What's with all the G@!D*&%ed F^)!ing Cookies?

[mps]

It used to be that what with logging on, one had to reject 4 cookies, and then one was free to surf, read and post on Bladeforums.com.

Recently, in addition to that, one has to reject another merchandisers cookie with each and every page or topic accessed.
You all do realize that more and more academic establishments, and a good many buisnesses are setting ALL public monitors to reject or interfere with all cookies? What that means is that accademia is in direct conflict with capaltism, but what it really means is that in short order the bulk of your audience may be simply unable to access your site. Think about it. What if all those of us accessing you from university and buisness clusters simply are denied access based on cookie bandwidth. The terminal that I usually access this site from now uniformly gives me an access denied message based solely on the need for cookies. Cookies suck, and serve a negative consumer impetus.

mps--- I've no idea how all this stuff works, but I can tell you that if you're marketing stratgedy relies on cookies that you are doomed to only ever even reach a small percentage of the interested population.

 

[Mike Turber]

Cookies are a general mechanism which server side connections (such as CGI scripts like we use here on BladeForums) can use to both store and retrieve information on the client side of the connection. The addition of a simple, persistent, client-side state significantly extends the capabilities of Web-based client/server applications. Basically here we use them to store your user name a password so you don't have to do insert that info into the form each time you reply to or make a new thread.

A server, when returning an HTTP object to a client, may also send a piece of state information which the client will store. Included in that state object is a description of the range of URLs for which that state is valid. Any future HTTP requests made by the client which fall in that range will include a transmittal of the current value of the state object from the client back to the server. The state object is called a cookie, for no compelling reason. Future cookies will have more options than current cookies but until then we use these here on BladeForums for convenience.

This simple mechanism provides a tool which enables a host of new types of applications to be written for web-based environments. Shopping applications can now store information about the currently selected items, for fee services can send back registration information and free the client from retyping a user-id on next connection, sites can store per-user preferences on the client, and have the client supply those preferences every time that site is connected to. The cookies here also set your preferences so that the forum works just like you want it to.



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Best Regards,
Mike Turber
BladeForums Site Owner and Administrator
Do it! Do it right! Do it right NOW!
www.wowinc.com

 

[Spark]

MPS, boiled down, what Mike is trying to say is that cookies are a part of internet life now, and everysite you go to is going to try to put them on you.

Go to CNN, Time, and hundreds of others, and you'll see that they are also using cookies.

Here's where we differ. Our cookies are used for two things.

1. (Most Important) They set your "last visited" time here so that when you come back, you can see what new messages have been posted. If a computer lab or MIS/CIS department decides to set their browsers so that they don't receive cookies, then all that should happen is that you don't see the cookie related functions. If you are denied entry due to cookies, that means that you are A. Probably operating behind a firewall, or B. have a really security minded security department, which is good in some cases, but off base with us. Sad enough, you can't ban only the bad, without losing the good as well....

2. They keep you from viewing the same ad twice.

There is also the tertiary effect where the cookies are used to store your username and password, but since you are at work/ on a University computer, that isn't the best environment to do this in....

Anyhow, the cookies here aren't going anywhere. The best option for security minded organizations like the Universities is to simply have the network admin make the Browser Settings have cookies refused/ turned off so that no one can turn them on. You still get to surf the sites, and no cookies are downloaded. Completely avoids the problem, without having to block off sites or enable unneccessary protocols like what you are experiencing.

Spark

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Kevin Jon Schlossberg
SysOp and Administrator for BladeForums.com

Insert witty quip here