[Eric Bliss]

Err… How did you get in here??? What you’re seeing is the separate development system that’s (obviously) Under Development. To get out of here, and back to the proper Cow system, look at the URL that’s showing as your current location in your browser. Where you see /cgi-bin/dev_(something), change it to say /cgi-bin/new_(something). That will put you back in the normal, sane view. I guess I should make a link back to “normality” for anybody else who accidently wanders in here. Or, if you just go back out to the front page of the site, that should also fix it for you.

Go ahead and e-mail me directly with how you got in here, if you know.

Eric Bliss

systems design and integration
CreativeCow.Net

int main(void) {
printf(“Hello World!\n”);
}

[Eric Bliss]

[Eric Bliss]

[Eric Bliss]

Now let me explain why I now KNOW that this is a problem on your end.

All cookies in this site are set on a SITE-WIDE basis. Indeed there is only a single type of cookie in the site that refers to individual threads, the “Mark As Read” cookie. The only thing it does is to mark links inside of a single thread as “read” rather than “new”. And it sounds like you don’t even use that one. And the only cookie that is specific to a single forum is the cookie that tells the number of days worth of posts that you want to display on the main page of that forum. No user identification is contained in either of them.

All other cookies we have are global cookies that are the same no matter where you are in the cow. Our mechanisms don’t distinguish between individual threads when it comes to holding on to your posting info. There is only one cookie that holds your screen name across the site, and only one cookie that holds your e-mail address across the site. That’s all. Any problems you are having with the cookies disappearing in particular threads is your own problem, induced by your browsing setup, firewalls, pop-up blockers, funky IE/third party hybrid browsers, and all.

Eric Bliss

systems design and integration
CreativeCow.Net

int main(void) {
printf(“Hello World!\n”);
}

[Eric Bliss]

Okay, you probably aren’t having an issue with the number of cookies on your system then. As far as “Avant Browser” goes, you’ve got such a niche browser that I hadn’t even heard of it until I went to Google after you mentioned it. So I can’t say that we support your browser in particular. Overall, though, you’re talking about an overlay on top of IE, which means that you have all problems that IE has, plus any problems that the Avant browser has on top of it. As for me personally – I think a third party overlay on top of a Microsoft security hole just sounds likely to have some issues.

Now that I’ve said all that, there are a few other things to consider…

Cookies have a set lifespan. Once it’s reached, they’re automatically deleted. Also, many browsers have settings that allow you (whether you realize it or not) to kill cookies before they’ve lived out a full and prosperous life. Indeed, some of these will kill cookies the second that you close your browser.

Cookies reside on your browser. They do not reside on the server. This means that cookies are not fully under our control. While most people are not having a problem with their cookies, most people are also running browsers that have very significant market share – on PC: IE (original, without addons) or Firefox. On Mac: Safari, Camino, or Firefox. We use all of these browsers ourselves, and if there is a problem, we can test it to find out why something is breaking. We do not use Opera, Avant, Mac IE, Netscape, etc. Each additional browser that we have to support takes another increasing chunk of a very limited supply of time. So, we have to pick and choose what to focus on.

As you have said, your cookies will work for many days, then stop. But, if you use the cookie reset mechanism, they work again. So the cookies that we send you do work when we set them. However, at some later point, either the cookie in your browser becomes corrupted, or your browser just deletes the cookie altogether. We have no control over this.

Finally, I should point out that less scrupulous individuals in the world are not above trying to steal or modify information just because they can. Those inbred slimeball children of babboons have methods of altering and stealing information stored by web browsers. There are steps you can take to protect yourself from those degenerate orangutans, but they discover new methods of breaking security all the time, and we cannot control what your browser may get exposed to, and have no way to know if a representative of that sorry convention of genetic defectives has corrupted your system.

By the way, you can’t tell that I despise those phreaks that give hacking a bad name, can you??? 🙂

Eric Bliss

systems design and integration
CreativeCow.Net

int main(void) {
printf(“Hello World!\n”);
}

[Eric Bliss]

Three questions…

1. How many different Cow forums do you visit on a regular basis?

2. How often do you use the “Mark as Read” function in the thread view?

3. What browser are you using?

Eric Bliss

systems design and integration
CreativeCow.Net

int main(void) {
printf(“Hello World!\n”);
}

[Eric Bliss]

[Eric Bliss]

[Eric Bliss]

[Eric Bliss]

Well, here’s a few different cookies for you – all of them should be listed as belonging to domain .creativecow.net …

cowname – the value of this cookie should be your posting name – you’ll probably see a %20 in it – that’s the spacebar.

cowemail – the value of this cookie should be your posting e-mail address. %40 is the at sign.

cowadd_signature – T or F – add your signature to a post by default.

cowview – t d, or s – default view for “View Posts” – [t]hread, [d]ate, or [s]ummary.

cownotify – T, A, F – Response Notification via Email – T: Message only A: Entire thread F: None – kinda cryptic now, but it was from [T]rue, [A]ll, or [F]alse.

cowtzo – number – minutes away + or – from GMT/UTC/Zulu Time (a.k.a. local time for Greenwich, England)

cowage_(forum number) – number of days back to show posts for that forum.

Those are the core cookies for the site. More are coming, but that’s what you should look for right now.

Eric Bliss

systems design and integration
CreativeCow.Net

int main(void) {
printf(“Hello World!\n”);
}