Question The Answers

Almost no matter who you are, it ain't gonna take more'n one hand to tally that up.  I'm not talking INTERNET...but WEB!  I've been getting email for years and years, but I've been ON the web since the summer of '94.   Almost five years.  There's some who got me beat...but not many!

What I've learned during that time, I could put in a book, but it wouldn't sell, and it would be boring as hell to write.  I've learned about winsocks, url's, hyperlinks, modems, stop words, 404 errors, DNS servers, domain name construction, html conventions and so much more. 

I've learned how to speed my downloads, "back up" inside a url until I get to a valid site, how to pop the hood on my browser and tinker with its innards, how to monitor my system's performance and tweak it here and there.  Granted, most of it is useless trivia in the real world.  However, when someone asks me in the cyber world, "How do I...?"  I usually know.  That's gotta be worth something!

So, I've decided to ask basic questions of myself, and respond with erudite and exact truths you won't find, even in the "Whatever for Dummies" series.

The WWW isn't a THING at all.  It's a "state of being."  Sometimes it's healthy, other times its arteries and veins are clogged with crap...this is called "spam."  The bain of cyberdom!

OK...real answer. The WWW is part of the Internet.  What makes it different and unique is that it enables us to "talk" to any other computer in the world that is also connected to the Internet.  This is possible due to a vague and mystifying thing called a "protocol."   This protocol  has a name...TCP/IP.  What a LOSER name, but we'd all be talking to ourselves if it didn't exist, so guess we can cut the designers SOME slack.

The Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol...which condenses to the lovely acronym we know and love so well...is HOW our machines reach out and touch each other. It's how we get touched back, too.  It's got to be on BOTH ends for it to work.  Transmission and reception go hand in glove.

We have transmission and reception protocols inside our bodies.  Touch a really hot surface...like ANYTHING in Texas during July...and your finger tells you, "OUCH!"  There was transmission and reception there! And a scorched finger, to boot.

Couple of things happened.  Brain tells finger to touch and muscles move finger.  Finger does as ordered and touches, say...Fort Worth.  Ft. Worth radiates heat, nerves in finger feel heat, tell brain..."NO touch...too HOT!"

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