Lordy, I just wrote:

> Because I examine the HTML code in a lot of web pages, for as much curiosity
>  as anything, I found one of these pages with web beacons in it a few days
>  ago, but I can't remember where it was to show it to you now. In essence,
>  what the web beacons are are a few links imbedded in the web page that say
>  something like this:
>
>     [Unable to display image]
>
>  I'm only guessing what the numbers really mean, but the first half of the
>  number, the "pl-234282-a-456", might be an ID number assigned to the
>  individual user while the second half, the "9928", might be the assigned
>  customer number (Microsoft, Barnes & Noble, HP, etc.), so that 9928 might
>  perhaps equal "HP".

...however, because I put in a "real" link, at least one that satisfies basic
HMTL syntax, I suspect that no one saw the text I meant to have displayed in
the previous message. What I personally got back was the above. You probably
got something similar.

Let me try again. My previous comments won't make any sense without the link,
which I'll now write like this, without angle brackets and a non-recognizable
URL:

          img src="ptth://aics-research/counters/pl-234282-a-456.9928"

In fact, the previous email was not a bad little demonstration of the general
moral. My original, but fake link was probably processed by a great majority
of the list's email readers. As a result, we generated a great number of hits
against the aics-research.com server, and that server could have been
programmed to count them, returning a 1x1 pixel gif to satisfy the email
reader but not noticeable to the person reading the email itself.

Wirt

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