Sometimes tips come in that seem too good to be true. Take today, for example. I got a tip that Bill Gates’ new site, The Gates Notes, was running on a Linux-powered server. This would be ironic since Gates is of course the founder of Microsoft, which is Linux’s biggest competitor in the server market. It would be the equivalent of catching Gates or CEO Steve Ballmer being caught using (and not just signing) a MacBook at a conference. So is it true?
A quick search on Netcraft shows that thegatesreport.com sure enough looks to be running on the Linux OS. But wait. The results also say that web server is Microsoft-IIS/7.0. That doesn’t sound right, so what gives? Well, it turns out that because Gates is using Akamai to mirror his sites’ content in the event of massive traffic (or more specifically, something like a DDoS attack), this data is being filtered through there. Akamai uses Linux for its servers, so that’s what OS is being passed back to Netcraft. But at the same time, to make things more confusing, the Akamai servers are still passing back the correct server header for Gates’ site: Microsoft-IIS/7.0.
How do I know this? Because the same thing happened in 2003 when it was humorously, but erroneously reported that Microsoft was using Linux servers to run microsoft.com. In fact, the same thing was going on: Microsoft was routing its traffic through Akamai, which again, runs Linux boxes. Microsoft has since apparently changed to its own servers since then so that they now correctly return Windows Server 2003 as their OS. That is likely what The Gates Report is running on as well given the Microsoft-IIS/7.0 web servers.
So sadly, no nice bit of irony here, it would seem. But if you haven’t yet done so, take the opportunity to check out Gates’ site, it’s really well done and full of good information.
[photo: flickr/world economic forum]
Maybe but it’s also running ASP.NET which is pretty Microsofty.
No, No and No. Everything there has “DOS INSIDE” (TM).
HaHaHa…
asp.net is a platform, not a server.
Yes, but ASP.NET only runs on Windows boxes.
ASP.NET runs in MS server only, MS’s IIS runs in MS server only, AKAMAI runs Linux but passes WIndows Headers. It’s kind of confusing … probably in the near future we can have ALL MS platforms run in WINE. This way might be fully protected including viruses. Just a thought :-)
Uhm, Mono can do ASP.NET and it runs everywhere (even on windows).
yea very true the website is totally on ASP.net and which is microsofty does the sever matters?
You can’t run ASP on anything other than MS’s IIS, so yeah… the server matters.
ASP.NET runs on Mono as well (which runs on almost anything).
Nice observation. Would be lovely if he really did run it on Linux wouldn’t it?
It would be quite unjustified no matter how much one would like it happen.
Economically, the Linux price advantage wouldn’t apply to MS since their own software is free to them and strategically, MS has to eat their own dog food to be able to tweak it as needed.
Boy, MS should start worrying that it is even becoming irrelevant as a punchline.
False. The server is Windows and IIS 7. Here are the headers:
HTTP/1.x 200 OK
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Last-Modified: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 19:58:38 GMT
Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.0
X-AspNet-Version: 2.0.50727
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
…
The real servers is at
C:\Users\Chris>ping thegatesnotes.com
Pinging thegatesnotes.com [209.170.90.27] with 32 bytes of data:
The Akamai server is mirroring on a DNS balancer at www
C:\Users\Chris>ping http://www.thegatesnotes.com
Pinging a756.b.akamai.net [96.17.15.97] with 32 bytes of data:
Any good CDN pro knows this. Perhaps you need a consultant over at TC?
I dealt with Akamai for a good while, before I deprecated it. LOLZ x 10 million + 1
right. did you read the post?
“A quick search on Netcraft shows that thegatesreport.com sure enough is running on the Linux OS. ”
This is false. Only http://www.domain is mirrored by Akamai in any given case.
The domain.com without the www is always the source. Akamai goes and fetches the content from there in a reverse proxy type setting in most cases and mirrors it.
Just like TechCrunch ran Varnish. I dunno if you still run it, but it’s the same principle.
That is the old way of doing CDN. We are going to show people the new way.
okay fair enough, i’ll update the wording slightly, but point is, as you say, no it’s not.
Worse it’s asking to install Microsoft Silverlight!
http://www.thegatesnotes.com/Important-Trips/article.aspx?ID=69
Good to know I am not the only person in the world who hates silverlight.
@K
“Good to know I am not the only person in the world who hates silverlight”
– I was riding the same boat as you did about silverlight, although now, I find it lucrative to use.
Tell me? Is it the burden of installing it, just like any other adobe flash player plugin? Or just the feeling of being alienated to a new plug for your PC/Netbook/Laptop?
If you happen to fall on those categories, then let me assure you, silverlight is one of the smoothest plugs you’ll ever use. Have you tried to use it on Bing Maps? http://bit.ly/bing-maps-beta-review
It looks so smooth, it made Google Maps AJAX look ‘constricted”
Thank you…
can someone ban this troll already??
Your lack of a professional attitude here doesn’t leave me with much confidence. Don’t start out by saying ‘lol’ and bagging the competition, seriously.
Right, but did you know Bill Gates is not administrating that website, so does it really mater what “they” are running on?
I guess iPad exhausted everyone :)
Wow your a stupid sand nigger. WTF. FYL.
That’s ironic. He doesn’t trust his own products?
Read the fucking article.
haha. now I know what they are saying if someone tells me to “RTFA!”
you may have just coined a new phrase. :)
it took me a while to get that one too. i kept seeing it on reddit and i was like ratify the fucking what? and i just kept resisting googling or using urban dictionary. i got it after a couple tries.
You got it after a couple of tries? Congratulations! You must be so smart. Because, like, mashing your mind to pieces trying to figure out an acronym is soooooo much more intelligent than taking 3 seconds to just go look it up. Bragging about it on TechCrunch is obviously even smarter. Do you have a place online where you give even more Pro tips like this one out for free?
Cool story bro.
Here is the pastebin version of my comment in case the original comment I posted had too many urls and triggered your Word press filter.
http://pastebin.com/m3aa1162a
the server was using the Microsoft-IIS/7.0
http://whois.domaintools.com/thegatesnotes.com
wasn’t it enough that there are pages ending in “.aspx”?
haaha noobs
Ha, nice. Although it could be running with a Mono implementation.
I can still have jsps running with aspx extension.
Also, IIS7 only runs on Windows Server 2008, so Gates is running newer software than Microsoft is running.
that’s interesting.
No it’s not. Microsoft.com was running on the beta version of Windows Server 2008 for a while, even before it was released to public.
I just checked, currently http://www.microsoft.com is running on Microsoft-IIS/7.5, which you only get with Windows 7 and its counterpart: Windows Server 2008 R2.
Microsoft.com is running newer stuff than Gates… which is a typical Microsoft-policy on their own products: use it as soon as possible. This is called dogfooding :)
On their Ops-blog you can read some more, for example http://blogs.technet.com/mscom/archive/2007/09/07/the-tasty-morsels-found-in-dogfood-mscom-ops-top-10-changes-in-iis7-0.aspx
Jesus, could the site’s font get any smaller? I just had to zoom-in (and that only happens once every few months).
Yes me too..Do n’t know how the hell these guys can design like this!
Use Firefox… and press command and plus to increase font size.
Calm down folks, it is possible to run ASP.NET on Apache.
;)
It’s possible to run it on Linux too with mod_mono, and even on Mac.
But would the people behind Bill’s website really want to do that?
For those of you from the Java world, mod_mono is like mod_jk, except that instead of passing requests from virtual hosts to Tomcat, they are passed to a CLI mod mono server instead.
His web developers just tested this on IE only. take a look at the W3C validator results:
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.thegatesnotes.com/Default.aspx&charset=(detect+automatically)&doctype=Inline&group=0
148 errors != fully compliant website
Yes, that is true of almost all of the Microsoft websites that I know of.
Too bad there is not a code filter in the CDN toolchain which automatically cleans all that up???
oh wait, there soon will be. Please join us at the Marriott hotel in Marina del rey on April 23rd 2010 at 6PM to hear more…
or they could learn to write valid html
Hey that’s my birthday. :)
Cant expect them to test it on every backwater browser out there. Just go with the majority browser and let god sort out the rest.
Would it not make more sense to make a site standards-compliant and then sort out any issues for non-compliant browsers?
So to summarise this article:-
Is Bill Gates’ New Website Really Running On Linux?
No.
(another great TC article).
+1 :)
lol. but the comments section is full of good comments, and mg really did try with this post. it’s devoid of anything funny and all about facts/getting facts right, or trying to find bg slipping up and being the first to post that or something that makes tc come off as know it alls. whatever it was, i read it, and the comments section is better, but the comments wouldn’t be here if he didn’t post this particular piece. so it’s all a codependant circlejerk.
This is crazy! Bill Gates on Linux??
this has got to be one of the worst news stories ever. well done guys.
lol. worse than the ipad has flash story? even despite adobe’s bitching. that post made me sad for a moment for biggs.
Dang still no one asked if its slow news day.
Meh, I would laugh more if Bill’s website was running on Apple’s servers.
hahahahaa…..
http://www.google.com/products?q=apple+xserve
Too rich for his blood! HP is about the best deal you can get for the price. Dell isn’t too bad either.
Writing code is boring …. :(
ha-ha-ha :D
Yes, that is true of almost all of the Microsoft websites that I know of.
Too bad there is not a code filter in the CDN toolchain which automatically cleans all that up???
oh wait, there soon will be. Please join us at the Marriott hotel in Marina del rey on April 23rd 2010 at 6PM to hear more…
This would be really funny if it was actually true, good article anyways.
This was originally solved in 2003 by the way.
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2003/08/17/wwwmicrosoftcom_runs_linux_up_to_a_point_.html
Which shows how innovative CDN services have gotten over the last 7 years. It works in exactly the same way as it did a decade ago and nobody has innovated. This was a space with huge innovation potential. I say was because the next step has been taken already. It’s at the deployment stage now.
Are you really going to try to turn this thread into an ad for your CDN company (or whatever it is)?
Funny you should talk about this. I know for a FACT that Bill and Melinda Gates foundation runs on a ESX server (VMWARE). I’m sure they are running Linux, Server 2008 also has the capability to run Linux programming and act as a Linux server will all resources BUT still be a Windows box (Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications). They also recently release Linux code to the open source development, coincidence? IDK
BTW, Firewalls and IDS can filter and change header. You can fake headers too. If it was a ESX server (Virtualized OS on VMWare) it will show as Linux. That’s all I can say. :-) thanks about it.
If it was an ESX server it would not say Linux, it would say whatever the guest OS version is.
Just because an OS is virtualising at the bare metal level doesn’t mean the virtual instance of a server instantly becomes a hybrid OS. The host server doesn’t interfere with higher level stuff in the TCP stack it only deals with the physical layer.
You are correct. I was thinking of the specific development for that particular server. Using the root IP (If you found It.) would show up Linux (The ESX server), if you were to ping the OS hosted would show its OS Based IP. All of these machines use an IP for service, that’s what I’m mentioning. The reason I know is I’ve actually worked on this server via my country. Sorry for the bad English.
Some of you may not have read this, so I am posting it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jan/25/bill-gates-web-censorship-china
Bill is approving China standards compliance for web content. The title of the article is:
“Web censorship in China? Not a problem, says Bill Gates”
Exerpt:
“Gates criticised his rival’s decision and insisted that agreeing to Beijing’s demands was just part of doing business in the country. “You’ve got to decide: do you want to obey the laws of the countries you’re in or not? If not, you may not end up doing business there,” he told ABC’s Good Morning America programme.”
Although I object to the spelling of criticize and program, I think Bill is simply trying to say that making money is better than not making money, and I agree.
Christopher,
You are a complete idiot.
The article you post and the spelling you object to are both British. That’s how they roll over there.
However, you, as a complete idiot, cannot even spell “excerpt”.
For a geek, you are quite stupid and the intelligent people here object to you!
curl -i -X HEAD http://www.thegatesnotes.com
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Last-Modified: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 19:58:53 GMT
Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.0
X-AspNet-Version: 2.0.50727
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
Cache-Control: public, max-age=12124
Or you could have seen that many of the pages have .aspx at the end of them denoting .Net
Or you could have found something more relevant to write about and stop wasting our time.
Huh?. http://www.thegatesreport.com is on Sedo auction.
What’s going on?. Did Bill forget to pay his renewal?.
Hahahahaha ….
At least this is not as bad as when Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz said she thinks the Yahoo! map site sucks and she personally uses google maps herself.
I also remember in an interview when the guy asked Bill “what OS do you have the most regrets about?” and he laughed and said “lets wait until we see how Vista turns out first” haha basically saying he thinks Vista is their worst OS.
nobody can say it is successful, even Bill, but I’m using W7 since beta editions and no error or disturbing thing so far.
There is a such thing as sleeping with the enemy, ya know…
I did check the first day the site was announced and concluded the same. After the purchase of hotmail, it was running on Linux for almost two years.
But some of MS sites (and Gate owned sites CorbisImages.com) still lag in upgrading their servers to the latest version of Windows servers.
When MS was pushing Windows 2008 to the enterprises, some of their own servers were running Windows 2003.
Hotmail ran FreeBSD.
Even though Linux is better than windows as server, but I do not think Bill Gate’s employees will use Linux as Gate’s website, that’s very foolish work and they smart enough
cdnpal, could you PLEASE STOP your audacious advertisements?
good afternoon.For those of you from the Java world, mod_mono is like mod_jk, except that instead of passing requests from virtual hosts to Tomcat, they are passed to a CLI mod mono server instead.
regards from Indonesia