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I was born in and grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee and am a graduate of Georgia Tech. If you've ever lived in or visited the southeastern United States during the fall, you know that there is nothing in the world like southern college football and their fans. Really, it is a living, breathing entity that consumes many a southerner like nothing else on fall weekends. There is a special game between two of the South's finest universities ... well, they're universities anyway ... the University of Georgia and the University of Florida. Many people refer to this annual gridiron matchup as the "World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party." Mind you, I've never been to one of these events in person; I guess I never had the desire. I do, however, know many Florida graduates and Georgia graduates that have been to more than their share, and I've heard their stories about it. It sounds like an interesting time. The name that this annual clash has been given got me thinking though. Now I know that Georgia does have a large student body and a very large fan population. And Florida's a large university also with probably an equally large fan base. So I can imagine that this event is probably a pretty big happening. And I do know first-hand that Georgia and Florida graduates and fans do like cocktails of one form or another. So I'm pretty much convinced that it's a pretty large cocktail party of sorts. I'm sure if someone challenged the qualifier of being the largest in the world, there'd be some Georgia fan who'd be willing to drop everything and comb the earth searching for every outdoor cocktail party known to the human race to make sure that none were bigger. Given all that as truth, the one word that bugs me is the word 'outdoor.' It's not called the "World's Largest." It's the "World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party." That mathematics training from Georgia Tech kicked in and got me thinking. If someone went to all the trouble of making sure that the word 'outdoor' made it into the name of this thing, they must have done it for a reason. And the logical reason that jumps out at me is that there must be an 'indoor' cocktail party that's actually larger than this most grandiose of brain cell killing southern traditions. And if there is not one that can be classified as 'indoors' in the strictest sense of the word, then there must be some hybrid indoor/outdoor cocktail party that just blows this thing away. In my best imitation of Jethro Bodine, I got down on my hands and knees and commenced to ciphering to try to break this thing wide open. Well, it didn't take me long after that to realize what that cocktail party is. Of course, it's the Internet! Why I'll bet even some Georgia undergrads in their most post-game fogginess could see it. The world wide web is just one humongous cocktail party! Simple as that! Let me do some 'plaining to try to make this a little clearer.
Now, if you will, imagine a cocktail party taking place in a very large room. I mean a really big room! In the room are a large number of people, and nothing else. No furniture. No drinks. Nothing, but people and whatever they brought with them. Well, wait a minute. If there were no drinks, then I guess it wouldn't be much of a cocktail party now would it. All right, throw the drinks back into the picture. Now as it turns out, there are three types of people at this cocktail party. Some people in the room are carrying absolutely nothing except for a stack of yellow stickies and a pencil. These people are very inquisitive types. They are always seeking information; always asking questions. Other people have with them one of those portable, accordion file folders. Now these people aren't particularly inquisitive, but boy are they happy to help other people out. If someone has a question or is looking for something in particular, they are happy to give them whatever they want, provided they have can find it in their accordion file, of course. A third set of people have nothing with them like the first set, but they are wearing running shoes. These are really strange people. They don't own anything. They don't ask many questions. They don't even answer questions. They just like to move things around, and as quickly as they can. I guess that explains the shoes. If someone hands them something, and says, "Take this over to Bobby Joe in the corner of the room over there," boy they're off in a flash. After they hand this whatever-it-was to Bobby Joe, then they just stand around and wait for someone else to hand them something. They really live a pretty sad life. Reminds me somewhat of a football game in Athens, Georgia on a fall Saturday afternoon. Not really a lot of thinking going on there; just a lot of mindless running around. That's it. That's the internet. Nothing more; nothing less. It's just a big cocktail party, in a very large room with these three different types of people. Sounds pretty boring doesn't it? Well, the inner workings of the WWW are pretty boring in reality. It's pretty much the same thing repeated ad nauseum. Keep reading, and I'll do some more 'plaining.
Since everyone in the south goes by their initials, we're going to give these three types of cocktail party goers some initials. The first group, the inquisitive ones, we'll call WB (pronounced, dubyuh bee). The second group, the ones that are happy to answer questions, we'll call WS (pronounced similarly, dubyuh ess). And the last group, those mindless runners, we'll call NI (pronounced, en eye).
Now here's what happens at this party. The WBs repeatedly jot down
notes on their yellow stickies and ask the NIs to carry the notes to one of the
WSs. Not just any WS, but a specific WS. Like, "Hey, NI, take this note and
give it to WS sitting over there in the corner next to the fireplace. NI
happily takes the note, races over to the WS sitting in the corner next to the
fireplace, and hands him/her the note. Figure one shows this particular note
which was delivered.
In its simplest form, a website is merely a structured set of files located on a computer (web server) somewhere in the world connected to the internet. No one will see these files unless they make a connection to this computer and ask to see one of the files (web pages). When someone does ask to see one of these files, the computer (web server), which houses your files, will send the requested file to the requestor's computer. What the requestor's computer does with this file is of no interest to the web server. The web server simply receives requests and responds to them by sending the requested file(s) to the computer that requested them. If the requesting computer understands the format of the file(s) that were sent, it will display them in your web browser. If it doesn't understand them, you'll probably get some sort of error message. That's all there is to surfing the web, really. The whole thing is very cordial. The internet is just a large mass of polite computers asking of or responding to other polite computers. Think of the cocktail party before everyone gets all messy.
These polite computers can be placed into two categories, servers and clients. The servers' main goal in life is to respond to requests, politely of course. The clients' main goal in life is to ask for files from the servers and display them in a web browser.