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Internet Forum

Internet forum

forum-based community as of April 2005 — powered by a modified version of phpBB.]] An Internet forum is a facility on the World Wide Web for holding discussions, or the web application software used to provide the facility. Web-based forums, which date from around 1995, perform a similar function as the dial-up bulletin boards and Internet newsgroups that were numerous in the 1980s and 1990s. A sense of virtual community often develops around forums that have regular users. Technology, computer games, and politics are popular areas for forum themes, but there are forums for a huge number of different topics. Internet forums are also commonly referred to as web forums, message boards, discussion boards, discussion groups, bulletin boards (but see also dial-up bulletin boards) fora (proper latin plural) or simply forums.

History

Early Internet forums could be described as web versions of newsgroups or electronic mailing lists; allowing people to post messages and comment on other messages. Later developments emulated the different newsgroups or individual lists, providing more than one forum, dedicated to a particular topic. As of late, forum software developers have actively encouraged the creation of open source plugins which can be integrated with the software as a means of expansion. Generally, these plugins provide more interaction for users and may add special features to the forum software.

Culture

Internet forums are prevalent in several developed countries. In terms of countable posts, Japan is far in the lead with over two million posts per day on their largest forum, 2channel. The United States does not have any one large forum, but instead several hundred thousand smaller forums, the largest of which are Gaia Online, IGN, Neoseeker, and GameFAQs. China, the Netherlands, and France are also home to hundreds of independent forums. Some countries such as Finland and Sweden do not have many prevalent forums despite having open and easily available Internet access. As of yet no study has been done on the prevalence of forums in countries around the world. Small forums are often based around a single subject. Usually there is an "off-topic" forum where users can post any items they find interesting (in Japanese, neta) or play "forum games". Larger Internet forums are in general more subject to public conflicts between users, leetspeak, and private jokes. Depending on the level of moderation there may also be conflicts between users and administrators. Like other forms of online communication, Internet forums are home to many heated exchanges and rivalries. Often, administrators ask users to conform to netiquette; if they leave a forum unmoderated it may degenerate and become useless for discussion.

Software features

The barebones definition of a forum is the ability for people to start threads and reply to other people's threads. (Someone posts a message which is visible to everyone, you read it and then have the option to post a reply which will also be visible to everyone, thus a discussion can build up without all users having to be online at the same time.) However, most forum software provides considerably more than this. Most forum software allows more than one forum to be created. These forums are containers for threads started by the community. Depending on the permissions of community members as defined by the board's administrator, they can post replies to existing threads and start new threads as they wish. Forum software can be broadly divided between those which allow visitors to post anonymously, and those which attribute posts to a registered username. For username-based software, visitors register using a username and a password, and possibly an email address for validation purposes. In these types of forums, the members are often able to customise both how their posts display to others (for example avatars, user profiles and signatures) and how the board appears to them (such as different themes). Username-based software may provide for anonymity by allowing visitors to post without registration. Anonymous forums may offer full anonymity or pseudonymity, but no registration. In order to provide the same set of features as registration-based forums, anonymous forums especially in Asia use a system of tripcodes, derived by encrypting a plaintext password put in the name field. Although blog comment pages are not Internet forums, they often use the anonymous system for the sake of simplicity. A forum administrator typically has the ability to edit, delete, move or otherwise modify any thread on the forum. These moderator privileges are often able to be delegated to other forum members. The reasons for having these abilities are often to allow peace to be maintained and the rules to be enforced. The ways in which the moderation system works depends on the board software—for example, they can be directly appointed by the board administrator or chosen by an automated process combined with meta-moderation (moderation of the moderators). Many other systems exist and the board administrator is free to choose rules for their own forums. Threads in a forum are either flat (posts are listed in chronological order) or threaded (each post is made in reply to a parent post). Sometimes, community members have a choice on how to display threads. Forum software packages are widely available on the Internet, and are written in a variety of programming languages, such as PHP, Perl, Java and ASP. The configuration and records of posts can be stored in text files or in a database. Each package offers a different variety of features, from the most basic providing text-only postings to more advanced packages offering multimedia support and formatting code (usually known as BBCode). Many packages can be integrated easily into an existing website to allow visitors to post comments on articles.

Comparison with other web applications

One significant difference between forums and electronic mailing lists is that mailing lists automatically deliver new messages to the subscriber, while forums require the member to visit the website, and check for new posts. Due to the possibility of members missing replies to threads they are interested in, many modern forums offer an "email notification" feature, where an email is automatically sent to all users who have chosen to be notified of new replies, informing them that a new post has been made. The main difference between newsgroups and forums is that additional software is usually required to participate in newsgroups, a newsreader. Visiting and participating in forums normally requires no additional software beyond the web browser. Forums, unlike wikis, do not allow people to edit other's messages. Some users, however, may be given this ability in order to moderate content (for example, if spam is posted to the forum). Unlike blogs, forums typically allow anyone to start a new discussion (known as a thread), or reply to an existing thread. The range of topics discussed on forums is typically wider—as a website running forum software may have more than one forum, each dedicated to a different topic. While many blogs allow visitors to post comments in reply, the number of people who can create entries is normally very limited, and the range of viewpoints and beliefs on a blog are also limited. Forums differ from chat rooms and instant messaging because they usually deal with one topic and personal exchanges are typically discouraged. Participants in Internet forums should realize that what they have to say will be public knowledge for years to come. For example, Google's Groups (formerly DejaNews) is an archive of Usenet articles dating back to 1981. Forum archives are sometimes the best way to find an answer to very obscure questions, such as how to fix a particular computer problem. Western-style forum software places a heavy amount of emphasis on identity, with user registration, custom titles and avatars being standard features. This makes the tone of discussion very different from the more anonymous 2channel style boards; the burdens of status and persona encourage, alternately, highly formal discourse and close personal relationships. The behavior of moderators shapes overall tendencies towards one direction or the other.

External links

- [http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/On_the_Web/Message_Boards/ Message Boards] in the Open Directory Project
- [http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Cyberspace/Online_Communities/Directories/ Online Communities: Directories] in the Open Directory Project
- [http://groups.yahoo.com/ Yahoo Groups] Category:Groupware ja:電子掲示板 th:กระดานสนทนาออนไลน์

April

April is the fourth month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar and one of four with the length of 30 days. April begins (astrologically) with the sun in the sign of Aries and ends in the sign of Taurus. Astronomically speaking, the sun begins in the constellation of Pisces and ends in the constellation of Aries. The derivation of the name (Latin aprilis) is uncertain. The traditional etymology from the Latin aperire, "to open," in allusion to its being the season when trees and flowers begin to "open," is supported by comparison with the modern Greek use of ἁνοιξις (opening) for spring. This seems very possible, though, as all the Roman months were named in honour of divinities, and as April was sacred to Venus, the Festum Veneris et Fortunae Virilis being held on the first day, it has been suggested that Aprilis was originally her month Aphrilis, from her Greek name Aphrodite, or from the Etruscan name Apru. Jacob Grimm suggests the name of a hypothetical god or hero, Aper or Aprus. On the fourth and the five following days, games (Ludi Megalenses) were celebrated in honour of Cybele; on the fifth there was the Festum Fortunae Publicae; on the tenth (?) games in the circus, and on the nineteenth equestrian combats, in honour of Ceres; on the twenty-first--which was regarded as the birthday of Rome--the Vinalia urbana, when the wine of the previous autumn was first tasted; on the twenty-fifth, the Robigalia, for the averting of mildew; and on the twenty-eighth and four following days, the riotous Floralia. The Anglo-Saxons called April Oster-monath or Eostur-monath, the period sacred to Eostre or Ostara, the pagan Saxon goddess of spring, from whose name is derived the modern Easter. St George's day is the twenty-third of the month; and St Mark's Eve, with its superstition that the ghosts of those who are doomed to die within the year will be seen to pass into the church, falls on the twenty-fourth. In China the symbolical ploughing of the earth by the emperor and princes of the blood takes place in their third month, which frequently corresponds to our April; and in Japan the feast of Dolls is celebrated in the same month. The "days of April" (journées d'avril) is a name appropriated in French history to a series of insurrections at Lyons, Paris and elsewhere, against the government of Louis Philippe in 1834, which led to violent repressive measures, and to a famous trial known as the procès d'avril. April was originally the second month of the Roman calendar and had 29 days. Julius Caesar's calendar reform in 45 BCE resulted in April having 30 days and becoming the fourth month, as the year now began in January.

The Tragic Month of April

Wars that started/ended in April include
- American Revolution Started (Paul Revere's Ride: April 18-19 1775)
- American Civil War (Started April 1861, Ended April 1865, thus "Across 5 Aprils")
- The Rwandan Genocide began in April 1994
- The Bosnian War began in the first days April 1992
- World War II (Germany Surrenders in April, 1945) Other Tragedies that have occurred in the month of April include
- President Abraham Lincoln's Assassination (April 14,1865)
- 1906 San Francisco Earthquake (April 18, 1906)
- The sinking of the RMS Titanic (April 14-15,1912)
- Martin Luther King Jr. Assassinated (April 4,1968)
- Super Tornado Outbreak (April 3-4,1974)
- Chernobyl nuclear accident (April 26,1986)
- The bloody end to the Branch Dividan siege in Waco, Texas (April 19,1993)
- The Oklahoma City Bombing (April 19, 1995)
- Columbine High School shooting (April 20,1999)
- Death of Pope John Paul II (April 2, 2005)
- The first use of poison gas at the second battle of Ypres in April 1915

Trivia

- April begins on the same day of week as July in all years and also January in leap years.
- April's flower is the daisy and sweet pea.
- April's birthstone is the diamond.

April Events

Monthlong events in April

- Chocolate Eaters Month
- Grass Month
- Pets Are Wonderful Month
- Uh-huh Month
- Cancer Control Month
- Marcus H. Birthday (National Holiday in Australia)
- Child Abuse Prevention Month
- Freedom Shrine Month
- International Guitar Month
- Keep America Beautiful Month
- Mathematics Education Month
- Multicultural Communication Month
- National Anxiety Month
- National Garden Month
- National Home Improvement Month
- National Humor Month
- National Occupational Therapy Month
- National Welding Month
- Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Month
- Philatelic Societies Month
- VD Awareness Month
- National Food Month
- Stress Awareness Month
- Alcohol Awareness Month
- Holy Humor Month
- International Amateur Radio Month
- International Twit Award Month
- Month of the Young Child
- National Florida Tomato Month
- National Knuckles Down Month
- National Sexually Transmitted Diseases Education and Awareness Month
- National Woodworking Month
- Sea Cadet Month
- Thai Heritage Month
- Sports Eye Safety Month
- Community Services Month (California)
- Listening Awareness Month
- Autism Awareness Month

Weeklong events in April

1st Week in April
- Medic Alert Week
- Cherry Blossom Festival
- Publicity Stunt Week
- National Birthparents Week
- Week of the Young Child
- Straw Hat Week
- National Bake Week (begins 1st Mon)
- Consider Christianity Week
- National Reading a Road Map Week 2nd Week in April
- Be Kind to Animals Week
- Masters Golf Tournament
- National Medical Laboratory Week
- Private Property Week (10th-16th)
- National Library Week
- Harmony Week
- National Garden Week
- TV Turn-Off Week
- National Guitar Week
- National Building Safety Week
- National Home Safety Week 3rd Week in April
- National Police Week
- Boys and Girls Club Week
- National Coin Week
- Bike Safety Week
- National Bubblegum Week
- Pan American Week
- National Week of the Ocean
- National Crime Victims’ Rights Week
- National Volunteer Week
- National Adult Films Week Last Week in April
- Forest Week
- National Lingerie Week
- Canada-US Goodwill Week
- Big Brothers/Sisters Appreciation Week
- Consumer Protection Week
- National TV-Free Week
- Jewish Heritage Week
- Keep America Beautiful Week
- National YMCA Week
- Professional Secretaries Week
- Intergenerational Week
- Reading Is Fun Week
- Egg Salad Week
- Teacher Appreciation Week (begins Last Mon) A Week in April
- Astronomy Week (determined by 1st Quarter Moon)

April Movable Daily Holidays

1st Sunday
- Set-Your Clock-Forward-Day
- Daylight Saving Time begins in the United States; turn your clock ahead at 2:00 a.m.
- Budoha Day (Hawaii)
- Vesak (Buddha's Birthday) 1st Saturday
- Saturday Market Day (Oregon) 1st Saturday before 5th
- Tax Saturday (UK) 1st Thursday
- Glarus Festival (Switzerland) 1st Friday
- Student Government Day (Massachusetts) Friday after 1st
- Arbor Day (Apache, Navajo, Coconino, Mohave, Yavapai; Arizona) 2nd Friday
- Audubon Day 3rd Sunday & Monday
- Sechselauten (Six Ringing Festival; Switzerland) 3rd Monday
- Patriot's Day (Maine, Massachusetts)
- Boston Marathon Thursday between 19th & 26th
- First Day of Summer (Iceland) Saturday nearest St. George's Day (23rd)
- Peppercorn Day (Bermuda) Monday nearest Feast Day of St. George (23rd)
- St. George's Day (Newfoundland) Sunday after 1st full moon after vernal equinox following Passover
- Lambri (Bright Day; Greece) 3rd Monday
- Patriots' Day (Maine, Massachusetts) 4th Monday
- Fast Day (New Hampshire) 4th Thursday
- Take Our Daughters to Work Day 4th Weekend
- Just Pray No weekend Last Monday
- Confederate Memorial Day (Alabama, Mississippi) Last Friday
- Arbor Day
- Bird Day Wednesday of Last Full Week
- Professional Secretaries Day Last Saturday
- National Sense of Smell Day (USA)

April Indeterminate Holidays

Full Moon Day of 6th Buddhist month (@ Apr/May)
- Vesak Sun enters Aries
- Solar New Year (Southeast Asia)
- aka Thingyan (Burma)
- aka Songkran (Thailand) 10th through 15th Day of 2nd lunar month
- Paro Tsechu (Bhutan) During planting season (@ Apr/May)
- Tyi Wara (Mali) Early April to late July (every 4 years)
- Summer Olympics begin Late April or May
- Alp Aufzug (Switzerland) Before 1st rainfall (@ Apr/May)
- Bobo Masquerade (Burkina Faso) Sometime in April
- World Championship Cow Chip Throwing Contest
- Palm Sunday - Christian
- Palm Sunday - Armenian Christian
- Good Friday - Christian
- Easter - Christian
- Pesach (Passover) - Jewish

References

- Chambers's Book of Days
- Grimm's Geschichte der deutschen Sprache. Cap. "Monate"
- Category:Months ko:4월 ms:April ja:4月 simple:April th:เมษายน

2005

2005 (MMV) is a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. 2005 is the World Year of Physics, the Year of the Rooster in the Chinese calendar, and the International Year of the Eucharist in Catholicism. See also Wikipedia's almanac of events for this year.

Events

January

- January 4 - Death of the Governor of Baghdad, Ali Al-Haidri, assassinated by gunmen.
- January 9 - The same storm which pounded the US earlier in the month hits England and Scandinavia, leaving 13 dead with widespread flooding and power cuts.
- January 9 - Mahmoud Abbas is elected to succeed Yasser Arafat as Palestinian Authority president in the Palestinian election.
- January 12 - Deep Impact is launched from Kennedy Space Center by a Delta 2 rocket.
- January 13 - Terrorists enter into Israel from Gaza and open fire on civilians near border, killing 6 and wounding 5 others. Hamas and Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades claim joint responsibility for attack.
- January 14 - The Huygens probe lands on Titan, largest moon of Saturn.
- January 16 - Adriana Iliescu gives birth at 66, the oldest woman in the world to do so. Adriana Iliescu.]]
- January 18 - Terrorists murder 1 person and wound 8 people in Gush Katif, Israel. Hamas claims responsibility.
- January 20 - George W. Bush is inaugurated in Washington, D.C. for his second term as 43rd President of the United States.
- January 20 - Ireland completes metrication.
- January 21 - In Belize's capital city Belmopan, the unrest over the government's new taxes erupts into riots.
- January 23 - Viktor Yushchenko is sworn in as the third President of Ukraine in Kiev, Ukraine.
- January 25 - A stampede at Mandher Devi temple in Mandhradevi during a religious pilgrimage in India kills at least 215, mostly women and small children.
- January 30 - The first free Parliamentary elections in Iraq since 1958 take place.
- January 30 - A Royal Air Force C-130 Hercules transport plane crashes in Iraq, killing 10 British servicemen. Iraqi insurgents release a video claiming to have shot the aircraft down using a missile.

February

- February 6 - The New England Patriots defeat the Philadelphia Eagles 24-21 to win their third Super Bowl in four years.
- February 8 - Danish parliamentary elections continue the center-right coalition led by Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen and his Liberal Party.
- February 9 - An ETA car bomb injures 31 people at a conference centre in Madrid.
- February 10 - North Korea announces that it possesses nuclear weapons as a protection against the hostility it feels from the United States.
- February 10 - Saudi Arabia holds its first ever elections for municipal authorities, in which only men are allowed to vote.
- February 12 - Fire devastates the Windsor Building, a 32 story office block, in Madrid.
- February 14 - A massive suicide bomb blast in central Beirut kills Lebanon's former prime minister Rafik Hariri and at least 15 other people. At least 135 other people were also hurt.
- February 14 - Around 59 people are killed and 200 injured in a fire at a mosque in Tehran, Iran. Iran emissions of greenhouse gases.]]
- February 16 - The Kyoto Protocol comes into effect, without the support of the United States and Australia.
- February 16 - The National Hockey League cancels its 2004-2005 season becoming the first North American professional league to cancel a season due to a labour dispute.
- February 19 - Suicide bombers kill more than 30 people in Iraq as Shia Muslims mark Ashura, their holiest day.
- February 20 - Spanish referendum on the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe, passing it by a substantial margin, but on a low turnout.
- February 20 - Early Legislative elections in Portugal result in a landslide victory for José Sócrates and the Socialist Party.
- February 22 - More than 500 people are killed and over 1,000 injured after entire villages are flattened in an earthquake measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale in Zarand region of Kerman province in southern Iran.
- February 25 - The Serial Killer Dennis Rader is apprehended by Wichita Police and the FBI.
- February 25 - Terrorists murder 5 people and wound 50 people in Tel Aviv, Israel. Islamic Jihad claims responsibility for attack.
- February 26 - Hosni Mubarak the president of Egypt asks parliament to amend the constitution to allow multi-candidate presidential elections before September 2005.

March

- March 1 - The U.S. Supreme Court rules the death penalty unconstitutional for juveniles who committed their crimes under age 18.
- March 3 - At 19:17 the 3500-ton freighter, M/V Karen Danielsen, crashes into the Western bridge of the Great Belt Bridge of Denmark, 800m from Funen. All traffic across the bridge is closed, effectively separating Denmark in two.
- March 3 - Millionaire Steve Fossett breaks a world record by completing the first non-stop, non-refueled, solo flight around the world in the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer.
- March 10 - Tung Chee Hwa's resignation: Tung Chee Hwa, the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, resigns.
- March 11 - In the UK, the controversial Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 was finally given Royal Assent after one of the longest ever sittings by the House of Lords.
- March 13 - First round of Central African Republic elections.
- March 14 - The People's Republic of China ratifies an anti-secession law aimed at preventing Taiwan from declaring independence.
- March 14 - Nearly one million people gathered for an opposition rally in Beirut, a month after the death of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri — the largest rally in Lebanon history. Lebanon, 2005.]]
- March 16 - Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri, accused of the bombing of the Air India Flight 182 in 1985, are found not guilty on all counts.
- March 19 - A suspected suicide bomber in Doha, Qatar, kills one person and injures about 12 others.
- March 19 - A time bomb explodes in a Muslim shrine in Quetta, southwestern Pakistan, killing at least 29 people and wounding 40.
- March 19 - A mine blast occurs at the Xishui coal mine in Shuozhou and rocks nearby Kangjiayao coal mine, killing up to 59.
- March 20 - At least 250 people in Japan are injured and at least one killed by when a magnitude 7 earthquake struck west of Kyushu Island, just 9km (5.5 miles) below the ocean floor.
- March 21 - 10 killed in the Red Lake High School massacre in Minnesota, the worst school shooting since the Columbine High School massacre.
- March 23 - The United States' 11th Circuit Court of Appeals' 2-1 decision refuses to order the reinsertion of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube.
- March 24 - The Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan reaches its climax with the overthrow of president Askar Akayev.
- March 26 - The Taiwanese government called on 1 million Taiwanese to demonstrate in Taipei in opposition to the Anti-Secession Law of Mainland China. Around 200 000 to 300 000 attended the walk.
- March 28 - The 2005 Sumatran earthquake struck off Sumatra, 3 months after the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. At a magnitude of 8.7 it is the second largest earthquake since 1965.

April

- Anti-Japanese demonstrations in China
- April 1 - Newsanchor Peter Jennings hosts what will turn out to be his final World News Tonight telecast.
- April 2 - Pope John Paul II dies, causing widespread grief in the world.
- April 7 - MG Rover, the UK's sole remaining volume producer goes into receivership after a planned alliance with Chinese manufacturer, Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation collapses.
- April 7 - A suicide bomber blows himself up in Cairo's Khan al Khalili market, killing two foreign tourists and wounding seventeen others. A group called "Islamic Pride Brigades" claims responsibility.
- April 8 - Referendum in Curaçao on independence vs. integration with the Netherlands.
- April 9 - Tens of thousands of demonstrators, many of them supporters of Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr, marched through Baghdad denouncing the U.S. occupation of Iraq, two years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, and rallied in the square where his statue was toppled in 2003.
- April 9 - The marriage of The Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker Bowles takes place. Camilla assumes the titles Her Royal Highness and The Duchess of Cornwall.
- April 12 - Fans hurl lit flares onto the field at San Siro Stadium in Milan during a Champions League quarter-final soccer match.
- April 15 - At least twenty one people died and around fifty people were injured in a devastating fire at a hotel in central Paris.
- April 16 - President Lucio Gutierrez of Ecuador declared a state of emergency in the capital city and dissolved the Supreme Court.
- April 17 - Twelve holidaymakers were killed in southern Switzerland when a bus carrying twenty seven people plunged 200 metres into a ravine.
- April 18 - Five people died in ethnic clashes in Iran's south-west Khuzestan province.
- April 19 - Joseph Ratzinger elected Pope Benedict XVI on the second day of the Papal conclave.
- April 20 - fifty six hurt as earthquake hits Fukuoka and Kasuga, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan. The earthquake measured a magnitude of 5.8 on the Richter scale.
- April 20 - President Lucio Gutiérrez of Ecuador is said to have fled after Congress voted to sack him amid growing protests.
- April 21 - A bus crash in Vietnam's Central Highlands has left thirty Vietnamese war veterans dead and four other people hurt.
- April 21 - A gunfight on the edge of the Saudi city of Mecca has left two militants and two members of the security forces dead.
- April 23 - Silvio Berlusconi, prime minister of Italy, re-forms government after its dissolution three days earlier.
- April 25 - A passenger train derails in Amagasaki Hyogo Prefecture Japan killing 107 people and injuring another 456. (see Amagasaki rail crash)
- April 26 - Facing international pressure, Syria withdrew the last of its 14,000 troop military garrison in Lebanon ending its twenty nine year military domination of that country.
- April 27 - The Superjumbo jet aircraft Airbus A380 made its first flight from Toulouse.
- April 30 - Attacks on tourists in the Egyptian capital Cairo leave three militants dead and at least ten people injured.

May

- May 1 - A suicide attack targets a Kurdish funeral in the northern Iraqi town of Talafar, near Mosul, and leaves at least 25 people dead and more than 30 others injured. Earlier, at least five policemen and four civilians were killed in two separate attacks in Baghdad.
- May 2 - 4th president of Singapore, Wee Kim Wee dies from prostate cancer.
- May 2 - A blast at an illegal munitions store in northern Afghanistan kills 28 people and injures at least 13 others.
- May 3 - At least 32 people are killed and nine others injured when three two-storey buildings in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore collapsed after gas cylinders stored in one of them exploded.
- May 4 - In one of the largest insurgent attacks in Iraq to date, at least 60 people have been killed and dozens wounded in a suicide bombing at a Kurdish police recruitment center in Irbil, northern Iraq.
- May 5 - The United Kingdom votes in the 2005 general election. The Labour Party is re-elected with a substantially reduced majority.
- May 5 - Two homemade bombs explode outside the British consulate in New York, USA.
- May 10 - A live hand grenade lands about 100 feet (30 m) from United States President George W. Bush while he is giving a speech to a crowd in Tbilisi, Georgia, but malfunctions and does not detonate.
- May 11 - Serial killer Michael Ross became first person executed in New England in 45 years.
- May 12 - An election was held in the Cayman Islands 7 months later than originally scheduled due to Hurricane Ivan. It resulted in a change of government, with the United Democratic Party giving four seats to the then-opposition People's Progressive Movement in the 15 member Legislative Assembly.
- May 13 - Uzbek troops kill up to 700 during protests in eastern Uzbekistan over the trials of 23 accused Islamic extremists. President Islam Karimov defends the act.
- May 13 - The United States Department of Defense issues a list of bases to be closed as part of the Base Realignment and Closure process (BRAC 2005).
- May 13 - The final episode of the TV series Star Trek: Enterprise is broadcast in the United States. This episode may mark the end of the Star Trek franchise itself, which dates back to 1966.
- May 15 - A passenger ferry capsizes and sinks in strong winds in the Bura Gauranga River in Bangladesh, leaving over 100 people missing.
- May 16 - George Galloway appears before a U.S. Senate committee, to answer allegations of making money from the Iraqi Oil-for-Food Programme.
- May 17 - Kuwaiti women granted right to vote.
- May 19 - Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith released, effectively completing the Star Wars movie saga begun by George Lucas in 1977 and shattering the opening day box-office record with $50,013,859.
- May 19 - The Canadian House of Commons members narrowly pass two budget bills at second reading allowing the minority Liberal government of Prime Minister Paul Martin to stay in power.
- May 21 - Greece wins the Eurovision Song Contest in Kiev.
- May 25 - Liverpool F.C. win the UEFA Champions League by defeating AC Milan 3-2 in a penalty shootout in Istanbul.
- May 25 - The Acting Chief Executive of Hong Kong, Donald Tsang, resigned for participating in the Chief Executive Election in July. As a result, Henry Tang and Michael Suen had become the Acting Chief Executive and Acting Chief Secretary for Administration respectively.
- May 29 - French referendum on the European Constitution votes resoundingly to reject.
- May 31 - W. Mark Felt is confirmed to be Deep Throat.

June

- June 1 - Dutch referendum on the European Constitution votes to reject, the second country to do so.
- June 5 - Switzerland votes to join the Schengen area and to allow same-sex partnerships.
- June 6 - Syrian Vice President Abdul Halim Khaddam resigns.
- June 9 - Glynn Birch announced as new president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
- June 13 - Singer Michael Jackson acquitted of all charges of harming children (see 2005 trial of Michael Jackson).
- June 17 - A 6.7 aftershock,which followed a 5.3 earthquake the previous day, hits California making it the fourth earthquake since June 12 in California. (California earthquakes of June 2005)
- June 17 - Because of "quadruple-witching" options and futures expiration, the New York Stock Exchange sees the heaviest first-hour trading on record. 704 million shares were traded between 9:30-10:30 A.M. 1.92 billion shares were traded for the day.
- June 19 - Election in the Autonomous Community of Galicia, Spain — preliminary results show that Manuel Fraga and the Partido Popular lose control of the autonomous parliament.
- June 21 - Volna booster rocket carrying the first light sail spacecraft (a joint Russian-United States project) failed 83 seconds after its launch, destroying the spacecraft.
- June 23 - The San Antonio Spurs win the NBA World Championship title.
- June 28 - Queen Elizabeth II conducts the International Fleet Review of 167 international warships in the Solent, as part of the Trafalgar 200 celebrations.
- June 30 - Spain joins Belgium and the Netherlands in permitting same-sex marriage.

July

- July 2 - Live 8, a series of 10 simultaneous concerts take place throughout the world, raising interest in the Make Poverty History campaign.
- July 4 - NASA's "Copper bullet" from Deep Impact spacecraft hits Comet Tempel 1, creating a crater for scientific studies.
- July 4 - Violent G8 demonstrations in Gleneagles
- July 6 - The European Parliament rejects the Directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions in its second reading in the codecision procedure.
- July 6 - The International Olympic Committee awards the 2012 Summer Olympics to London. London.]]
- July 7 - Four explosions rock the transport network in London, three on the London Underground and one on a bus. Over 50 deaths were reported, and over 200 injured. See 7 July 2005 London bombings.
- July 7 - Al-Qaeda admits to the killing of Egypt's Ambassador, Ihab al-Sherif.
- July 10 - Luxembourgish referendum on the European Constitution votes to accept.
- July 10 - Hurricane Dennis strikes near Navarre Beach, Florida as a Category 3 storm killing 10 people, after killing over 50 people in the Caribbean.
- July 12 - Terrorists kill 5 people and wound 90 people in a crowded mall in Netanya, Israel. Islamic Jihad claims responsibility for attack.
- July 13 - Three trains collide in the Ghotki rail crash in Ghotki, Pakistan, killing over 150 people.
- July 14 - A compromise budget is reached in Minnesota, ending the fourteen-day government shutdown.
- July 16 - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth book of the Harry Potter saga by the British writer J. K. Rowling, is released.
- July 19 - President Bush nominates Appeals Court Judge John G. Roberts, Jr. to the United States Supreme Court, following the retirement of Sandra Day O'Connor.
- July 20 - Canada's Civil Marriage Act, legalizing same-sex marriage, receives Royal Assent.
- July 21 - A terrorist attack on London, similar to the July 7 attacks, includes 4 attempted bomb attacks on 3 Underground trains and a London bus. The bombs failed to explode properly, and only one injury was reported.
- July 22 - A Brazilian electrician, Jean Charles de Menezes, is shot dead at a London underground station by police who mistake him for a suicide bomber.
- July 23 - A series of blasts in a resort town in Egypt. See July 23, 2005 Sharm el-Sheikh attacks.
- July 24 - Lance Armstrong wins a record seventh straight Tours de France before his scheduled retirement.
- July 26 - Launch for Space Shuttle Discovery return to flight mission STS-114. This is the first Space Shuttle flight in nearly two and a half years since the breakup of Columbia on its return from mission STS-107.
- July 28 - The Provisional IRA issues a statement formally ordering an end to the armed campaign it has pursued since 1969 and ordering all its units to dump their arms.

August

August
- August 2 - Air France Flight 358 bursts into flames after overshooting the runway at Toronto Pearson International Airport; all aboard survive.
- August 6 - An ATR-72 heading from Italy to Tunisia crashes into the Mediterranean Sea, killing 16 of 39 on board.
- August 9 - Space Shuttle Discovery returns to Edwards Air Force Base at 0814 EDT, completing STS-114, "Return to Flight."
- August 12 - Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter launched.
- August 14 - Helios Airways Flight 552 crashes into a mountain in Greece, killing 121.
- August 16 - West Caribbean Airways Flight 708 crashes into a mountain in Venezuela, killing 152 passengers.
- August 17 - The first forced evacuation of settlers, as part of the Israel unilateral disengagement plan, starts.
- August 17 - Bangladesh is hit by bomb explosions. [http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Bangladesh_hit_by_several_bomb_explosions]
- August 18 - BTK killer Dennis Rader is sentenced to 10 consecutive life sentences.
- August 18 - Peace Mission 2005, the first joint China-Russia military exercise, begins its 8-day training on the Shandong peninsula.
- August 22 - A 4.1 kg meteorite crashes into the Dotito area of Zambezi Escarpment in Zimbabwe, leaving a 15 cm crater.
- August 23 - Israel's unilateral disengagement from 25 Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and West Bank ends.
- August 24 - Hong Kong High Court Judge Michael Hartmann rules that sodomy laws were unconstitutional. Michael Hartmann.]]
- August 28 - Terrorist wounds 52 at bus station in Beersheba, Israel. Islamic Jihad claims responsibility for attack.
- August 29 - At least 1,300 are killed, and severe damage is caused along the U.S. Gulf Coast, as Hurricane Katrina strikes the Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama coastal areas. Within hours, levees give way and New Orleans is flooded.
- August 31 - A crowd crush on the Al-Aaimmah bridge in Baghdad kills several hundred civilians (see Baghdad bridge stampede).

September

- September 1 - Oil prices rise sharply following economic effects of Hurricane Katrina.
- September 5 - Mandala Airlines Flight 091 737 crashes in Indonesia killing at least 117. (See airplane accidents in 2005).
- September 7 - Incumbent Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak wins its first multi-party presidential election.
- September 11 - Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and the LDP are returned to power following the Japanese general elections.
- September 12 - Norwegian parliamentary election
- September 12 - English cricket team draw the final match to win The 2005 Ashes.
- September 14 - September 16 - Largest UN World Summit in history, held in New York City.
- September 17 - Helen Clark leader of the Labour Party is re-elected for a third term in the New Zealand general election
- September 18 - Angela Merkel of the CDU and Gerhard Schröder of the SDP both claim victory in German federal election
- September 18 - Afghan parliamentary election
- September 19 - North Korea agrees to stop building nuclear weapons in exchange for aid and cooperation.
- September 24 - Hurricane Rita hits the US Gulf Coast. The 9th Ward section of New Orleans floods for the 2nd time in a month and a half. Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, and Alabama are also affected.
- September 25 - Polish parliamentary election.
- September 26 - U.S. army reservist Lynndie England is convicted by a military jury on six of seven counts in connection with the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal.
- September 27 - Michaëlle Jean, born in Haiti, becomes the 27th Governor General of Canada, and the first black person to hold that position.
- September 28 - American politician Tom DeLay is indicted on charges of criminal conspiracy by a Texas grand jury.
- September 29 - John G. Roberts, Jr. is confirmed and sworn in as Chief Justice of the United States.
- September 30 - The Parliament of Catalonia passes with 120 plus votes and 15 against, the Project of New Catalan Statute of Autonomy, proclaiming in its article 1, "Catalonia is a nation".

October

- October 1 - 26 people are killed and more than 100 are injured in the 2005 Bali bombings.
- October 1 - The world's largest bank, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, is formed by the merger of two Japanese banking conglomerates.
- October 1 - An Australian photojournalist in Afghanistan, Stephen Dupont, films US soldiers two dead Taliban militias' bodies.
- October 2 - 20 people are killed in a shipwreck in Lake George, NY.
- October 4 - Hurricane Stan hits Mexico and Central America killing over 1,153 people.
- October 5 - Flight Lieutenant Malcolm Kendall-Smith charged with refusing to serve in the Iraq war.
- October 7 - UN nuclear agency director Mohamed ElBaradei is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
- October 8 - An earthquake in Kashmir kills about 80,000 people.
- October 9 - Polish presidential election.
- October 12 - The second Chinese human spaceflight Shenzhou 6 launched, carrying Fei Junlong and Nie Haisheng for five days in orbit.
- October 13 - Veselin Topalov wins the FIDE World Chess Championship 2005
- October 15 - The referendum on the new Proposed Iraqi constitution is held.
- October 15 - Riot in Toledo, Ohio during a Neo-Nazi rally surrounding racial issues; 114 arrested
- October 15 - Qinghai-Tibet Railway completed.
- October 16 - US Helicopters and warplanes bomb two villages near Ramadi in western Iraq, killing about 70 people.
- October 18 - The UN tightens the rules for its staff, following several claims of financial impropriety and sexual abuse.
- October 19 - The Trials of Saddam Hussein begin.
- October 19 - Hurricane Wilma swells into a Category 5 storm.
- October 21 - 200th Anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar, celebrations held around the United Kingdom.
- October 22 - Tropical Storm Alpha forms making the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season the most active on record.
- October 23 - Polish presidential election.
- October 23 - Referendum on the merger of the Kamchatka Oblast and the Autonomous District of Koryakia.
- October 23 - [http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referendo_Sobre_a_Proibi%C3%A7%C3%A3o_do_Com%C3%A9rcio_de_Armas_e_Muni%C3%A7%C3%A3o_no_Brasil Guns and Amno Ban Referendum] in Brazil
- October 23 - Bellview Airlines Flight 210 crashes in Nigeria.
- October 24 - Hurricane Wilma makes landfall in southwestern Florida as a category 3 hurricane.
- October 26 - The Chicago White Sox win the 2005 World Series.
- October 26 - Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calls for Israel to be "wiped off the map" at "World Without Zionism" conference in Tehran, Iran, and condemns peace process.
- October 27 - Two teenagers accidentally electrocute themselves in Seine-Saint-Denis, Paris, France, leading to widespread rioting.
- October 28 - Vice presidential adviser Lewis "Scooter" Libby resigns after being charged with obstruction of justice, perjury and making a false statement in the CIA leak investigation.
- October 29 - A train in Andhra Pradesh, India derails, killing at least 77 people.
- October 29 - At least 61 people are dead and many others wounded in three powerful blasts in the Indian capital, Delhi. See 29 October 2005 Delhi bombings for full details.
- October 30 - Hurricane Beta hits the coast of Nicaragua. It is the thirteenth hurricane of 2005, breaking the 1969 record of 12 hurricanes.

November

- November 1 - The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall arrive in the United States for a state visit, their first overseas tour since their marriage.

World Wide Web

:For the world's first web browser, see WorldWideWeb. WorldWideWeb] The World Wide Web ("WWW" or simply the "Web") is an information space in which the items of interest, referred to as resources, are identified by global identifiers called Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs). The term is often mistakenly used as a synonym for the Internet, but the Web is actually a service that operates over the Internet. (Find more information at [http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Internet/2002/Web_vs_Internet.asp this link].)
Basic terms
The World Wide Web is the combination of four basic ideas:
- hypertext, that is the ability, in a computer environment, to move from one part of a document to another or from one document to another through internal connections among these documents (called "hyperlinks");
- computer network addresses, that is the ability, on a computer network, to locate a particular computer on the network through a unique address;
- the client-server model of computing, in which client software or a client computer makes requests of server software or a server computer that provides the client with resources or services, such as data or files; and
- markup language, in which characters or codes embedded in text indicate to a computer how to print or display the text, e.g. as in italics or bold type or font. On the World Wide Web, a client program called a web browser retrieves information resources, such as web pages and other computer files, from web servers using their network addresses and displays them, typically on a computer monitor, using a markup language that determines the details of the display. One can then follow hyperlinks in each page to other resources on the World Wide Web of information whose location is provided by these hyperlinks. It is also possible, for example by filling in and submitting web forms, to send information back to the server to interact with it. The act of following hyperlinks is often called "browsing" or "surfing" the Web. Web pages are often arranged in collections of related material called "websites." The phrase "surfing the Internet" was first popularised in print by Jean Armour Polly, a librarian, in an article called Surfing the INTERNET, published in the Wilson Library Bulletin in June, 1992. Although Polly may have developed the phrase independently, slightly earlier uses of similar terms have been found on the Usenet from 1991 and 1992, and some recollections claim it was also used verbally in the hacker community for a couple years before that. Polly is famous as "NetMom" in the history of the Internet. For more information on the distinction between the World Wide Web and the Internet itself — as in everyday use the two are sometimes confused — see Dark internet where this is discussed in more detail. Although the English word worldwide is normally written as one word (without a space or hyphen), the proper name World Wide Web and abbreviation WWW are now well-established even in formal English. The earliest references to the Web called it the WorldWideWeb (an example of computer programmers' fondness for intercaps) or the World-Wide Web (with a hyphen, this version of the name is the closest to normal English usage). Curiously, the abbreviation "WWW" is fallacious as it contains more syllables than the full term "World Wide Web", and thus takes longer to say.
How the Web works
When you want to access a web page, or other "resource", on the World Wide Web, you normally begin either by typing the URL of the page into your browser, or by following a hypertext link to that page or resource. The first step, behind the scenes, is for the server-name part of the URL to be resolved into an IP address by the global, distributed Internet database known as the Domain name system or DNS. The next step is for an HTTP request to be sent to the web server working at that IP address for the page required. In the case of a typical web page, the HTML text, graphics and any other files that form a part of the page will be requested and returned to the client in quick succession. The web browser's job is then to render the page as described by the HTML, CSS and other files received, incorporating the images, links and other resources as necessary. This produces the on-screen 'page' that you see. Most web pages will, themselves, contain hyperlinks to other relevant and informative pages and perhaps to downloads, source documents, definitions and other web resources. Such a collection of useful, related resources, interconnected via hypertext links, is what has been dubbed a 'web' of information. Making it available on the Internet produced what Tim Berners-Lee first called the World Wide Web in the early 1990s [http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/FAQ] [http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/Kids].
Origins
See also: History of the Internet History of the Internet The underlying ideas of the Web can be traced as far back as 1980, when Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau built ENQUIRE (referring to Enquire Within Upon Everything, a book Berners-Lee recalled from his youth). While it was rather different from the Web we use today, it contained many of the same core ideas (and even some of the ideas of Berners-Lee's next project after the WWW, the Semantic Web). In March 1989, Tim Berners-Lee wrote "Information Management: A Proposal", which referenced ENQUIRE and described a more elaborate information management system. [http://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html] He published a more formal proposal for the actual World Wide Web on November 12, 1990 [http://www.w3.org/Proposal]. Implementation began on November 13, 1990 when Berners-Lee wrote [http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html the first Web page] on a NeXT workstation. During the Christmas holiday of that year, Berners-Lee built all the tools necessary for a working Web [http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/WorldWideWeb]: the first Web browser (which was a Web editor as well) and the first Web server. On August 6, 1991, he posted a [http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=6487%40cernvax.cern.ch short summary of the World Wide Web project] on the alt.hypertext newsgroup. This date also marked the debut of the Web as a publicly available service on the Internet. The crucial underlying concept of hypertext originated with older projects from the 1960s, such as Ted Nelson's Project Xanadu and Douglas Engelbart's oN-Line System (NLS). Both Nelson and Engelbart were in turn inspired by Vannevar Bush's microfilm-based "memex," which was described in the 1945 essay "As We May Think". Berners-Lee's brilliant breakthrough was to marry hypertext to the Internet. In his book Weaving The Web, he explains that he had repeatedly suggested that a marriage between the two technologies was possible to members of both technical communities, but when no one took up his invitation, he finally tackled the project himself. In the process, he developed a system of globally unique identifiers for resources on the Web and elsewhere: the Uniform Resource Identifier. The World Wide Web had a number of differences from other hypertext systems that were then available.
- The WWW required only unidirectional links rather than bidirectional ones. This made it possible for someone to link to another resource without action by the owner of that resource. It also significantly reduced the difficulty of implementing Web servers and browsers (in comparison to earlier systems), but in turn presented the chronic problem of broken links.
- Unlike certain applications such as HyperCard or Gopher, the World Wide Web was non-proprietary, making it possible to develop servers and clients independently and to add extensions without licensing restrictions. On April 30, 1993, CERN [http://intranet.cern.ch/Chronological/Announcements/CERNAnnouncements/2003/04-30TenYearsWWW/Welcome.html announced] that the World Wide Web would be free to anyone, with no fees due.
Web standards
At its core, the Web is made up of three standards:
- the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), which is a universal system for referencing resources on the Web, such as Web pages;
- the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which specifies how the browser and server communicate with each other; and
- the HyperText Markup Language (HTML), used to define the structure and content of hypertext documents. Berners-Lee now heads the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which develops and maintains these and other standards that enable computers on the Web to effectively store and communicate different forms of information.
Java and JavaScript
Another significant advance in the technology was Sun Microsystems' Java programming language. It initially enabled Web servers to embed small programs (called applets) directly into the information being served, and these applets would run on the end-user's computer, allowing faster and richer user interaction. Eventually, it came to be more widely used as a tool for generating complex server-side content as it is requested. Java never gained as much acceptance as Sun had hoped as a platform for client-side applets for a variety of reasons, including lack of integration with other content (applets were confined to small boxes within the rendered page) and poor perfomance (particularly start up delays) of Java VMs on PC hardware of that time. JavaScript, however, is a scripting language that was developed for Web pages. The standardised version is ECMAScript. While its name is similar to Java, it was developed by Netscape and not Sun Microsystems, and it has almost nothing to do with Java, with the only exception being that like Java its syntax is derived from the C programming language. Like Java, Javascript is also object oriented but like C++ and unlike Java, it allows mixed code - both object oriented as well as procedural. In conjunction with the Document Object Model, JavaScript has become a much more powerful language than its creators originally envisioned. Sometimes its usage is expressed under the term Dynamic HTML (DHTML), to emphasise a shift away from static HTML pages.
Sociological implications
The Web, as it stands today, has allowed global interpersonal exchange on a scale unprecedented in human history. People separated by vast distances, or even large amounts of time, can use the Web to exchange — or even mutually develop — their most intimate and extensive thoughts, or alternately their most casual attitudes and spirits. Emotional experiences, political ideas, cultural customs, musical idioms, business advice, artwork, photographs, literature, can all be shared and disseminated digitally with less individual investment than ever before in human history. Although the existence and use of the Web relies upon material technology, which comes with its own disadvantages, its information does not use physical resources in the way that libraries or the printing press have. Therefore, propagation of information via the Web (via the Internet, in turn) is not constrained by movement of physical volumes, or by manual or material copying of information. And by virtue of being digital, the information of the Web can be searched more easily and efficiently than any library or physical volume, and vastly more quickly than a person could retrieve information about the world by way of physical travel or by way of mail, telephone, telegraph, or any other communicative medium. The Web is the most far-reaching and extensive medium of personal exchange to appear on Earth. It has probably allowed many of its users to interact with many more groups of people, dispersed around the planet in time and space, than is possible when limited by physical contact or even when limited by every other existing medium of communication combined. Because the Web is global in scale, some have suggested that it will nurture mutual understanding on a global scale. By definition or by necessity, the Web has such a massive potential for social exchange, it has the potential to nurture empathy and symbiosis, but it also has the potential to incite belligerence on a global scale, or even to empower demagogues and repressive regimes in ways that were historically impossible to achieve.
Publishing web pages
The Web is available to individuals outside mass media. In order to "publish" a web page, one does not have to go through a publisher or other media institution, and potential readers could be found in all corners of the globe. Unlike books and documents, hypertext does not have a linear order from beginning to end. It is not broken down into the hierarchy of chapters, sections, subsections, etc. Many different kinds of information are now available on the Web, and for those who wish to know other societies, their cultures and peoples, it has become easier. When travelling in a foreign country or a remote town, one might be able to find some information about the place on the Web, especially if the place is in one of the developed countries. Local newspapers, government publications, and other materials are easier to access, and therefore the variety of information obtainable with the same effort may be said to have increased, for the users of the Internet. Although some websites are available in multiple languages, many are in the local language only. Also, not all software supports all special characters, and RTL languages. These factors would challenge the notion that the World Wide Web will bring a unity to the world. The increased opportunity to publish materials is certainly observable in the countless personal pages, as well as pages by families, small shops, etc., facilitated by the emergence of free web hosting services.
Statistics
According to a 2001 study [http://www.brightplanet.com/technology/deepweb.asp], there were more than 550 billion documents on the Web, mostly in the "invisible Web". A 2002 survey of 2,024 million web pages [http://www.netz-tipp.de/languages.html] determined that by far the most Web content was in English: 56.4%; next were pages in German (7.7%), French (5.6%) and Japanese (4.9%). A more recent study [http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~asignori/web-size/] which used web searches in 75 different languages to sample the Web determined that there were over 11.5 billion web pages in the publically-indexable Web as of January 2005.
Speed issues
Frustration over congestion issues in the Internet infrastructure and the high latency that results in slow browsing has lead to an alternative name for the World Wide Web: the World Wide Wait. Speeding up the Internet is an ongoing discussion over the use of peering and QoS technologies. Other solutions to reduce the World Wide Wait can be found on [http://www.w3.org/Protocols/NL-PerfNote.html W3C].
Academic conferences
The major academic event covering the WWW is the World Wide Web series of conferences, promoted by [http://www.iw3c2.org IW3C2]. There is a [http://www.iw3c2.org/Conferences/Welcome.html list] with links to all conferences in the series.
Pronunciation of "www"
Most English-speaking people pronounce the 9-syllable letter sequence www used in some domain names for websites as "double U, double U, double U" despite shorter options like "triple double U", or even "World Wide Web" being available. Some languages do not have the letter w in their alphabet (for example, Italian), which leads some people to pronounce www as "vou, vou, vou." In some languages (such as Czech and Finnish) the w is substituted by a v, so Czechs pronounce www as "veh, veh, veh" rather than the correct but much longer pronunciation "dvojité veh, dvojité veh, dvojité veh;" the same applies to Finnish, where the correct pronunciation would be "kaksoisvee, kaksoisvee, kaksoisvee." Also in Norwegian, and similarly in Swedish and Danish: Instead of the correct "dobbel-ve, dobbel-ve, dobbel-ve" it is pronounced "ve, ve, ve". The pronunciation of "ve" instead of "dobbel-ve" is also used in other abbreviations. Several other languages (e.g. German, Dutch etc.) simply pronounce the letter W as a single syllable, so this problem doesn't occur. Depending on how the domain and web server are set up, a www website can often be accessed without entering the "www.", as long as the ".com" or other appropriate top-level domain is appended. Even this is not always necessary as some browsers will automatically try adding "www." and ".com" to typed URIs if a web page isn't found without them. In English pronunciation, saying the full words "World Wide Web" takes one-third as many syllables as saying the initialism "www". According to Berners-Lee, others mentioned this fact as a reason to choose a different name, but he persisted. Another, less common way of saying "www" is w3, or double u to the power of 3, power because the 3 in w3 is superscripted. However, the use of this initialism is uncommon. One further way is used by those wishing to speed up the full pronounciations by saying "All the double-U s" In New Zealand and occasionally in Australia, "www" is often pronounced "dub-dub-dub". This is widely accepted (for example its use in TV commercials appears standard) and is more concise than some other renditions in English. In the Southern United States the two syllable pronunciation of the letter w "dub-ya" is often used, resulting in dub-ya-dub-ya-dub-ya, even when spoken by persons who would normally use the "standard English" three syllable pronunciation for a single letter w.
See also

- History of the Internet
- Semantic Web
- Media studies
- Smartphone
- List of websites
- Search engine
- Web directory
- Hypertext
- First image on the Web
- Streaming media
- Cyberzine
- Web 2.0, term often applied to perceived ongoing transition of the WWW from a collection of websites to a full-fledged computing platform serving web applications
References

-
-
-
External links

- [http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Web_Design_and_Development/ Open Directory - Computers: Internet: Web Design and Development]
- [http://www.adstockweb.com/www-vl/ The World Wide Web Virtual Library: Web Design] from the World Wide Web Virtual Library
- [http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html World Wide Web], the first known web page.
- [http://www.mit.edu/people/mkgray/net/ Internet Statistics: Growth and Usage ofl
- [http://www.experienced-people.co.uk/1099-webmaster-glossary/ Alternative WWW and webmaster glossary] (humour)
Standards
The following is a cursory list of the documents that define the World Wide Web's three core standards:
- Uniform Resource Locator (URL)
- RFC 1738, URL Specification (updated by RFC 3986 "Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax" in January 2005)
- Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)
- [http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/draft-ietf-iiir-html-01.txt Internet Draft, HTML version 1]
- RFC 1866, HTML version 2.0
- [http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html32 HTML 3.2 Reference Specification]
- [http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/ HTML 4.01 Specification]
- [http://www.w3.org/TR/html/ Extensible HTML (XHTML) Specification]
- HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) ja:World Wide Web ko:월드 와이드 웹 simple:World Wide Web th:เวิลด์ไวด์เว็บ

Bulletin board systems

A bulletin board system or BBS is a computer system running software that allows users to dial into the system over a phone line and, using a terminal program, perform functions such as downloading software and data, uploading data, playing games, reading news, and exchanging messages with other users. During their heyday (from the late 1980s to the mid 1990s), many BBSes were run as a hobby free of charge by the "SysOp" (system operator), while other BBSes charged their users a subscription fee for access. In current usage (primarily in Japan and China) the term BBS may be used to refer to any online forum or message board. See Internet forum. Bulletin board systems were in many ways a precursor to the modern form of the World Wide Web and other aspects of the Internet. BBSes were a highly social phenomenon and were used for meeting people and having discussions in message boards as well as for publishing articles, downloading software, playing games and many more things using a single application. The BBS was also a local phenomenon, as one had to dial into a BBS with a phone line and would have to pay long distance charges for a BBS out of the local area. Thus, many users of a BBS lived in the same area and it was common for activities such as BBS Meets, where everyone from the same board would gather and meet face to face. The world's largest BBS was MBnet (1994–2002), located in Finland. MBnet ran PCBoard and had the most licensed nodes of any BBS in the world, 1000. The world's largest free BBS was The Gaming Center, at 40 licensed nodes.

History

The first BBS, CBBS, went online on February 16, 1978 in Chicago, Illinois. With the original 110 and 300 baud modems of the early 1980s, BBSes were painfully slow, but speed became acceptable with the introduction of 1200 bit/s modems in and around 1985, and this led to a substantial increase in popularity. The lack of autodial and autoanswer capabilities in many 110-300 bit/s modems was also an obstacle to their use in unattended BBS installations. Most of the information was presented using ordinary text or ANSI art, though some offered graphics, particularly after the rise in popularity of the GIF image format. Such use of graphics taxed available bandwidth, which in turn propelled demand for faster modems. Towards the early 1990s, the BBS industry became so popular that it spawned two monthly magazines, Boardwatch and BBS Magazine, which devoted extensive coverage of the software and technology innovations and people behind them, and listings to u.s. and worldwide BBSs. In addition, a major monthly magazine, "Computer Shopper", carried a list of BBSes along with a brief abstract of each of their offerings. Before commercial Internet access became common, networks of BBSes provided regional and international e-mail and message bases. Some even provided gateways by which members could send/receive e-mail to/from the Internet. Elaborate schemes allowed users to download binary files, search gopherspace, and interact with distant programs, all using plaintext e-mail. Most BBS networks were not linked in realtime. Instead, each would dial up the next in line, and/or a regional hub, at preset intervals to exchange files and messages. The largest BBS network was Fidonet, which is still used, to some extent, outside of the United States. With the rise of the world wide web function of the Internet in the middle/late 1990s BBSes rapidly declined in popularity in the west. In China and Taiwan, however, BBSes have gained a considerable increase in popularity since 2000. Several largest BBS sites once had tens of thousands of online users at any time, such as SMTH, YTHT, etc. However, those BBSes located in China have been limited on access or closed since 2004. Several BBS systems connected directly to the Internet, removing the necessity of direct dial-up and consequently attracting a more geographically diverse user base. Most of these systems ran on derivations of a free code package called Citadel. A few are still in existence (as of 2004, including the likely largest ISCABBS). Some general purpose bulletin board systems had special levels of access that were given to those who paid extra money or knew the sysop personally. BBSs that charged money usually had something special to offer their users such as door games, a large user base, or pornography. While many pay BBSes had pornography, some of the largest BBSs charged users merely for discussion boards. Pay BBSes such as The WELL and Echo NYC (both of which exist to this day), and MindVox (which folded in 1996) were admired for their tightly-knit communities and quality discussion forums. However some "free" BBSes maintained close knit communities and some even had annual or bi-annual events where users would travel great distances to see meet face-to-face their on-line friends. Even today ISCABBS still has bi-annual ISCANIC and annual CampNic events. Some BBSs, called elite boards, were exclusively used for distributing pirated software. These BBSes often had multiple modems and phone lines, allowing several users to upload and download files at once. Most elite BBSes used some form of new user verification, where new users would have to apply for membership and attempt to prove that they weren't a law enforcement officer or a lamer. The largest elite boards accepted users by invitation only. Today, BBSing survives as a niche hobby for