Re: [wg-review] A Reply to Miles B. Whitener... Re: The owners of "the Internet" must manage it for their own benefit

[Bret Busby <bret@clearsol.iinet.net.au>]

Robin Miller wrote:
> 
> Sotiropoulos wrote:
> 
> >
> > But, I don't see any actions being taken against the setting of cookies... nor do I foresee anything on the horizon, do you?
> >
> > Sotiris Sotiropoulos
> >           Hermes Network, Inc.
> 
> in theory, you can sue someone for that here. Cookies are illegal in Germany.
> But sometimes cookies have to be set for certain applications - like on Delphi
> for example. They use cookies to identify you to the forum software system.
> Cookies are necessary for the site to work, its also the case for the Blaxxun
> 3d software as well. Needs cookies to work, so you log in and the community
> software 'remembers' you and all your stuff in the environment.
> 
> So with cookies, I guess its all in the application of them. The new fun thing
> to do on sites is to try connecting to your computer with NetBIOS - that can be
> worse than cookies... all in all, best get a decent firewall. Many firewalls
> block cookies, (norton for sure does) and a decent one will surely block
> NetBIOS access through the Net. Norton has a neat feature of being able to turn
> cookies on in the browser but turning it to ask me on the firewall, when it
> hits a cookie, it asks you if you want to accept them from that site. Yes - you
> accept them. No, it throws all the cookies from that site silently into the
> bitbin.
> 

Cookies are not necessary.

Some programmers find them useful, but, they are not essential.

I have discussed this on my local Linux Use Group mailing list, the
other members of which, know that I regard cookies at one of the evils
of the 20th century, like java.

Basically, I just disable cookies in my browser, apart from one
particular site (which hasn't been up, when I have wanted to use it,
since I decided to accept othe mailing list subscribers' advice, and,
acept the cookies for partuclar sites).

I am not sure, but, I believe that programming in a particular way, in
Perl, can eliminate the need for cookies.

In terms of the origin of this discussion (I think); spam, I understand
that spam is banned in two of the USA. It is unfortunate that spam is
not universally banned. Such a ban could increase acceptance, and,
usage, of the Internet, and, thus, could benefit (almost) everyone.

-- 

Bret Busby

Armadale, West Australia

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