Comments on: A good recipe for cookies?

By: Eszter

Eszter — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 20:30:43 +0000

tps12 – Actually, it’s precisely this type of attitude that videos of this sort may try to address. If you care about privacy, for example, then you do need to know what a cookie is. If you don’t care about privacy then perhaps a video about why perhaps you should would be helpful. I’m not suggesting that we should force people to care about everything, but I think they should be informed about certain practices before deciding that they would rather dismiss them.

By: c.l. ball

c.l. ball — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 17:19:52 +0000

Re #6

This is an excellent point. For example, to tell a phishing email from a genuine one, being able to read the URL in the link is helpful, or knowing that the sender’s address looks funny is a big help to stopping fraud.

BTW this one is not bad. Not great, but fairly good for a novice.

By: melissa

melissa — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 14:38:44 +0000

#5 tps12

If you, your friends & collegues, are computer adept, of course you assume everyone is computer adept. I do some work in online university education and masses of students don’t know what cookies are, or even terms like URL. These students are 18-22 (“the net generation”); many are from underserved & rural areas; but a surprising number are urban & suburban. They have learned only what they need (IM, facebook, google, and bookmark). They don’t have the concepts and vocabulary to take certain actions or follow directions.

Short informative videos would be great if, as Eszter notes, they were explanatory at the introductory level.

By: tps12

tps12 — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 14:02:25 +0000

It’s 2007! I don’t need to know what a cookie is any more than I need to be able to sharpen a spark plug or whatever.

By: abb1

abb1 — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 13:58:58 +0000

I don’t have Google toolbar. I have something called “Google Gears”, though I don’t remember installing it.

Yeah, come to think of it, pre-fetching initiated by mouse-over sounds like a reasonable explanation.

By: Adam

Adam — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 13:41:47 +0000

exposed = installed. Not sure where that one came from.

By: Adam

Adam — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 13:40:03 +0000

abb1—I’m foolishly wading into a topic that’s out of my depth, but I think you must have enabled a Google feature that preloads search results. The point of this feature is to make your web surfing experience smoother. Pages are fetched in the background while you’re reading, so they appear to download instantly when you decide to click a link. Do you have the Google toolbar exposed?

Unfortunately, preloading can cause all sorts of ancillary effects that may be undesirable. I don’t know whether this behavior is technically evil, but I’m pretty sure you can disable it.

By: abb1

abb1 — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 13:14:49 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I configured my firefox (just out of curiosity) to prompt for confirmation every time someone is trying to create a cookie. There’s something interesting I noticed, maybe it’s common knowledge, but I doubt it. When you’re on a google-search-results page, just going mouse-over a link is enough for that site to set a cookie, at least in some cases. Not a google’s cookie, target site’s cookie, even if you never click on the link to that site. Try it. Is this an undeniable proof of the Evil Conspiracy or what?