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Technology Stocks : Apple Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Henry J Costanzo who wrote (83601)	7/4/2009 1:55:42 PM
From: Stock Puppy	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 213177

Cookies are very misunderstood. They fairly small so it would be like asking if adding a drop of water to the fishtank would cause it to overflow. Should not affect performance. Might consider deleting cookies (or having them expire after browsing) for privacy concerns. I usually set cookies to be saved only to "sites that I navigate to" - most ads don't put cookies down with that option. Some sites leave a cookie behind so that when you revisit it, it can recall some things (eg preferences) - such as SI you have the option to save your password and login name so you don't have to log in each time you visit SI. The cookies can also record what links you clicked on in that site, etc. Some cookies are from ads, so they track what sites you visit who have ads from the same advertising company (eg doubleclick) and from the info they gather they can present ads which are more focused to your interests (to put it nicely ) o do other things with that info. Generally only the (for lack of a better name) company that put the cookie on your computer can read it or alter it. So if every page you visit is an Amazon affiliate and has an ad for such, Amazon could conceivably know all the pages that you (or at least your computer) visited. May or may not be able to know who you are. Different browsers have different ways to handle cookies - you can turn cookies off, delete them or set restrictions on how they are made - for example Firefox can be set to clear all cookies when you close the browser and optionally ask you if its OK to delete cookies. Some sites require cookies to work properly - sometimes navigating from one page to another requires certain information that they store on your computer such as "is MCHJC logged in and so he is authorized to view the page he requested?" I'm also a bit lazy, so I use one browser for important stuff and other for general browsing, so monkey business isn't mixed with real business (meant in many different contexts :-)

To: Henry J Costanzo who wrote (83601)	7/5/2009 4:32:47 PM
From: shlurker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 213177

Cookies ... they are fixed-length strings of 'text' placed on YOUR computer, to facilitate the software that puts up a particular web page. A very simple example is when you see as part of a web page display: "You have visited this page 5 times" The scrap in your computer will be encoded-text identifying the URL of the web page and a text-encoded binary number. That number has just been increased by 1 somehow by the source code of web page. 'Somehow' is outlined below: . reads the web page's text cookie from a fixed spot on your computer( it knows where it is). . decodes the part of this text where it knows it has placed the #visits number. . adds +1 to the binary number . recodes the part of the text that is the #visits number. . stores the revised text cookie back into your computer into the same spot. All of the processing is done by the web source code: . get cookie . process cookie . store cookie The cookie is a fixed-length UNIX-style(literally UNIX on Apple computers) text-file that is never referenced by any application on your computer(ie- it is 'read-only' when accessed by your computer. Note that the Web page designer has no hope to create this feature without cookies. It would have to keep track of this number for EVERY web page visitor on the whole wide world web!