Cookies

[Albert Lunde]

>I've never understood why anyone other than vendors would want cookies, but
>perhaps I'm missing something.  The only useful thing that I am aware of
>cookies doing is to allow you to customize a site to your individual
>preferences - show golf news first, bring up your transaction account,
>greet you by name, ect.  On a machine where multiple users with different
>preferences will be accessing the site, it doesn't make any sense to allow
>customization.
>
>Am I missing some other great use of cookies from the user side?

At one level, HTTP is a "stateless" protocol: you don't have a "sesson"
open to a web server, just a series of transactions that fetch individual
pages and images. (I know how https: and HTTP/1.1 might be considered
exceptions to this statement, but it is in a way that isn't important to my
point).

HTTP cookies are not just a way to store persistent information between
visits to a web site; they are a reasonable way to create the appearance of
a "session" where none really exists (not the only way, "magic" URls and
data in hidden fields are others). This is useful for many complex CGI
systems, including both online stores _and_ library catalogs.

This usefulness is more or less orthogonal to the privacy issues raised
about cookies.

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    Albert Lunde                      Albert-Lunde at nwu.edu