5/31    btw, just to clear it up.  Hotmail runs iis/win2k:
        http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=www.hotmail.com
        \_ Yeah we know.  They moved it off FreeBSD because it was too
           embarrassing for bill.
        \_ Not exactly.  The front end is several thousand PCs running
           windows, but on the back they are one of Sun's largest customers
           in the western US.  Hundreds of UE 4500s with something like half
           a petabyte worth of T3 disk arrays.  Incidentally, when they
           switched from freebsd to windows for the front end, they scaled
           up the number of machines handling the front end by a third.
           \_ this is pretty awesome, if true. Do you have something to
              substantiate this claim?
              \_ It sounds like something called a Trade Secret to me.
                 You should be grateful you even know. Either that or
                 it is just bullshit. I guess you have to decide which
                 is more likely.
                 \_ hmm... well, its on the motd, so...
              \_ I know some people there.  If you're curious about their
                 setup, why don't you just email root@hotmail and ask them
                 about it?  They run the largest mail server in the world;
                 do you think they're not proud of what they've built?
         \_ http://www.microsoft.com/technet/migration/hotmail/default.asp
            \_ "FreeBSD, a UNIX-like system similar to the Linux operating
               system, was used to run ......"  M$ is so creative when it
               comes to bashing Linux.
               \_ how is that sentence "bashing Linux"?
                  \_ First they're replacing FreeBSD with Win2K for whatever
                     weaknesses they claim FreeBSD has, then they're trying to
                     imply that those weaknesses also exist in Linux by
                     unnecessarily mentioning Linux in the document even though
                     Linux has nothing to do with the Hotmail servers.
                     \_ well, they provide this handy footnote at the very end
                        that rectifies the implied bashing of both platforms:
                        "There obviously are multi-tasking/multi-process
                        solutions that Hotmail could have leveraged under
                        FreeBSD. However, they would require making
                        application modifications and rework to implement. So,
                        this was an optimum opportunity to examine other
                        options and platforms."   (no comment...)