Please Don't Use Port 80 (Unless You Are My Web Server)

I recently went to run a sample app which used port 80 for its web UI. Despite the fact that this strikes me as a horrible default(1. port 80 is the default for a web server so if you have one you can expect conflicts, 2. linux users can't touch port 80 unless they are root), I was shocked to find that something on my Windows XP laptop was already using that port. No web server was up and I only had a few programs running. I decided to go the old-fashioned route and popped open a command prompt:


> netstat -ao

Proto	Local Address	Foreign Address	State	PID
...
TCP	LEELAPTOP:http	LEELAPTOP:0	LISTENING	5108
...

> tasklist /?
...
> tasklist /FI "PID eq 5108"

Image Name	PID	Session Name	Session#	Mem Usage
Skype.exe	5108	Console	0	43,008 K

http://hasin.wordpress.com/2007/06/28/damn-why-the-hell-skype-is-blocking-port-80/!?

So it turns out this has been a "feature" of skype for a very long time. To their credit, this was insanely easy to turn off (Tools->Advanced->Connection and uncheck "Use port 80 and 443 as alternatives for incoming connection"). But I'm still shocked/amazed that this would be on by default.