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cache
case-sensitive
client
compression
cookie |
cache
Say "cash." Have you noticed that
once you've visited a particular Web page, if you
click to it again it usually appears onscreen faster?
That's your cache at work. A cache is an area of
your computer's memory or its hard drive that stores
Web text and images you've already seen. When your
browser asks to see those things again, the computer
has them on hand and doesn't have to go get it from
the Net.
case-sensitive
Case-sensitive refers to whether or not a given
software program, or a communications protocol such
as IP, requires you to type with strict attention
to upper- or lower-case characters. If a program
sees the letters "UPS" and "ups"
as the same, it is not case-sensitive. If it finds
them different, then it is. Case-sensitivity comes
in handy if, say, you're searching for information
on Franklin Pierce but prefer not to suffer matches
having to do with earlobes, navels, and tongues.
client
Picture the Web as a business, with yourself
as the client. You ask the Web for certain services
and the Web provides them. Now just substitute the
word "server"
for "business,"and you'll understand client/server
communications. Client software interprets the information
servers send out. Your browser (and most other Internetapplications
for that matter: e-mail, FTP, Telnet, etc.) is a
piece of client software. Clientssend queries to
various servers on the Internet for information.
The servers serve the information to your computer,
where your client software interprets it. In other
words, client software handles sending and receiving
on your end, server software sends and receives
on the Internet's end. Unless you're an Internet
Service Provider, chances are every piece of software
you use for exploring the Webis a client.
compression (.zip,
.sea, .sit, .tar)
Any of various ways of squeezing a file down
to a smaller size. Compressed files save you time,
as they transfer much more quickly. Software that
compresses files, such as the shareware utility
PKZIP.EXE or StuffIt, looks for repetition in the
bytes comprising a file and assigns various codes
that represent the repeated bytes -- without storing
the actual bytes in the file's compressed version.
Another form of compression, disk compression, refers
to software that compresses all data on a given
hard disk.
cookie
If you've ever wandered around a Web shopping
mall throwing goodies into a virtual shopping cart,
you've been making Web cookies. A cookie is a small
piece of information that a Web server (such as
the one that holds the Web shopping mall) sends
to your browser to hold onto until it's time for
the server to read it. For instance, the cookie
made while you shop around a Web mall contains a
list of the items you're planning to purchase. When
you head to the checkout desk, the server collects
the cookie from your browser to see what you're
buying. Cookies also have expiration dates and instructions
about which sites can "eat" them, along
with security information to protect your buying
info. Alphabet Soup Watch: Why do they call it a
cookie, anyway? No reason; they just wanted a cute
name. (An alternate view is that they were thinking
of a "magic cookie" in Dungeons and Dragons,
or of the cute "cookie monster" pseudo-virus
that made the rounds on the Net for many years.)
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