Why most of the online magazines have this kind of link:
http://www.someonlinemagazine.com/technology/news/0302/13/083703.htm
instead of this:
http://www.someonlinemagazine.com/technology/news.php?id=083703
What might be the reasons behind this and how do they do that?
the reason:
fairly commonly this is done because some search engines do not index documents with the second url style.
how:
url rewriting.
there's an article about it
http://www.webmasterbase.com/article/910
don't know how good it is, but I'm sure it covers the basics.