What does TANSTAAFL mean?

[j-Xiti]

What does TANSTAAFL mean?[:^)]

[Pharcellus]

Google is your friend.

[Tokoz]

There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch, if you don't want to get the googlecookies....

My dad used to say that all the time, and I've never read the book... :p

[Pharcellus]

..and what, exactly, is wrong with "googlecookies"?

[imported_tjl]

google can answer that too. tin foil hats don't like them I guess.

[Tokoz]

Yep, and you can download the type of tinfoil hat I use right here:

http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/central.html

Much better about deciding which cookies are allowed, or if you just want them placed for the session and deleted when you're done.

Google isn't too bad, they're just paired up with places like Doubleclick...

The really bad one is Omniture. They place a single cookie giving your machine an ID and then track everywhere you go and sell the information to companies. They even pulled my government account information. (scarey)... :p :p :p

But you can block them easily by blocking all information from 2o7.net :p

No, I'm not paranoid. I just don't want things to get to the point where I open my fridge to grab a Coke, and the TV changes it's advertisement to one for Pepsi....

[Pharcellus]

Yeah, it's pretty common that people have absolutely NO CLUE how cookies and cookie-tracking work, and assume they have to delete cookies to prevent Big Brother (tm) from watching everything they do.

It's a crock, since every browser leaks information to websites completely unrelated to cookies.

[j-Xiti]

dead

[Pharcellus]

Eh? Google is not a bot. Google is a search engine.

The fact that it uses cookies to store user preferences and to uniquely identify your browser to Google and ONLY Google does not make it malicious. Google, like any website, will log and track any information in the referrer field of the HTTP header, and there is no way to prevent that, outside of using a modified or non-standard browser which fakes it.