Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Cookies, Germans, Art
Buried in the fine print is where you will find Jimmy Hoffa and mitigation. Sarcasmo writes "I'm hoping you'll post this story, since it's partly a correction/update of a previous story on Slashdot. While Senator Edwards' bill, S. 197, does come down on spyware in a very good way, it doesn't as the previous article suggested, "require commercial web sites to ask permission from the user before a cookie can be set or personal information collected." To quote the bill itself:
"(B) The term does not include a text file, or cookie, placed on a person's computer system by an Internet service provider, interactive computer service, or commercial Internet website to return information to the Internet service provider, interactive computer service, commercial Internet website, or third party if the person subsequently uses the Internet service provider or interactive computer service, or accesses the commercial Internet website."Though I did come across this bill introduced to the house by Representative Green of Texas -- and it seems to come down just as hard on cookie use specifically."
Oh, baby, I love your photo-realism -- it's so ... real-seeming. After wryly noting that the last few times it's been featured in this forum it's been while he was on a plane, or in the middle of bug-fixing, or while being boiled alive by cannibals, etc, Paul Nolan says of his Photogenics graphics software:
"Well, it was a long hard slog, but it's finally out, the press release is here.
There's a pretty good chance there will be a local power outage today, on the off chance that would increase my chances ;)"
Nicht wahr, nicht wahr. sconeu writes "According to Wired, a German Defense Ministry official has denied the original report in Der Speigel about the Microsoft ban ... Oh well..."
My project attempts to evolve these effects using genetic algorithms, but you could use the code without the genetic algorithm. Project page at http://www.cs.brown.edu/people/morgan/evolver/inde x.html.
-m
The name of the magazine is Der Spiegel (not Speigel). It would have been nice if the official's statement would have gotten a bit more space in the Wired article. A name would have been nice, as well. BTW, it was also doubted in the article that the statements reflect the real position of the government towards MS products.
I still don't understand why any closed-source products are used in sensitive areas, be it in Germany or elsewhere. To create a somewhat secure environment, good admins are required anyway. They don't need any funky GUIs, so why not pick one of the free Unices?
Okay, read the article first. It includes comments from Andy Mueller-Maguhn, a leader of Berlin's Chaos Computer Club and also Europe's representative on the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), about the political sensitivities that might be offended by a German move away from Microsoft for all security-sensitive stuff (in other words, the US Government might be offended by "US Software is Insecure" being bandied about by the German government). The article suggests that the original report may, indeed, be accurate.
Beyond that, why announce to the world that your sensitive systems are or are not running any given OS or group of OSen? I mean, "Our sensitive systems will no longer run NT" (if an accurate statement) lets crackers know that (a) NT-only exploits won't work and (b) if they do, the box is uninteresting. Of course, that is assuming the statement is accurate ("Hey, Hans, how about if we disuguise the DoD C&C codes as marketing data and put zem on one of zose NT servers?" "Ah, excellent, Frans. Zee stupid Americans vill never realize.")
After playing all day yesterday with browsers, I've come up with a way to handle cookies that I'm happy with.
Opera 5.02 has a great feature called "throw away new cookies on exit". It will accept all cookies, but when you exit it tosses them. So, you set up cookies for all the sites you want them for (like slashdot), exit opera (it only saves cookies on exit), check them using Opera File Explorer (see below), then start it back up and check off the "throw away new cookies on exit" option under File|Preferences|Security.
Now, doubleclick and everyone else can throw all the cookies at you they want, and they will be erased when you exit Opera. But, you also still have your stored cookies for the sites you want. Works great! No other browser can do this as gracefully. Opera 5 seems very cool (although I've only played with it for a couple days...).
Links:
Opera: http://www.opera.com
Opera File Explorer (you will need this to view your cookies and decide which to keep): http://www.westelcom.com/users/jsegur/
- Twid
- "When you want something with all your heart, the entire universe conspires to give it to you" -Paulo Coelho
Cookies are used for both good and evil. They are just a tool. When used for good, they can be extremely convenient, like here on Slashdot. However, if users had to give permission for them to be used, I would expect that many internet sites would stop using them altogether rather than go through the hassle. Meanwhile, the evil people would find some other way to track you, like by IP -- lots of people are going static these days.
Personally, I think browsers should either:
That would eliminate the ads.
If you don't like cookies, turn them off, damnit. Don't make the rest of us suffer for your paranoia. Personally, I like it when I go to Amazon and it immediately gives me a list of new, highly-rated graphics programming books.
------
"If you're using Windows NT in a nuclear missile command-and-control center, yes, you should be concerned." - Andrew Fernandes
Giving the term "Blue Screen of Death" a whole new meaning, eh?
People shape laws. Not the other way around.