Did you ever want to know

[yubetcha]

...the difference between the Internet and the World Wide Web?
...what's inside a hard drive?
...if it is possible to eavesdrop on Electromagnetic Radiation?
...the history of the @ sign?
...if cookies compromise security?
...many many other things?

I found an interesting site:

http://www.pcwebopaedia.com/DidYouKnow/_index.asp

Later there will be a test.

[bravus]

Hehe - just for the fun of it, let me give 'em a try off the top of my head. Promise I didn't look at that site or any other reference materials...:

...the difference between the Internet and the World Wide Web?

The World Wide Web is a subset of the Internet, which is essentially the combination of the physical phone network and the Internet Protocol (IP) addressing system. The World Wide Web consists mostly of web pages, using the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP). The Internet also includes e-mail (POP and SMTP (the latter is Send Mail Transfer Protocol, I think, not sure about the former), Usenet newsgroups on Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP), File Transfer using File Transfer Protocol (FTP), and lots of other kinds of traffic.

...what's inside a hard drive?

Hmm, I'm more a software than a hardware guy, but I think it's a single layer disk, similar to the one inside a floppy disk, except less, um, floppy! It has reading/writing heads on both sides of the disk. It's even possible there are multiple disk layers.

...if it is possible to eavesdrop on Electromagnetic Radiation?

Yep, with the right kind of antenna you can read someone's monitor, or more precisely the data going to and from it, right through a wall - even if their computer is not connected to any network. It's called Van [something] phreaking, I think. (I keep wanting to say 'Van Allen', but that's the belts of magnetic field that protect Earth from solar radiation!) On the other hand, or course, if people have a wireless network it's pretty easy to eavesdrop. With a wireless network card you can go 'war-driving' (analogous to the old 'war-dialing' of phone numbers to find dialup access) and see where you're close enough to connect to someone else's network.

...the history of the @ sign?

No clue on this one! But the original query was 'do you want to know', and I have to confess I have no burning desire to repair this particular gap in my knowledge.

...if cookies compromise security?

They certainly have the potential to do so. If someone offered my kids a cookie to reveal my password, I don't think they'd be able to resist... Oh, you mean computer cookies? Yeah, same answer - not every cookie compromises security: some simply make life easier by storing preferences for the next time you come back to the site. But cookies enable companies to track your moves on the net, and anything companies can track can also potentially be tracked by crackers (malicious hackers). I don't turn cookies off, or even have the computer prompt me every single time to accept or reject (when some net banking sites require 6 cookies for every login, that's just too fatiguing) but yeah, the potential is there.

...many many other things?

I do know many, many other things - most of them useless, like which band Ronnie James Dio sang for before he joined Rainbow - but I always want to know more (except the history of the @ sign!), so I'll definitely be looking at this site. Thanks heaps for finding and suggesting it, yubetcha.

Bravus

[yubetcha]

gasp! You weren't curious about the @ sign? I must admit that I was. And others probably are too. I had read or heard something about it long before, but needed a refresher. I already knew about the others in the list. But I was just trying to show the various things at the site. I learned something at the site anyway, so it wasn't wasted

[yubetcha]

And BTW, Ronnie Dio's band? Dio. Deeeo. Deelight come and we wanna go home. LOL! Sorry about that. (ô¿~)

[Fafhrd]

damn you people, now I have holy diver stuck in my head...
*grumbles*

[Munin the Raven]

I've used that page for over three years now. It's great if you want to know what a certain tech term or acronym means, like "CMOS". It's very extensive and quick and easy to use, and using related links for each term you can learn the basic concepts and history of a certain aspect of networking, hardware, or software in twenty minutes or less.

Most of those questions are no-brainers if you've used the net for a few years, but I'm curious about the @ symobl. Doesn't that predate the telecommunications network? Time to check.

An interesting thing about EMR is that in addition to snooping on it, you can also jam or interfere with pretty much any signal. Recently I found instructions on the internet for making a GPS jammer to prevent transmitters within a desired range from transmitting succesfully (interestingly, the article only lasted about 24 hours before it mysteriously disappeared.... Big Brother is watching ).

EDIT: That's interesting about @. I remember older mechanical typewritters had the symbol, but had no idea that it went back quite that far in its history.

[Bat-mite]

Dio replaced Ozzy in Black Sabbath before setting out on his own.

[bravus]

Yep to all of that Dio stuff (and yep to the site's usefulness as well!), but you're all wrong! The band 'Dio' was after Black Sabbath, which was after Rainbow. I was talking about the band he was in *before* Rainbow... ;p

Bravus

[yubetcha]

If you say so

[Zaccheus]

Originally posted by yubetcha
...the difference between the Internet and the World Wide Web?
...what's inside a hard drive?
...if it is possible to eavesdrop on Electromagnetic Radiation?
...the history of the @ sign?
...if cookies compromise security?
...many many other things?

I found an interesting site:

http://www.pcwebopaedia.com/DidYouKnow/_index.asp

Later there will be a test.

In addition to Bravus answer:
A harddrive has several layers.
The @ sign comes from billing, as in 3 apples at 5 pence each.

[Gumdrop]

Originally posted by Zaccheus
...3 apples at 5 pence each.

Sold!