Re: Tim Berners-Lee on the Semantic Web--Missing His Main Point

From: Ross Singer <rossfsinger_at_nyob>
Date: Fri, 23 Oct 2009 14:23:29 -0400
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 1:41 PM, Karen Coyle <lists_at_kcoyle.net> wrote:
> I don't recall the details, but something in the back of my mind is telling
> me that the sessions exist because we didn't want vendors to use cookies on
> public access terminals. Does anyone else remember that? I believe the idea
> of the session-based URL was to retain the session without leaving anything
> on the computer.

This is exactly right (not just public terminals, but also this
hypothetical fear of disenfranchising anybody that might turn cookies
off or be on a browser without cookies).

Having session information in the URL isn't necessarily evil, but not
"failing" into a new session sort definitely is.  After all, the way
the status quo is designed, it would seemingly fail even with cookies
(since you'd just be pushing the session id into a cookie, rather than
the URL).

It's just piss-poor, inexcusable, pre-web design and we should be
ashamed that it still persists to this day.

-Ross.
Received on Fri Oct 23 2009 - 14:24:56 EDT