This isn't exactly Apple-related, but it gave us a chuckle, so bear with. We assume you know what Hotmail is-- the largest free web-based email service, with over fifty million users. You may also know that a couple of years ago, Microsoft bought it, putting it under the MSN name. And you may have heard about Microsoft's embarrassing attempts to migrate the Unix-based Hotmail architecture over to a Windows NT infrastructure; because of NT's scalability problems, all efforts to make Hotmail a Windows-driven technology crashed and burned. To this day, Hotmail's running on Unix, much to Microsoft's dismay. (To be fair, Microsoft's not the only company not using its own operating system to host its web site; Apple's main site was once hosted exclusively on Macs, but is now served by Unix systems.)

And now Hotmail's the source of another embarrassment up there in Redmond. Faithful viewer John Haytol forwarded us a CNNfn article about how Hotmail services went down last weekend-- because Microsoft forgot to pay their $35 domain name registration bill. Apparently Hotmail relies on Microsoft Passport to allow users to log in and check their mail-- and Microsoft had neglected to pay the annual renewal fee for PASSPORT.COM. So when Passport stopped working, Hotmail did, too. Millions of people were inconvenienced because of a $35 late payment. Think of it this way: if Bill Gates' entire fortune were represented by a 3 GB hard disk, that $35 comprises the letter "q" stored somewhere on the drive.

But here's the real irony: as pointed out by faithful viewer Jeff Adkins, CNET reports that a lone Linux programmer named Michael Chaney actually got the Hotmail site working again by paying the registration fee himself, with a personal credit card on Christmas morning. Microsoft claims to be "profusely grateful" to Chaney, which is why they generously offered to-- get this-- "repay the $35." Ooooooo. What a lucky guy that Chaney is! He did a good deed for one of the richest corporations on earth, and in return, they're even offering to pony up the $35 he spent for them. Evidently Microsoft has been overcome with Christmas spirit, because they didn't even charge a 15% weekend transaction surcharge. Wow, it's just like A Christmas Carol, isn't it? For what it's worth, Chaney describes the whole event on his Linux-driven web page, and hints that maybe Microsoft should consider kicking him a little something extra for his trouble. It'll be interesting to hear whether his hints amount to anything or not.