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Microsoft Using Linux To Optimize Skype Traffic
An anonymous reader writes "A security researcher believes that Microsoft has overhauled Skype, with thousands of Linux boxes serving as the 'supernodes' that route calls between users of the voice-over-IP service. Kostya Kortchinsky of Immunity Security 'discovered the Linux supernodes using a Skype probing technique he and colleague Fabrice Desclaux first demonstrated in 2006,' according to Ars Technica. The drastic infrastructure change doesn't affect the peer-to-peer nature of the calls between Skype users."
Next you'll start bragging about how Metro on a tablet kicks the crap out of pretty much all the other tablet OSes (been running it as such since December and ... well it does, have the other too... use them as coffee cup coasters now), and how the biggest VoiP provider in Europe delivers touch screen telephones running on Wintel and how Microsoft products currently have the best documentation (start with MSDN for developers and move through all the other products and when that's not good enough look to Microsoft press) out there. Or how like after 28 years, X11 still doesn't have a reliable way to configure network adapters without modifying the /etc directory or how after playing catch-up for years, DirectX passed and left behind OpenGL in features and consistency.... hell, you need to read two books on OpenGL these days just to learn the "best practice" method of uploading a vertex list.
Pretty sure that while we're all talking about how irrelevant they are in modern culture, they're just sitting back and letting us all buy their products and saying "Well... we'd rather be considered irrelevant than evil... Google and be evil... we'll just take the money and be happy and chug along making new stuff". I think that Microsoft's fading to behind the scenes might have been the most profitable thing they ever did. Let's face it, the justice department is pretty much leaving them alone, anti-trust suits have faded away, they're just making money like they always have and "Don't be evil Google" and "Think Different Apple" are now the new companies to be paying out fortunes in settlements while Microsoft just keeps one making products and selling them.