Actually, I don't think this is an operating system feature (when I've seen it, some programs in the operating system exhibited the behavior while others didn't). I think it is just C coders using atol() with an argument of 0 instead of with an argument of 10. I personally consider such as a bug in said C code, but I've seen it enough that I encourage everyone to take your warning seriously.

Update: Well, I would hope that this bug isn't present in the basic inet libraries on any operating system...

        - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")