here ya go
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307881
I've been able to read/copy files from my ntfs partition through OS X without any third party software...I just can't write anything to that partition.
Yep, same here. If you have Leopard (although I think earlier versions of OS X can do it too) you can read/copy/see/whatever an NTFS partition, just not write to it.
Under Windows (on an NTFS partition) you can't read or write (or even see for that matter) to OS X (the HFS+ partition).
Honestly, after have both Vista (mostly for gaming) and Leopard (for everything else), I haven't found it a big deal. If I ever did need to move something to the NTFS partition I just use a flash drive (which I've formatted as FAT....4 GB flash drive is like $20), and like I said, if I needed to copy anything from the NTFS drive I can just do it under OS X.
The thing that sucks about FAT is there's a 4GB file size limit (among many other things). Plus, it's older than dirt.