Why not get really really cryptic?
Dubya is a nickname for your president. So - ‘bush’ is easier to say than double-you. Saying ‘bush bush bush’ would be silly so shorten that to ‘3B’.
See, where I’m from someone’s ‘Britney’s’ are their aural receptors. Ignore that 3B is also a soft pencil. No, actually that’s better, the more shared acronyms the better! Hehe! I’m off to IMHO to ask how many acronyms have more than one meaning… 
When refering to the world wide web, i call it just that. sure it sounds geeky, but probably no more geeky than any kind of abbreviation or acronym we could come up with. world wide web’s only got 3 syllables. When naming an address though, i leave it out altogether like i’m sure most everyone else does. Just want to get a few posts under my belt
Perhaps it’s the mathematical precision freak in me speaking, but this really annoys me. Just two dubyas is wrong. The URLs ww.yahoo.com and www.yahoo.com are distinct! They go to two different places! Do not use one to refer to the other! Bad bad bad! I think this practice deserves its own Bob the Angly Flower cartoon. 
Back a few years ago, a friend of mine coined the phrase “triple-you”. The rationale being that “www” = “triple double-u” so why not drop the middle part to just make it “triple u”. When I say “triple-u” most people seem to know what I mean, which makes it good enough for me. Plus, it almost sounds like it’s a new letter of the alphabet.
I heard someone on the radio say “wuh wuh wuh…”
Oh great. Now I’m NEVER gonna get that out of my head!!!
dub-a-dub-a-dub-a-you-dot
dub-a-dub-a-dub-a-you-dot
dub-a-dub-a-dub-a-you-dot
What a rhythm it’s got!
In my circle here, it’s “trip-dub” or “dub dub dub”… I personally use trip-dub more than anything…
Why not sextuple-u? 2X3=6. Sextuple-u also reduces the chance of mistaken identity, like you get by calling it ‘web’ or any of the other probable subdomains. If I did start using one of these shorthand methods in speech, I’d be sure that the appropriate subdomains worked as well (i.e. sextupleu.domain.com and uuuuuu.domain.com and sextupleyou.domain.com would all be valid http serving subdomains).
psychonaut, thanks for going geek on these people so that I didn’t have to. There’s one omission, though:
Correct, but the browser also assumes port 80, because it’s a web browser. I almost wish they didn’t, since Netscape is also (or at least used to be) a FTP client, and most browsers are also https clients.
Continuing in the technopedantry, Rutabegger said
Technically, “www.straightdope.com” isn’t an URL, it’s web shorthand for an URL. The URL would be “http://www.straightdope.com/”, per RFC 1738 and others.
Last, but not least, I say ‘earl’ when talking to competent people, and ‘web adddress’ when talking to the antidigerati. Pronouncing it as ‘U R L’ just makes it longer without improving comprehension on the part of the listener. Rutabegger, do you say ‘N A S A’ and ‘L A S E R’, or the more common ‘nasa’ and ‘laser’?
www-dot, I won’t believe it
www-dot, until I read it
My heart is tied up in a knot, you know it’s true
www.nevergetoveryou
-Prozzak, “www.nevergetoveryou”
anecdotes:
my metro website’s (www.metrodemontreal.com) alternative address is metro.paip.net .
A local shopping street had a website called wwww.plaza-st-hubert.com - because they have a four-seasons approach - and they advertised it as “a unique web address for a unique place” or some such nonsense.
there’s a website for Esperanto whose address is ttt.esperanto.org - the ttt is for Tut-Tera Teksajho (world-wide web).
It must have caught on somewhere because I’ve been hearing it since 1996. I remember because I was doing tech support for an ISP back then and someone called saying “dub-dub-dub.” It caught me off guard and I sat there trying to figure out what the heck “dub-dub-dub” meant. I leaned over and asked my boss and he told me it means “www.” Boy did I feel like a dummy.
Because the whole point is to reduce the number of syllables you have to say; you want to make it roll off the tongue. “Sextuple” just seems to trip over my tongue a bit, whereas “triple” is easy to roll off the tongue.
Besides, “triple-u” is a moderate extension to the well-accepted “double-u.” “Sextuple-u” would just be going too far, numerically.
The web server doesn’t assume anything. The name www is setup in DNS and can be anything you want it to be. And the index.html is configured in the web server to be the directory index. There is no assuming involved.
Personally I’m a fan of weh weh weh.
