Four Island

Hello, it's me again! Before you scream and run away to the funny farm where life is beautiful all the time, and I'll be happy to see those nice young men in their clean white coats and they're coming to take me away ha ha, they're coming to take me away, LISTEN. Yes, I'm ranting about something in uppercase letters that doesn't pertain to the English language. Shock and horror.

Anyway, this rant is mainly about my "No WWW" policy and EDUCATING the CHILDREN with THE TRUTH. THAT'S RIGHT LITTLE JOHNNY, THAT WASN'T SANTA CLAUS UNDER THE MISTLETOE! IT WAS YOUR REAL FATHER! Um, anyway, I felt the need to do this because first of all, I run Four Island at a Class B no-www compliance level and I've never actually talked about it and because last week, after explaining a bit about how the World Wide Web was not the same thing as the Internet to my cousin, she rebounded with this: "So, does that mean that Four Island isn't part of the World Wide Web because it doesn't have a www?"

No, Keke Palmer, it doesn't. (Lol, seriously, no offense, I like ranting! PLEASE DUN KILL ME- static) Let's begin with what a URL actually needs to be part of the World Wide Web. No, it's not the "www.", it's the "http://" that most people have only seen in their community college's Computing 101 course where they get to learn how to increase the font size in Microsoft Internet Explorer 2.03. The World Wide Web (which was invented by Tim Burners Lee, who is awesome) actually goes by another, less common to non-techy people, name: The Hypertext Transfer Protocol. I'm not really going to go into it much because I'm afraid my popcorn will get cold but basically, the Internet is full of many, many different ways to transfer information and the way you use the Internet to see webpages is HTTP. That's what that "http://" in front of URLs means; that it's going to let you see a webpage or a picture or a sound file. Or a picture of a sound file... or something like that. The reason that it's necessary is because, as I said earlier, there are many different ways of transferring information on the Internet and you have to tell your computer which one you want. However, many people don't know this because most web browsers created after 1650 automatically add the "http://" if you "forget" (read: don't realize the existence or necessity of) it.

On the other hand, there's "www." I have witnessed some horrible things with "www."s such as someone reciting a link to someone at a computer and the person at a computer MANUALLY ADDS IN a www. even if the other person didn't say to add one. I see people go "Hey, let's Google that" (which, by the way, you shouldn't say because it's trademark infringement (yes, I went the Googleplex last week and it was awesome (YOU GET FREE CANDY AND SODA! SO WORKING THERE! :P))) and go to their computer and type in "WWW.GOOGLE.COM". Yes, in all caps, but that's not the point; the point is that they added four completely unnecessary characters to what they had to type WHICH MADE THEM MORE SUSCEPTIBLE TO CARPEL TUNNEL! SEE, FOLKS? USING WWW. IN FRONT OF EVERY URL CAN KILL YOU! DON'T DO IT!

The use of "www." in front of URLs most likely came from the old standard of putting your servers at subdomains corresponding to their function, such as "www" for web servers, "mail" or "smtp" for email servers and "ftp" for FTP servers. However, THIS ISN'T NECESSARY! IT'S JUST A STANDARD! In fact, as some of you may know, if you leave out the www. in a URL.... IT WILL STILL WORK! OH MY GOD! HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?!?!?! It's possible due to a magical thing call DNS and the kindness of your local detergent salesperson.

The reason why I don't like "www."s is because it makes me angry when I see people think that it's necessary and that the Internet is the same thing as the World Wide Web and was invented by some guy named Bob. I'm sure some guy named Bob has set up an intranet in his local laundromat that wants to go "TOTALLY DOT COM", but he didn't invent The Internet. Also, I think domains look prettier without the "www." in front. www.fourisland.com. fourisland.com. Yeah, someone's winning Hottest Domain Of The Year.

Also, while, I'm at it, no, Obama does not have a button that can turn off the Internet. There is no conspiracy or CIA cover-up because IT'S PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT BLOWING UP PLANET EARTH. (However, you could theoretically disable the Internet for people who aren't insane and memorize IP addresses by blowing up the 13 root nameservers of the Internet, but they're heavily protected (seriously, people have tried to attack them. Twice). Wow, that would be an AWESOME movie: "NO! WE HAVE TO SAVE THE INTERNET!!!! NAMESERVER G IS GOING DOWN! HAND ME THAT ETHERNET CABLE! WHY ISN'T DMAP INSTALLED ON THIS COMPUTER?!?!?")

I'm sorry, I'm off to file copyright papers. That idea is just too awesome to let go.