Hal wrote: [Summary of the Cookie Situation, including an interesting proposal about client-side shopping carts that could replace some uses of cookies.]
(Given the difficulties in creating new protocols for this kind of support, I think a step in the right direction would be to change the user interface so that cookies are only sent upon user request. Maybe you have to shift-click or use some other key modifier to send a cookie. Then shopping pages could ask you to shift-click the buy button to add the item to your shopping cart.)
Neat idea, but it might be hard to get many users to understand the interface. I'm surprised no one's mentioned that this week's beta of Netscape Navigator (3.0b5, available in U.S. or export strength) has a configuration option that let's you see an alert box before your browser accepts a cookie. It's a little hard to find... (Note to Jeff W. or other Netscape folks: maybe this should move from Network: Protocols to Security: General. Makes more sense to keep all the "Show an Alert Before" choices in one place.) Joe