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Re: click on Israel TV: Someone just said cookies are kosher !!!




PLP>   I was watching click on ITV 1, and some wise bozo just stood up and told
PLP> people about cookies being a good thing, that they are only sent back to
PLP> the site that made them, and how to turn them on.

I don't know if that was bozo or not, but IMHO he was completely right.
And by default they ARE turned on in most browsers I know. If you knew how
to turn them off, you surely would know how to turn them on.

PLP>   If web page makers want to keep data on visitors, they can use a
PLP> database with confidence, and not rely on users (who may use different

Well, seems that you never designed real system that needs user tracking.
How do you suppose to distinguish user requests? By IP? Oh well, don't
make me laugh. Half of world use proxies and more that a half -
interruptable diaplups with changing IPs. All the site infested with forms
and 300-bytes-long URLs? Awful to design, impossible to navigate - and
wastes your resources even more, since here forms do the same as cookies -
only they aren't fit for the purpose. Any other idea ?
Cookies is a tool for user identification and persisitent information 
storage. It can be used for session tracking (just one exapmle: shopping
baskets), personalisation (I would like to have site setup for me - like
private set of options on search engine, private set of topics on news
site, etc.) and other stuff. What is bad in this idea? You fear for
diskspace? Link persistent cookie file to /dev/null. Or buy old 20M disk
for some 100 NIS - it will happily store cookies for half an internet and
still will have plenty of space. Something else is wrong? 

PLP>   Convincing the users to use cookies spares the web developer the expense
PLP> for the database. Not a gift I'd make.

Well, if you don't want to use cookies - turn them off. But the cookies
itself is an excellent tool, if used sanely. To throw away an idea just
becase someoe abuses it would be plain silly. Like refusing to deal with
email on the grounds that you might be spammed.
By the way, it's offtopic, not? ;)
--
frodo@sharat.co.il	\/  There shall be counsels taken
Stanislav Malyshev	/\  Stronger than Morgul-spells
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