>>402
roids?
No. But thanks for the offer.
>>403
in layman's terms why does omitting the "www" take you to a different site sometimes?
All site names are linked to the real site identifier on the Internet, that being the IP address. This linkage is accomplished through the Domain Name System (or Service), a.k.a. DNS. So if the DNS is setup to have differing IP addresses for the following, then typing in one and then the other will arrive at different sites. This is rare but can happen.
Site 1:
www.mootfail.org
Site 2: mootfail.org
In the case of site #1, some guy sets up his web server for HTTP requests. But he decides to use the master domain name in site #2 for handling email. He registers these servers with his name provider, and each name is entered into the Internet's DNS servers with different IP addresses, since each is actually a different server and in fact performs different functions. In such a rare case, entering "mootfail.org" in your web browser would probably give a timeout (if the server was not configured to handle HTTP requests) or some default "this is not a web server" page.
Remember, the Internet does not run on names per se, but numbers: The IP addresses. The DNS servers hold the huge, huge lists of all the registered names and their associated numbers. They can be set and reset at will and however they like; just because most people setup most if not all servers with the same domain name so that they have the same handler server, does not mean that some people do not set them up separately.