The Data Source Object

In HTML files, you can insert instances of objects that can be used to perform various tasks. The two most common such components are Java applets and Microsoft ActiveX controls. These objects are inserted into the file by using the <OBJECT> tag. If the component is to be reused, a unique object identifier is assigned to it. This identifier is a 32-character hexadecimal string that's computed by an algorithm involving randomly generated digits based on the date, time, and other factors. This guarantees that no two object identifiers are alike.

Note

This guarantee isn't an absolute, but the odds of getting a duplicate are truly astronomical—on the order of 1 to the number of particles in the universe.

One such object is ...

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