idea why this happened?

[djupedal]

>worlds biggest and worlds most influental company

Excuse me? MS is not the biggest and hardly the most influential.

That would be General Electric, and MS is way down on the list from them.

However, Harvard likes to think that Gates is the most influential business leader... - HBC has to tag along on someone's coat tails, after all.

Re:Anyone have any idea why this happened?

[Pommpie]

As has been pointed out, it's possible that their coinage was simply lost in the system. To me, the irony of Microsoft being the recepient of bad design is delicious.

It's called a legal department

[Mr. Neutron]

Whether there is one legal department for all of Microsoft, or separate ones for each division of the company, this is the department that is in charge of keeping track of things like trademarks. Domain names fall into this category. They are most likely the ones to blame for this oversight.

Not a shining review...

[siphoncolder]

... for Microsoft Outlook's "Reminder" function.

It was pointed to Amazon

[mccalli]

My wife noticed this the other evening - told me she was trying to go to Hotmail and ending up on Amazon. I thought it sounded ridiculous, but sure enough that's what happened when I tried.

Had a laugh about it, then told her to use Hotmail.com. I forget if the site it was pointed to was amazon.com or .co.uk, but it was definitely at one of the Amazon sites.

Cheers,
Ian

Forget the goatse.cx guy..

[Shenkerian]

Imagine having rights to read all the email to *@hotmail.co.uk.

Re:Forget the goatse.cx guy..

[jjhall]

That would be tons more spam than I'd care to have rights to...

your wife

[Anonymous Coward]

It's because she doesn't want her BOFH husband reading all her mail. Especially the steamy love notes from her Latin Lover, Juan Carlos.

Re:your wife

[ckaminski]

Right, not stupid enough to trust her BOFH husband from reading her mail from her latin lovers, but stupid enough to use a computer that he could put sniffers, keystroke loggers and cache traps on to read mail from her latin lovers? Right....

It's probably because he's crashing the damn thing every other day. :-)

Re:your wife

[powerlord]

Considering she already gave me her login/password and often asks me to look things up for her on her account, I doubt "she is hiding something" is the issue. :)

The crashing is a distinct possibility though :)

Re:WHAT THE F$%!

[Trailer Trash]

Yes. Contrary to the Reg's article, I didn't "sign it over to Microsoft", I simply paid their outstanding invoice.

As I explained it to reporters at the time, if I went and made your mortgage payment I wouldn't own your house.

This particular case seems to be different than the passport.com case, though. It looks like the .co.uk domains get tossed back in the pool quicker, and the person actually did buy the domain. Part of the story is that they were trying to contact Microsoft to transfer it back to them and Microsoft wouldn't pay attention. It's difficult to be a good samaritan some days...

Misspellings

[The Creator]

I once accidently typed micosoft.com And yes, it was a porn site.

Registering misspellings of popular sites seems to be an easy way of getting traffic.

Re:Misspellings

[Snowdrake]

There's a horrible joke in there somewhere about the models and fungal infections -- er, wait, that's "myco," not "mico," isn't it?

And the best bit...

[Simon Brooke]

-[root]-# whois hotmail.co.uk

Domain Name:
hotmail.co.uk

Registrant:
Microsoft Corporation

Registrant's Agent:
Dark Marketing Ltd [Tag = DARKUK]
URL: http://www.darkmarketing.com

Who would have ever believed that Microsoft would go over to the dark side?

doublewide is slashdotted...

[ih8apple]

Google cache of it is here

Re:doublewide is slashdotted...

[OP_Boot]

Hah!

Possibly the effect is not from /. alone, but the fact that it's been on ElReg already?

Hours before the /. laggards got their arse in gear.

Now that's DARN tight petty cash control!

[magarity]

Worryingly, no one in the UK could deal with the matter so it was up to the US to sort things out.

Nobody in MS's UK division has the authority to reimburse $35?!?! Now that's what I call some serious centralized cash management!

Re:Now that's DARN tight petty cash control!

[shawn(at)fsu]

Yeah you know cause it was 35 USD , MS UK Division can only do GBP. See if it was 17.50 GBP it all would have been okay.

Re:Right/left? - Hands in different pockets

[BrynM]

Right hand, this is left hand, come in, over.

This is Microsoft. The right hand is in their pocket playing with that big lump of... liquid cash. The left hand is trying to get into your pocket for your... lump of cash. Somehow, an extra hand seems to be holding gullable/unwitting companies by their lumps of cash in some sort of vise and won't let go. With the cloth and distance between them, it's no wonder they don't communicate.

Next week on Slashdot ...

[JonKatzIsAnIdiot]

Microsoft forgets to put out this week's recycling bin
Microsoft misses the rinse cycle
Microsoft forgets to buy lottery ticket this week
Microsoft misses the ice cream truck

anything else?

Re:Next week on Slashdot ...

[tibike77]

Miscosoft forgets to wash hands after using the toilet?
:)

Expense account math?

[Thud457]

Well, spending $7,000 to obtain a net result of $500 isn't too effective...

Re:Expense account math?

[Trailer Trash]

They got their name in newspapers and news web sites around the country. $7000 was a bargain for that kind of press.

Re:hotmail

[e-matt]

Actually Hotmail is backended by BSD.

I don't see how...

[moonboy]

I don't see how this can happen. Network Solutions bugs the crap out of me to renew mine well in advance. They've been sending me renewal notices for a couple of months now for domains I have that will need to be renewed by March and May of 2004!

Re:I don't see how...

[AchmedHabib]

Just make sure all of them are from network solutions. Because a lot of scammers like to send you mails like that to, only their "renewal" page does does not review anything.
I have even got snail mail from companies where their name and paper looks like network solutions, only it's not.
so be careful.

Re:I don't see how...

[lintux]

I don't think they registered a .co.uk domain at NetSol...

Re:I don't see how...

[milkman_matt]

I don't see how this can happen. Network Solutions bugs the crap out of me to renew mine well in advance. They've been sending me renewal notices for a couple of months now for domains I have that will need to be renewed by March and May of 2004!

You know, I hadn't even thought about -that- fact, shit I get reminders from like 3 different registrars to renew my domain names even though i'm not a customer of any of them!

-matt

Re:I don't see how...

[illumin8]

I don't see how this can happen. Network Solutions bugs the crap out of me to renew mine well in advance. They've been sending me renewal notices for a couple of months now for domains I have that will need to be renewed by March and May of 2004!

You obviously haven't experienced Hotmail's overzealous spam filters. Pretty much any message coming from an automated system (including my Paypal emails) gets junked automatically unless you specifically allow that sender through. It took me forever just to figure out how to reset the password on my Paypal account because all of the password reset messages were getting trashed by Hotmail automagically...

It's not too far of a leap to think that automatic domain renewal notices will be junked by spam filters as potential spam. Most things coming from Network Solutions these days are spam.

The reward...

[theendlessnow]

A free copy of Microsoft Money and MSN!! Oh boy!!

Re:The reward...

[frkiii]

... a visit from the BSA to audit all the software on his/her systems. That will teach him/her. ;-)

Low on priorites

[novakane007]

Maybe they just didn't get around to it? Afterall, they could have just sued anyone that picked it up in the meantime. They probably have more lawyers than they do security people.

Why it's being given back to Microsoft.

[sammy baby]

I keep seeing posts which run along the lines of, "Why give it back to them? Just take it and make 'em pay through the nose!"

Stupid, dumb, dumb, dumb. On the one hand, Microsoft has more lawyers than God. For another, it's just wrong to register a name with the express intention of screwing someone else. And lastly, it's definied by ICANN as registering a domain in bad faith.

b. Evidence of Registration and Use in Bad Faith. For the purposes of Paragraph 4(a)(iii), the following circumstances, in particular but without limitation, if found by the Panel to be present, shall be evidence of the registration and use of a domain name in bad faith:
(i) circumstances indicating that you have registered or you have acquired the domain name primarily for the purpose of selling, renting, or otherwise transferring the domain name registration to the complainant who is the owner of the trademark or service mark or to a competitor of that complainant, for valuable consideration in excess of your documented out-of-pocket costs directly related to the domain name...

And now you know.

Re:Why it's being given back to Microsoft.

[maroberts]

If you however, setup a site on "passport.com" containing information on passport control and customs, or a site on "hotmail.co.uk" about postal regulations, you would
a) be able to bypass this claim
b) get a lot of hits due to the previous owners stupidity
c) Be able to generate lots of ad impressions
d) Profit!

Re:Why it's being given back to Microsoft.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Microsoft has more lawyers than God"
God has NO lawyers. They all belong to Satan (i.e. Microsoft)!

Re:Why it's being given back to Microsoft.

[sammy baby]

b) get a lot of hits due to the previous owners stupidity
c) Be able to generate lots of ad impressions

Oh, yeah, because that hasn't been considered.

(iv) by using the domain name, you have intentionally attempted to attract, for commercial gain, Internet users to your web site or other on-line location, by creating a likelihood of confusion with the complainant's mark as to the source, sponsorship, affiliation, or endorsement of your web site or location or of a product or service on your web site or location.

Re:Why it's being given back to Microsoft.

[maroberts]

As mentioned earlier, you simply set up a site that has no chance of being confused with the previous owners. How do you think all those domain parking sites get away with it?

If it makes you happy, you can even put a disclaimer on the front page denying affiliation; then you have them over a barrel

Re:Why it's being given back to Microsoft.

[cuyler]

Microsoft has more lawyers than God.

That may be true but I highly doubt they have more lawyers than Satan.

Re:Why it's being given back to Microsoft.

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft has more lawyers than God

Only because no lawyers make it to heaven.

Want to know what really happened?

[shik0me]

They were trying to renew the domain, but IE kept crashing :D

Re: your sig

[tiled_rainbows]

"Whilst" is, strictly speaking, past tense. For example "I like to eat tacos while playing my gameboy" / "When I was young, I liked eating tacos whilst playing on my gameboy".

Not that you have ever called me a pretentious jackass, but I tohught you might like to know.

Have you actually followed that link?

[EnglishTim]

Have you?

I assume they don't use network solutions

[SirCrashALot]

Whenever my domain is "about" to expire netSol sends me tons of crap, both email and snail mail. Granted about to expire means sending me junk now when my domain expires in april. Only because i did a two year contract and then stupidly waited until the last minute to renew am I not on a cheaper reseller.

Re:Not a problem

[NanoGator]

"Honestly, who does use Hotmail anyway?"

People who travel a lot.

Next question?

M$ $krew$ up AGAIN

[XdarkstarX]

wtf are they thinking?! i mean, if M$ doesnt like the UK... TOUGH! if you dont like a country just because they know what open source has to offer doesnt mean that a greed-driven corporation should just *forget* to renew a domain... sheesh...

No it wouldn't

[maroberts]

$35 = 21.08GBP at $1.66 = 1GBP BBC Exchange rates
The above does not include commission charges or a buy/sell spread, so 25UKP would be better.

Re:No it wouldn't

[shawn(at)fsu]

Oh my mistake, sorry.

I just used the rough estimate that 1 GBP = 1.50 USD which gets me by.

BTW my post was supposed to be a joke, I should have made it you know.... funny.

And this matters because?

[supabeast!]

I'm all for shadenfreude, but isn't it easier for us to just ignore Microsoft's failings and worry about more important things?

Re:And this matters because?

[Carton132]

Well you know, I'm sorry to say it but you act like this is ONLY interesting because this is about Microsoft, and maybe for some people it is, but really it's a big deal because Microsoft and Hotmail are some of the front runners in computers and the internet right now. Don't you think if Google forgot to renew their domain that it would make headlines? You bet your ass it would, because they are Google for Pete's sake.

Good thing they didn't use TotalNIC.net.....

[BestNicksRTaken]

Or the domain would be up for auction by now, without the possibility of you being able to transfer it to another registrar: www.suit-u-sir.com

Bad plan

[Jerf]

Bad plan; one phrase: ICANN trademark resolution policies suck.

Better to play nice; if the lawyers come out it'll get uglyl, and not for Microsoft.

Re: your sig

[the phantom]

You seem to have invented a new method of karma whoring, just reply to people's .sigs. I like it. Funny moderators.

Thanks for the explaination, by the way.

but why?

[Babelfish42]

Kudos to squiggleslash for the wonderful HHGTG reference!

What I want to know is why would anyone in their right mind actually do M$ a favour? The 'good samaritan' should have at least made Gates and Co. pay up big for their domain back.

Long live Tux!

-- Babelfish42

I know

[maroberts]

..but at $1.50 you would have 23.33UKP - you used $2 = 1UKP

Stop digging! ;-P

Even when being funny it helps to be right

Time for a dupe on this one :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

I'm waiting for this sentence to be real funny tomorrow - when this story is being posted again.

This happens all the time at big companies

[winkydink]

The invoice gets sent to the Accounts Payable department, who has probably never heard of the registrar because the domain was initially paid for by some worker-bee in the IT department who then used an expense report form to get reimbursed for setting it up. When renewal comes along, said worker-bee, who has listed his company's Accounts Payable department as the billing entity (because he thinks he's doing the right thing) assumes that it will be handled.

Unfortunately, the AP department deals with things like Approved Vendor Lists and Purchase Orders. Upon receiving the invoice and not being able to correlate it to either of these lists, it goes off to invoice purgatory, where it sits until somebody squawks and gets the invoice paid.

"Good" Samaritan implies Samaritans are bad.

[fishbowl]

The "Good Samaritan" idiom is racist from the start. The meaning of the phrase stems from a presumption that all Samaritans (whose descendents happen to be modern-day Palestinians) would sooner hasten the Jew's death than render aid. The fact that a Samaritan did render aid to the Jew in the story is such a noteworthy event, so completely unprecedented and unexpected, that "THE" Good Samaritan becomes a mythological singularity.

The implication of the story at Luke 10:30-37 is that the theives that the man ran into were Samaritans, and that robbing and stabbing and leaving him for dead was exactly the sort of treatment a Jew could expect from Samaritans on the road to Jericho. Then two Jews saw him and left him for dead, and it was a Samaritan who saved him.

The story, updated to a modern context, should be something like this:

A man from Jerusalem was driving to Jericho. Palestenian soldiers halted his car. When they saw that he was a Jew, they pulled him from his car, shot him, blew up his car with a grenade, and left him for dead. Some time after, as he clung to life, a UN jeep passed him on the road, but the soldiers did not stop to render aid or even investigate. Later, a group of tourists passed by the other direction, and also regarded the dying man as part of the scenery.

Finally, a Palestinian man happened on the scene, took pity on the man, took him to a doctor, and even helped him pay for a hotel room until he gets back on his feet.

And the moral of this story is, "Not all Palestinians will wontonly murder any Jew: most of them will, but there was one who didn't."

Re:"Good" Samaritan implies Samaritans are bad.

[inteller]

"Not all Palestinians will only murder any Jew: most of them will, but there was one who didn't."

bottom line is most will....and most is all that counts ;)

Re:"Good" Samaritan implies Samaritans are bad.

[Kaboom13]

I think thats a wrong interpretation of the story (and I'm an aethiest). Take it in context. The Jews dislike the Samaritans (and just about anyone else not jewish) and generally, in their pride considered themselves superiors to the "gentiles" and Samaratins in particular. The man is wounded (doesn't say if he is jewish or not) and left to die. He is passed by a priest, the moral authority of jewish culture, and ignored. That propably wouldn't have been to surprising to occur in real life, the priests at the time considered themselves the superior of the superior for their piety, and thus wouldnt look twice at lowly man (doesn't say he is jewish) dieing on the side of the road. He is too important. But a Samaritan, who the audience of the story wouild have reviled, especially the priesthood, stopped and helped him. If the story was just about the mercy shown by the Samaritan, why include the priest at all? Jesus was answering the question, in response to telling them to love their neighbor, "And who is my neighbour?". He ends the story asking them "Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?". He is telling them it is better to be a lowly samaritan who does what's right then it is to be a stuck up priest. He is using their own ideas about Samaratins agaisnt them. If you asked any jew if they would rather be a Samaritan or a priest, they would choose priest, as that is a position of high status and respect, but they should be humble like the samaritan, and help people in need because it's right, not because its expected of you or your position. Even if you aren't religous, I think the story is a good one, and the lesson well learnt. The reference to the "good samaritan" here is especially appropriate. The man here coud've said screw Microsoft, they are a huge rich company they can handle their own problems. He instead chose to help, at cost to himself, to help others, despite their status.

Yes I did go to the links..

[suso]

I did go and skim through the pages linked to, but for some reason I thought it was microsoft.com as well that had this problem. I guess not.

Re:Yes I did go to the links..

[grandmofftarkin]

ok, fair enough. Sorry if I caused any offense.

Hard to spell?!

[Pope]

That's what bookmarks are for, geez. I work with people who insist on trying to remember all the staging and live URLs for all the web sites we work on; meanwhile I have a nicely organized bookmarks list so I don't have to.

Thats what they get

[dtfinch]

They go to such lengths to ignore email from anyone who's not paying $150 per incident. I bet they even use a whitelist. Everyone not on the list gets blackholed. Registrars aren't going to pay them or drive to Redmond to tell them they have to renew their domains. If the people they do business with can't get heard, I doubt customers can either.

Plus there's no reason for them to be registering their sites for such short periods of time. They should be buying domains for like 10 years at a time.

Need a TODO list

[SomeOtherGuy]

Miscrosoft todo list:

1. Fix bugs in IE CSS support
2. Develop a hack proof Web Server
3. Kill Linux
4. Purchase OS X machines
5. Fire guy that photos our loading docks
6. Register all htomail domains
7. Breakfast at tiffanies
8. Laundry
9. Supplies computers to 3rd world countries that don't even have electricity.
10. Sleep

Re:Need a TODO list

[G-funk]

"Purchase feeble public access show, and exploit it"

I feel sorry for whoever that is.

Re:Need a TODO list

[vericgar]

<<6. Register all htomail domains>>

vericgar $ whois htomail.com

[...]

Organization:
Microsoft Corporation
Carolyn Gudmundson
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052
US
Phone: 425-882-8080
Fax..: 425-936-7329
Email: domains@microsoft.com

Registrar Name....: Register.com
Registrar Whois...: whois.register.com
Registrar Homepage: http://www.register.com

Domain Name: HTOMAIL.COM

Created on..............: Sat, Nov 29, 1997
Expires on..............: Tue, Nov 28, 2006
Record last updated on..: Wed, Aug 27, 2003

[...]

what if...

[itallushrt]

The clown that registered this domain used a email@hotmail.co.uk address for renewal notification, and just perhaps this said individual was on vacation, sick, or got fired until today / yesterday. Obviously he wouldn't be able to retrieve the email stating he needed to renew?

Yeah I know it's a dumb theory. Flamers and Trolls take your best shots.

Of course...

[Anonymous Coward]

this wouldn't be a problem if Microsoft had complete control over DNS, or the whole internet.

There's a point there somewhere. Hell if I know what it is, though.

Re:You girls are getting desperate

[rizzn]

[I suppose if the President of the U.S. was arrested for drunk driving and CNN decided to report on it, that that would be "pathetic" and "anti-Bush?"] Actually -- have you seen the state of political commentary these days?

They do...and it's $40,000

[ProfessionalCookie]

I was the domain renewal guy at Microsoft. You know there's a lot of domains to keep track of.

---
Will sit in front of computer for food.

Re:They do...and it's $40,000

[Jeffv323]

Key word there: was

Re:You girls are getting desperate

[pclminion]

Ah, this all explains why Slashdot decided TO REPORT the fact that the Linux kernel almost got backdoored yesterday. Thanks for the fucking enlightenment.

As for why it's news worthy, it's news worthy because MS made this mistake BEFORE, in 1999, with the UNITED STATES Hotmail. Regardless of the fact that the company is Microsoft that is both hilarious and pathetic.

Re:WHAT THE F$%!

[Sacarino]

It's difficult to be a good samaritan some days...

Come on now, it's hard to get a giant's attention when you're just a gnat buzzing in the wind. ;)

Re: your sig

[geeber]

Well, that is in interesting explanation. Too bad it is incorrect. Search through some dictionaries, and you will find that roughly half consider "whilst" to be anarchaic form of while, and the other half state it is primarily used in British English.

Re:AOL.com looks like it's in bigger trouble

[kalinh]

hmmm,

how do i mod myself down now...

Microsoft Outlook Calendar is good for this...

[billstewart]

You'd think that if they're using Outlook, they could put "Remember to renew all your domain names" in their Calendar.... But maybe the Hotmail folks are using Hotmail instead.

Re:Not a problem

[Patik]

"Honestly, who does use Hotmail anyway?"

People who travel a lot.

Web-based e-mail is so prevalent these days that having a Hotmail account for travel makes little sense. Even the cheapest web hosting companies offer it, and if you're traveling for business, you'd probably want to be using your company address (and I'm sure most companies have webmail as well).

To the original poster, Hotmail is useful for giving out to places that are likely to give you spam -- entering contests, buying online, posting to usenet, etc. Keeps your real (personal/business) e-mail pretty much spam free.

New Microsoft Business Model

[pulse2600]

1) Forget to renew domain
2) Let someone else renew it for you
3) ???
4) PROFIT!!!

Re:WHAT THE F$%!

[Kippesoep]

Seems like a gnat buzzing in the wind, taking Microsoft's pants with it. You'd think they'd take notice.

What a useless and an incomplete list without the

[roman_mir]

most important point:

11. Profit!

Re:WHAT THE F$%!

[rgraham]

Part of the story is that they were trying to contact Microsoft to transfer it back to them and Microsoft wouldn't pay attention. It's difficult to be a good samaritan some days...

What a wasted opportunity for a perfect "Ask Slashdot" question. I could see it now: "Ok, so I now have in my possession a rather popular domain name, passport.com, and I'm wondering what to do with it? Any /.'s out there have a good suggestion or two?"

Re:Not a problem

[NanoGator]

"Web-based e-mail is so prevalent these days that having a Hotmail account for travel makes little sense."

It's also the best known client.

"Even the cheapest web hosting companies offer it..."

It's still not free, plus if they change providers for whatever reason, they have to change addresses.

" and if you're traveling for business,"

Business travelers are not the only people who use Hotmail. When I wrote that, I was thinking of a friend of mine that is visiting the USA from Brazil right now.

In a similar vain..

[iantri]

In a similar vain..

When PriceWaterHouseCoopers decided to change their name to Introducing Monday (!!) they never bothered to register introducingmonday.co.uk. So somebody else did.

How would I contact Microsoft if I wanted to?

[Dominic_Mazzoni]

I think that the real issue here is that it's impossible to contact anyone important at a large company like Microsoft. Suppose I discovered that one of their domains just expired, or I found a new security hole in IE, or found out the identity of someone inside Microsoft who had been "leaking" builds of Longhorn, or something like that. What do I do? All of their public telephone numbers and email addresses get routed to minimum-wage drones who wouldn't understand what I'm talking about, much less even have the authority to contact somebody who does.

In the specific case of security holes, Microsoft has repeatedly complained when people publish exploits without contacting them first, and yet in many cases the researcher who found the problem had been trying to contact Microsoft for weeks without getting any response.

I suppose the best way I could think of might be to send email to individual Microsoft employees I know of who might be willing to listen - there are some who post regularly to public newsgroups and mailing lists (and even Slashdot!) and one of them might pay attention. But how long would it take them to figure out who to contact to fix the problem?

Not that it's better in many other large companies. Anyone know of any large corporations where they're actually handling this well?

Re:How would I contact Microsoft if I wanted to?

[m_pll]

If you google for contact+microsoft+security+email, the first result is this link: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin /alertus.asp

Yes, this is the right way to contact the MS Security Response Center. This is what most people who actually find vulnerabilities do. And no, it's not better to email individual employees - they will just forward your email to MSSRC.

Re:How would I contact Microsoft if I wanted to?

[dunelin]

I doubt that most discoveries you could make are that urgent. If you want to contact someone important, it's as easy as sending a letter through the US Mail. If it's so urgent that you think the world would be brought to its knees if Microsoft didn't intervene soon, overnight a letter to the corporate offices. The imporant decision-makers only work 9-5, so what's the point of sending an e-mail that won't be read till the next morning anyway?

Re:How would I contact Microsoft if I wanted to?

[louisv]

Not exactly what you were looking for, but this might help:

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/contactpr.asp

Re:How would I contact Microsoft if I wanted to?

[Dominic_Mazzoni]

Lots of people have responded with various ways to contact Microsoft, but the fact is that they get lots of junk, and as a result they miss out on a lot of interesting, useful mail people are sending them because the people they've hired to sort through their mail don't know what they're talking about.

How else do you explain that so many security researchers say that their emails to Microsoft were never returned?

I won't post anon...

[zoloto]

HEre is the website where you can find info about the company that purchaced the check on ebay.

As for your username... nothing I can do to find it :)

Re:I won't post anon...

[Darby]

As for your username... nothing I can do to find it :)

You could do what I did and look at the post directly above yours ( assuming you're in flat mode).

Re:hotmail

[Dudio]

Hotmail was migrated to W2K a couple years ago. They made a pretty big deal of it at the time, as I recall.

Meaning

[pommiekiwifruit]

IIRC "fag" and "faggot" both mean kindling wood (never mind about the meatballs in gravy!).

Cigarettes are generally burned (or placed behind the ear at a rakish angle). UKians sometimes refer to this usage.

In the olden days homosexuals (and witches and heretics) were burned. USians seems to want to keep that memory alive.

That is why I consider that word to be a meaningful (i.e. serious) insult, like for example asking a Jew to get "disinfected" (or whatever the german word was).

Re:Meaning

[ckaminski]

Homosexuals were burned? Really? In a concerted effort, like witches and heretics?? How come I've never heard this before?

I don't think Americans, yes, we've been Americans for 50+ years, we're STILL AMERICANS! want to keep this aspect of our history alive (should it be true), at least not most of us.

I too consider it an insult. UKians... oh that's a good one ;-)

Re:Meaning

[pommiekiwifruit]

When I say olden days I mean it :-)

• 390 - Roman Emperor Valentinian decreed burning at the stake as a fit punishment for homosexuals.
• 506 Visigoth Alaric II - burning at stake.
• 529 Byzantine Emperor Justinian - castration, torture then stake.
• 650 Spanish King Kindasvinth - castration.
• etc. etc.
• 1307 King Philip le Bel - Knights Templar - torture then burned.
• 1484 Pope Innocent VIII - Inquisition - "Convicted and burned."
• 14th & 15th century Florence - (over 18yo) - burned at stake.,
• 1616 Malta - burnt in ashes

However, after looking it up a little, that association of the word might be quite new (1914, USA) since the punishment in England was generally hanging rather than the stake.

I think in recent times the laws has mostly been against individuals rather than organisations, although the recent events in Malaysia (deputy prime minister jailed) would show such accusations are still used for political purposes.

• 1533 English Henry VII - hanging until dead. This law (which was in force on and off in England for centuries) was adopted by the 13 colonies.
• 1624 USA - Richard William Cornish - hanged (claimed non-consent).
• 1646 Manhatten - Jan Creoli - choked to death and burned to ashes (non-consent, but victim flogged also!)
• etc.etc.

So the majority of killing probably predates the USA.

UKians includes Ian Paisley but at the same time pisses him off :-)

Re:WHAT THE ...

[magarity]

you know how many hits I wouldn't gotten?!

Hardly any; your annual bandwidth quota would get exceded in a very short amount of time. Assuming your server could handle the traffic more than a few seconds. Any idea how many people read their mail from hotmail every day?

great, absolutly wonderfull...

[windex82]

95% of all computers are trusted to a manufacturer to cant get their shit together enough to remember to re-register their domain name, not ONCE but TWICE!

And to think people "rely" on this company for mission critical applications... absolutly wonderfull.

osxvnc.com

[linuxelf]

And, let's just say that you can no longer get VNC for Mac OS X at osxvnc.com either....

not only in UK

[PhiberOptix]

The same happens in Brazil (com.br).
I see the error messages all the time in our mail servers. I guess it's easier for millions of users to see the mail error, figure it out that the domain is wrong and re-send the message than some admins to do the same and configure the mx records apropriately...

Re:Not a problem

[millette]

from http://www.hollan.org/rmsvisit.html:

"Richard gets his email by building a compressed GNU zip archive on his mail server of his incoming mail, and transferring it to his laptop -- in our case, via an intermediate floppy. He then reads and queues responses on his laptop for later transmission by reversing the process."

That's Richard, as in Richard Stallman. Ok, so maybe not an example for everyone, but still interesting :)

Filters?

[commodoresloat]

This brings up the question of filtering websites. There are a lot of filters available that filter out adult sites for those who want to do that. My problem is that when I am looking for porn I often get sidetracked with news, weblogs, statistics, speeches, advertising, political websites, and other insignificant things that I would like to filter out. Hasn't someone built a proxy that will filter out all this extraneous information so I can focus on the important things on the web?

Re:Filters?

[ShadowBlasko]

" Hasn't someone built a proxy that will filter out all this extraneous information so I can focus on the important things on the web?"

I know this was a joke, but the usenet service (newsfeeds.com) I used to use actually *did* offer this type of filter service on their "adult" servers.

Filtered out the spam, the conversations, the whiny "please re-post blah blah" garbage. All you got was the pR0n you paid for.

But damn was that service expensive.

Re:Filters?

[taernim]

I agree... what an outrage! You should go to www.whitehouse.com and report that immediately! ;-)

Re:WHAT THE F$%!

[The Almighty Dave]

you can only legally steal domain names if you're a bunch of Tree huggin' hippies

Or a bunch of extremist animal lovin' hippies

Yeah, hotmail.co.uk too runs Linux-Apache

[vijayk]

Netcraft confirms the fact that hotmail.co.uk was running Linux-Apache combo. It's also saying the domain hotmail.co.uk "Failed to resolve hostname" since 6-Nov-2003. Netcraft on hotmail.co.uk

Maybe they won't be around...

[Kashif Shaikh]

10 years from now. We can only hope:)

And...

[Kashif Shaikh]

- People who change ISPs frequently
- Or people who used to change ISPs frequently and used hotmail, and now continue to use hotmail because everyone knows their email address
- Easy way to avoid viruses / worms
- easy to create multiple accounts to register at websites, shop, etc.

The question should be: why NOT use free webmail services? Less control & organization of your email. Lack of integration with desktop email clients(I think Outlook 2k+ can dl mail from hotmail).

Motorola

[HFShadow]

I had a similar instance with motorola, their asp page was broken one day and gave away the filename to the include with their database passwords, which was readable via the web.

I called their tech support number after not being able to find any other way to contact them and explained it to a very slow lady. I guess it worked because the next afternoon it was fixed.

Re: your sig

[richie2000]

I am already worshipping the Comic. It is indeed nifty.

(Hook, line, sinker and a subscription to Angler's Weekly)

Oh I wish it could have been me!

[L-s-L69]

They could have offered me money, sexual favours, anything but id cling to that domain name through every court in the land. That and I'd redirect it to gnu.org or linux.com.

Re:WHAT THE F$%!

[Starve]

Welcome to Microsoft. Would you like that slice of dysfunction with or without evil empire sauce?

Re: your sig

[tiled_rainbows]

Yeah, it's the past tense in British English. Maybe it doesn't apply in the US.

Re: your sig

[geeber]

Well, the Cambridge dictionary only says that "whilst" is a formal UK version of "while". It says nothing about tense. I would think they of all people would understand British English.

Forgot?!

[matsmats]

Someone paid for it again? They're speculating in it, those cheap Microsoft bastards!

Mats