[tlug] Absurd DNS failures

["Norman Diamond" <ndiamond@example.com>]

When dialled up from Linux, the nslookup command automatically contacts my
ISP's DNS servers and resolves names like www.yahoo.co.uk, www.yahoo.co.jp,
and www.att.com.  But it fails with names like www.yahoo.com -- it says that
it cannot reach any name servers.  This has been reproduced a dozen times
one day and a dozen times the next day.

When dialled up from Windows XP, the nslookup command automatically contacts
my ISP's DNS servers and resolves all of those names.

So is there something about the combination of US domain names and Linux and
my ISP's DNS servers that causes failure?  No, that is not it, because of
one more test.

Back to Linux, and something that I only reproduced twice in one day because
this was enough to persuade me that this is unbelievable.
"nslookup www.asia.microsoft.com" found CNAME records for microsoft.com
and listed several addresses starting with 207.46.
But "nslookup microsoft.com" timed out and said it could not reach any name
servers.

SuSE 8.1, but does it matter, this situation is unbelievable anyway.

What is going on?