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Unix
upload
URL
Usenet
uuencoding |
Unix
Say "you-nicks." Before the Mac OS
(operating system),
before Windows, even before DOS, there was Unix
. It was the first operating system that could be
used on many different types of computers. Because
of this flexibility, lots of people started using
it around the world (and later used it, of course,
to handle their Internet needs). The Net and the
Web grew up on Unix, and many of the computers on
the Net still use it for their servers.
Other popular operating systems for Web-hosting
servers include Windows NT and the Apple Internet
Server Solution. "Unix" doesn't stand
for anything; in fact, sometimes you'll see it spelled
"UNIX." In all-caps, it's a trademark
of AT&T Bell Labs, who developed the OS in the
late 1960s. Top
upload
Think of the Internet as the great network
in the sky, and the words "upload" and
"download" make more sense. Whereas
downloading is when you receive something -- a
message, data, whatever -- from another computer,
uploading is when you send something to another
computer.
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URL
Just as every person on the Net has a unique
e-mail address, every file and page on the Web
has a unique URL. The URL is the address of a
Web page. You can see the URL for the Web page
you're on now; look up above the page to the thin
white horizontal box. The jumble of letters in
there is the URL. (It happens to be "http://www.pekin.net/pekin108/technotalk/u.html").
The first part of the URL (http) tells the browser
it's looking for a Web page. The rest gives the
name of the computer that holds the page (www.pekin.net),
the directory it's in (pekin108/technotalk) and
the name of the file that makes up the page (u.html).
You can instantly jump to any page on the Web
by typing the page's URL into the white box.
URL
stands for "Uniform Resource Locator."
http stands for "Hypertext Transfer Protocol."
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Usenet
See newsgroup
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uuencoding
Uuencoding allows you to send binary, non-textual
files, in ASCII
format. Uuencoding is most often used for sending
binary files via e-mail, or for posting them to
a newsgroup. Uuencoding a file should not be confused
with compressing it, as uuencoded files typically
take up more space than the originals. If you
receive a uuencoded file you need a uudecoding
program to make sense of it.
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