Origin of "cookie"?
Charles Packer
that Web sites leave on your computer to keep track of you?
--
pac...@clark.net (Charles Packer)
http://www.clark.net/~whatnews
jmfb...@aol.com
pac...@clark.net (Charles Packer) wrote:
>How did the term "cookie" come to be applied to the files
>that Web sites leave on your computer to keep track of you?
>
/BAH
Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.
Steve O'Hara-Smith
> How did the term "cookie" come to be applied to the files
> that Web sites leave on your computer to keep track of you?
Someone at Netscape thought it was a cute name.
Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879
by pac...@clark.net (Charles Packer):
> How did the term "cookie" come to be applied to the files
> that Web sites leave on your computer to keep track of you?
The first usage I can find is in the Unix man page for fseek. I quote
from the BSD 4.3 man page:
Ftell returns the current value of the offset relative to
the beginning of the file associated with the named stream.
It is measured in bytes on UNIX; on some other systems it is
a magic cookie, and the only foolproof way to obtain an
offset for fseek.
Printed 6/13/100 February 24, 1986 1
From this, I conclude that a cookie is an inscrutable bit of data
given you by a system that may be meaningless to you, is not intended
to be manipulated by you, but is supposed to be useful if you give it
back to the system at some later time.
It would seem that the cookies given out by some web servers are exactly
this kind of thing.
I exchanged E-mail with DMR about this, and if I recall his reply, he
thought this wording was the original wording from the original man
page for fseek at Bell Labs.
Doug Jones
jo...@cs.uiowa.edu
(PS: Note that the BSD 4.3 man command has a cosmetic Y2K bug in it!)
Charlton Wilbur
> Charles Packer <pac...@clark.net> wrote:
> > How did the term "cookie" come to be applied to the files
> > that Web sites leave on your computer to keep track of you?
>
> Someone at Netscape thought it was a cute name.
It predates Netscape by a good long time - I think I remember mention
of cookies in an old X10 reference. Basically, it's a bit of data that
You Are Not Expected To Understand; you get it from some authority (an
authentication server, perhaps), and when you pass it back to that
authority, the authority knows what to do with it.
I suppose a rough synonym could be "handle" or "reference," though both of
those have the connotation that if you follow where they point you'll find
something interesting. Cookies are opaque.
Charlton
--
Charlton Wilbur | Wer bin ich, waer' ich deine Wille nicht?
University of Massachusetts | -- Bruennhilde
cwwi...@music.umass.edu | 1832 - 1841 - 1976 - 1992 - 2001
S.C.Sprong
Charlton Wilbur <cwwi...@oitunix.oit.umass.edu> wrote:
>On Tue, 13 Jun 2000, Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote:
>> Charles Packer <pac...@clark.net> wrote:
>> > How did the term "cookie" come to be applied to the files
>> > that Web sites leave on your computer to keep track of you?
>> Someone at Netscape thought it was a cute name.
>It predates Netscape by a good long time - I think I remember mention
>of cookies in an old X10 reference.
See the man page for X's Display Manager xdm (notably the switch:
``XDM-AUTHORIZATION-1 MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1.'') and generic Kerberos
documentation. Coincidentally, both X and Kerberos are from MIT.
>I suppose a rough synonym could be "handle" or "reference," [...]
The synonym I heard the most is 'ticket'.
>Cookies are opaque.
Not quite. The least abusive use for web cookies is to add states to
the HTTP protocol (they should have used another protocol and preferrably
another network, and be in another galaxy, but I digress). Then the cookie
content can be left meaningless.
A more dubious ploy is to store user information in cookies that gets
passed around. Then cookies are more comparable to a cat's bell.
scsprong
Eric Chomko
[...]
: (PS: Note that the BSD 4.3 man command has a cosmetic Y2K bug in it!)
Only one? I have fixed exactly two Y2K bugs and both were of the variety
"19100" as strings.
Eric
Ariel Scolnicov
> On Tue, 13 Jun 2000, Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote:
>
> > Charles Packer <pac...@clark.net> wrote:
> > > How did the term "cookie" come to be applied to the files
> > > that Web sites leave on your computer to keep track of you?
> >
> > Someone at Netscape thought it was a cute name.
>
> It predates Netscape by a good long time - I think I remember mention
> of cookies in an old X10 reference. Basically, it's a bit of data that
> You Are Not Expected To Understand; you get it from some authority (an
> authentication server, perhaps), and when you pass it back to that
> authority, the authority knows what to do with it.
Is it some MIT-ism?
> I suppose a rough synonym could be "handle" or "reference," though both of
> those have the connotation that if you follow where they point you'll find
> something interesting. Cookies are opaque.
How about "ticket"? That seems to be used in a similar manner.
--
Ariel Scolnicov
Robin G. Cox
"How did the term "cookie" come to be applied to the files"
Charles, try:
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/jargon.html#cookie
Robin
Charles Packer wrote:
> How did the term "cookie" come to be applied to the files
> that Web sites leave on your computer to keep track of you?
>
Charles Eicher
>
>[ Jumping in head-first and a bit late, but...]
>Charlton Wilbur <cwwi...@oitunix.oit.umass.edu> wrote:
>
>>> > How did the term "cookie" come to be applied to the files
>>> > that Web sites leave on your computer to keep track of you?
>
>>It predates Netscape by a good long time - I think I remember mention
>>of cookies in an old X10 reference.
>
>``XDM-AUTHORIZATION-1 MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1.'') and generic Kerberos
>documentation. Coincidentally, both X and Kerberos are from MIT.
>
>>I suppose a rough synonym could be "handle" or "reference," [...]
>
>The synonym I heard the most is 'ticket'.
Actually, I think cookies go back a lot longer than that, at least as computer
folklore.
There's an interesting anecdote about cookies in Ted Nelson's "Computer Lib"
(circa 1973?) but I don't have any reason to trust its authenticity (or to doubt
it, for that matter). He described a large company with a mainframe accounting
program that would stop at random times, and assert at the console "Give me a
cookie." The first time it happened, all processing stopped until they figured
out that they had to type "cookie" and then processing resumed. According the
story, the cookie code was attributed to a programmer who had left the company,
the in-house development team spent weeks trying to remove the code from the
program, but it was buried so deeply and obscurely that they could not remove it
without risk of breaking the program. So the cookie request was left in place
and documented in the program manual.
Eric Smith
> Not quite. The least abusive use for web cookies is to add states to
> the HTTP protocol (they should have used another protocol and preferrably
> another network, and be in another galaxy, but I digress). Then the cookie
> content can be left meaningless.
They're still basically opaque. Even when used that way, the content of
the cookie is only intended to be meaningful to the web server, not to the
poor slob who's paying for the disk space it's stored on.
Sure, sometimes you can figure out what some web cookies mean, but that's
purely accidental from the point of view of the protocols (even if it
might be done with deliberate intent by the software).
Arthur T. Murray
>"Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879" wrote:
>...
>
>> The first usage I can find is in the Unix man page for fseek. I quote
>> from the BSD 4.3 man page:
>>
>> Ftell returns the current value of the offset relative to
>> the beginning of the file associated with the named stream.
>> It is measured in bytes on UNIX; on some other systems it is
>> a magic cookie, and the only foolproof way to obtain an
>> offset for fseek.
>
>> Printed 6/13/100 February 24, 1986 1
> [...]
DMR:
>In the 7th Edition (1977) this snip about ftell is indeed rendered identically.
>The term is also used liberally in Steve Johnson's description
>of the PCC compiler. Somehow I remember Bob Morris as introducing
>it locally as a term for an opaque token, but haven't found the citation.
>
>Articles later in the thread are relevant, though the one
>referencing the Jargon File doesn't have early citations,
>and the about Computer Lib (invoking Sesame Street's
>cookie monster) is more suggestive of ultimate origin
>than the more specific usage either for browsers or ftell.
>
>> (PS: Note that the BSD 4.3 man command has a cosmetic Y2K bug in it!)
>
>Consider a fix along these lines. As a fan of ceremony, although I knew
>of the need to do it, I decided not to install it until 1 Jan 2000:
[ code snipped ]
> Dennis
ATM:
Why hasn't anybody in this thread mentioned someone named
"Lou Montulli -- invented Web cookies" -- which is what I jotted
down two or three months ago on the back of my sheet of
`Zu Verrichtende Sachen' [to-do list] in my nerd pocket. Also:
parity check -- invented by Richard M. Bloch, 18jun1921-22may2000.
--
Forth is the lingua franca of AI, embedded NC and robotics.
For details on Mind.Forth and the public domain AI project,
see the ACM Sigplan Notices 33(12):25-31 (December 1998),
"Mind.Forth: Thoughts on Artificial Intelligence and Forth."
Dennis Ritchie
"Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879" wrote:
...
> The first usage I can find is in the Unix man page for fseek. I quote
> from the BSD 4.3 man page:
>
> Ftell returns the current value of the offset relative to
> the beginning of the file associated with the named stream.
> It is measured in bytes on UNIX; on some other systems it is
> a magic cookie, and the only foolproof way to obtain an
> offset for fseek.
> Printed 6/13/100 February 24, 1986 1
> From this, I conclude that a cookie is an inscrutable bit of data
> given you by a system that may be meaningless to you, is not intended
> to be manipulated by you, but is supposed to be useful if you give it
> back to the system at some later time.
> It would seem that the cookies given out by some web servers are exactly
> this kind of thing.
In the 7th Edition (1977) this snip about ftell is indeed rendered identically.
The term is also used liberally in Steve Johnson's description
of the PCC compiler. Somehow I remember Bob Morris as introducing
it locally as a term for an opaque token, but haven't found the citation.
Articles later in the thread are relevant, though the one
referencing the Jargon File doesn't have early citations,
and the about Computer Lib (invoking Sesame Street's
cookie monster) is more suggestive of ultimate origin
than the more specific usage either for browsers or ftell.
> (PS: Note that the BSD 4.3 man command has a cosmetic Y2K bug in it!)
Consider a fix along these lines. As a fan of ceremony, although I knew
of the need to do it, I decided not to install it until 1 Jan 2000:
$ diff /n/dump/1999/1201/sys/lib/tmac/tmac.s tmac.s
881c881,884
< .if "\\*(DY"" .ds DY \\*(MO \\n(dy, 19\\n(yr
---
> .nr yP (\\n(yr+1900)/100)
> .nr yD (\\n(yr%100
> .af yD 01
> .if "\\*(DY"" .ds DY \\*(MO \\n(dy, \\n(yP\\n(yD
Dennis
Steve O'Hara-Smith
> On Tue, 13 Jun 2000, Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote:
>> Charles Packer <pac...@clark.net> wrote:
>> > How did the term "cookie" come to be applied to the files
>> > that Web sites leave on your computer to keep track of you?
>>
>> Someone at Netscape thought it was a cute name.
> It predates Netscape by a good long time - I think I remember mention
Cookies do indeed predate Netscape, but it was Netscape that applied it
(rather than any synonym) to HTTP.
P98McCabe
>Lib"
>(circa 1973?) but I don't have any reason to trust its authenticity (or
>to doubt
>it, for that matter). He described a large company with a mainframe accounting
>program that would stop at random times, and assert at the console "Give
>me a
>cookie." The first time it happened, all processing stopped until they figured
>out that they had to type "cookie" and then processing resumed. According
>the
>story, the cookie code was attributed to a programmer who had left the
company,
>the in-house development team spent weeks trying to remove the code from
>the
>program, but it was buried so deeply and obscurely that they could not remove
>it
>without risk of breaking the program. So the cookie request was left in
>place
>and documented in the program manual.
>
I think I must have read this (or a similar account) back around 1980. With
the help of a friend, I set up a similar challenge on the terminal of a
particularly obnoxious administrative type. Since he also fancied himself *the
greatest programmer on earth* as well as the guardian of all that is true and
holy, we did it in hardware (a small microprocessor tied to his terminal's
RS-232 port and hidden in plain sight.)
I'm not sure he ever actually figured out what happened. I heard that he went
as far as changing system packs (VS/9 on a Univac 90/60.) I left for the
summer. When I came back, both he and his *possessed* terminal were gone.
I'm not sure the hardware approach was entirely original either. I seem to
remember that somebody pulled a similar stunt (mechanically) with a teletype.
Does anyone else remember this?
---
p98m...@alltel.net
Micheal H. McCabe
Robert & Debbie Fetter
The Multics 'cookie' program did just what you described -- locked a user's
terminal until 'cookie' was entered. Indeed, it was worse than just that: it would
sleep in the background for 1/2 the previous wait time, and then demand another
cookie. Eventually, all one could do is enter cookie after cookie after cookie....
One of my early career antics was to have taken said same program, rewriting it
as 'joint', and pointing it at the third shift operator of the Multics system we had
at
General Motors central office.
Needless to say, the operator's diary of that evening had quite the oblique
reference
to a "system service needing attention".
(BTW: X/Windows was from the same crowd involved with Multics)
Charles Eicher wrote:
> In article <8i5uce$46kig$1...@fu-berlin.de>, "S.C.Sprong" says...
> >
> >[ Jumping in head-first and a bit late, but...]
> >Charlton Wilbur <cwwi...@oitunix.oit.umass.edu> wrote:
> >>On Tue, 13 Jun 2000, Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote:
> >
> >>> Charles Packer <pac...@clark.net> wrote:
> >>> > How did the term "cookie" come to be applied to the files
> >>> > that Web sites leave on your computer to keep track of you?
> >>> Someone at Netscape thought it was a cute name.
> >
> >>It predates Netscape by a good long time - I think I remember mention
> >>of cookies in an old X10 reference.
> >
> >See the man page for X's Display Manager xdm (notably the switch:
> >``XDM-AUTHORIZATION-1 MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1.'') and generic Kerberos
> >documentation. Coincidentally, both X and Kerberos are from MIT.
> >
> >>I suppose a rough synonym could be "handle" or "reference," [...]
> >
> >The synonym I heard the most is 'ticket'.
>
> Actually, I think cookies go back a lot longer than that, at least as computer
> folklore.
>
Bruce Hoult
<d...@bell-labs.com> wrote:
"Give me a cookie" is pretty obviously a reference to Sesame Street, but
perhaps the use of "cookie" for an opaque bit of
data-you-are-not-supposed-to-understand is related to Chinese fortune
cookies?
-- Bruce
Megan
>There's an interesting anecdote about cookies in Ted Nelson's "Computer Lib"
>(circa 1973?) but I don't have any reason to trust its authenticity (or to doubt
>it, for that matter). He described a large company with a mainframe accounting
>program that would stop at random times, and assert at the console "Give me a
>cookie." The first time it happened, all processing stopped until they figured
>out that they had to type "cookie" and then processing resumed. According the
>story, the cookie code was attributed to a programmer who had left the company,
>the in-house development team spent weeks trying to remove the code from the
>program, but it was buried so deeply and obscurely that they could not remove it
>without risk of breaking the program. So the cookie request was left in place
>and documented in the program manual.
That is mostly the story I heard (back when I was at WPI, 1974-1978)
from another student. He related that it had happened at IUPUI
(Indiana University).
The version I heard was that the program first asked for a cookie...
eventually someone simply typed 'cookie' in response and it was
happy. The next time it asked, they responded 'cookie', which was
no longer sufficient. Now it wanted to knowwhat *kind* of cookie.
Any type was sufficient... but it remembered them. Subsequent
requests for cookies had to get differing responses...
...or so I heard...
Megan Gentry
Former RT-11 Developer
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
| Megan Gentry, EMT/B, PP-ASEL | Internet (work): gentry!zk3.dec.com |
| Unix Support Engineering Group | (home): mbg!world.std.com |
| Compaq Computer Corporation | addresses need '@' in place of '!' |
| 110 Spitbrook Rd. ZK03-2/T43 | URL: http://world.std.com/~mbg/ |
| Nashua, NH 03062 | "pdp-11 programmer - some assembler |
| (603) 884 1055 | required." - mbg KB1FCA |
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
Charles Packer
>and the about Computer Lib (invoking Sesame Street's
>cookie monster) is more suggestive of ultimate origin
>than the more specific usage either for browsers or ftell.
This is what I was after: the ultimate origin. I thought I
would try to help out William Safire, who writes a weekly
column in the New York Times Magazine called "On Language".
(He's probably better known for his political columns on
the Op Ed page of the Times.)
In last Sunday's magazine, he wrote about how several
"low-tech" words came to be used in computerese, specifically
bundling, spam, cache, cookie, and attendant. I took the
liberty of saving a copy of his article on my Web site,
since it will disappear from the Times's after Saturday:
http://www.clark.net/~packer/safire.html
He calls the origin of cookie "obscure", and asks for further
information. Of course, we could suggest that he read this
thread, in the FAQ tradition, but I think that would be
asking too much. I'd be willing to take a crack at summarizing
the thread and posting it for iterative refinement before
sending it off to him as the collective work of this ng.
My own speculation, before posting my query, was that it had
something to do with the "fortune cookie" programs that
displayed a humorous saying when you logged in. I vaguely
recall that it wasn't simply randomly selected, but depended
on what it showed you at the previous login, and did so by
reading a small file that it had left in your account at the
previous login.
However, after reading the thread, the business about the
program that demanded "cookie" sounds more plausible as
the ultimate origin. This would mean that the metaphoric
origin is not the resemblance of a small, opaque file to
a physical cookie, but rather that the origin is in the
resemblance of two _transactions_. And the transaction
might in turn trace back to "Sesame Street" or Andy Williams.
Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879
by pac...@clark.net (Charles Packer):
> In article <3946EBDF...@bell-labs.com>, Dennis Ritchie wrote:
>>and the about Computer Lib (invoking Sesame Street's
>>cookie monster) is more suggestive of ultimate origin
>>than the more specific usage either for browsers or ftell.
> This is what I was after: the ultimate origin. I thought I
> would try to help out William Safire, ...
> However, after reading the thread, the business about the
> program that demanded "cookie" sounds more plausible as
> the ultimate origin. This would mean that the metaphoric
> origin is not the resemblance of a small, opaque file to
> a physical cookie, but rather that the origin is in the
> resemblance of two _transactions_. And the transaction
> might in turn trace back to "Sesame Street" or Andy Williams.
There are clearly two issues here; one is the first use of the word
cookie to mean the obscure and not intended to be understood token
given you by someone or something, and intended to have meaning only
when you give it back. Here, the ftell citation and DMR's references
to internals of PCC are a clear example of the use.
The other question is why someone chose to call it a cookie and not,
say, a token.
Here, the best that can be said is that we're speculating. Yes, it
was in the era when the cookie monster lived, and yes, the folklore
about the "give me a cookie" hack was known back then, but I don't
find the connection convincing.
I hold this despite the WYSIWYG example, where the connection with
the TV show Laugh In is very clear -- the line "what you see is what
you get" spoken forcefully by a busty woman, did indeed inscribe it
in people's minds and make further use of the phrase quite natural.
The reason I'm not convinced is that there's nothing demanding about
the need for a cookie, and the demand doesn't come at you out of the
blue. The system gives you cookies when you ask for them, for example,
by calling ftell, and you give them back to the system to make it
do something useful in exchange. The use of words like token is more
natural here, with implications of economics.
We need to hear more from those who first used the term in its computer
sense.
Doug Jones
jo...@cs.uiowa.edu
Arthur T. Murray
>From article <slrn8khkci...@clark.net>,
>by pac...@clark.net (Charles Packer):
>> In article [6] <3946EBDF...@bell-labs.com>, Dennis Ritchie wrote:
>>>and the about Computer Lib (invoking Sesame Street's
>>>cookie monster) is more suggestive of ultimate origin
>>>than the more specific usage either for browsers or ftell.
>
>> This is what I was after: the ultimate origin. I thought I
>> would try to help out William Safire, ...
[...]
DWJ:
>There are clearly two issues here; one is the first use of the word
>cookie to mean the obscure and not intended to be understood token
>given you by someone or something, and intended to have meaning only
>when you give it back. Here, the ftell citation and DMR's references
>to internals of PCC are a clear example of the use.
>
>The other question is why someone chose to call it a cookie and not,
>say, a token.
ATM:
"Someone"? As I wrote in my not name-dropping but perhaps
name-buddying-up <3946...@news.victoria.tc.ca> post, I saw
a Lou Montulli somewhere credited with `cookie' and wrote it down.
>Here, the best that can be said is that we're speculating. Yes, it
>was in the era when the cookie monster lived, and yes, the folklore
>about the "give me a cookie" hack was known back then, but I don't
>find the connection convincing.
[...]
DWJ:
>We need to hear more from those who first used the term in its computer
>sense.
ATM:
So I went to http://www.altavista.com and used the powerful search for
(inserting plus signs:) +Lou +Montulli +cookie -- and I got back
150 references, at the top of which was The Unofficial Cookie FAQ
with paydirt:
FAQ:
> According to an article written by Paul Bonner for Builder.Com on
> 11/18/1997:
> "Lou Montulli, currently the protocols manager in Netscape's client
> product division, wrote the cookies specification for Navigator
> 1.0, the first browser to use the technology. Montulli says there's
> nothing particularly amusing about the origin of the name: 'A
> cookie is a well-known computer science term that is used when
> describing an opaque piece of data held by an intermediary. The
> term fits the usage precisely; it's just not a well-known term
> outside of computer science circles.'"
DWJ:
> Doug Jones
> jo...@cs.uiowa.edu
ATM:
I must be too paranoid. I always thought that `cookie' was
an attempt by either Microsoft or some other Evil Empire
to get consumers to accept an insidious stealth device
under the rubric of a friendly baked good. I was wrong,
but, hey, that's the way the cookie crumbles.
--
Arthur T. Murray
http://www.geocities.com/mentifex/mind4th.html "The AI@Home Project"
Eric Chomko
[...]
: (BTW: X/Windows was from the same crowd involved with Multics)
What you say? THAT explains everything... :)))
Eric
Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879
by uj...@victoria.tc.ca (Arthur T. Murray):
> "Someone"? As I wrote in my not name-dropping but perhaps
> name-buddying-up <3946...@news.victoria.tc.ca> post, I saw
> a Lou Montulli somewhere credited with `cookie' and wrote it down.
His credit is only to the introduction of cookies into the Netscape
and web world. The discussion that's more interesting has focused
on the earlier question of how the term came to be used in computer
science as
>> ... a well-known computer science term that is used when
>> describing an opaque piece of data held by an intermediary. ...
Tracing it back to the on-line Unix documentation for ftell is easy,
those who know the PCC compiler pointed out comments in that compiler,
of about the same vintage, using the same term with the same meaning.
Who injected this term into Computer science? That's what we're
after at this point.
Doug Jones
jo...@cs.uiowa.edu
Charles Eicher
>
>Articles later in the thread are relevant, though the one
>referencing the Jargon File doesn't have early citations,
>cookie monster) is more suggestive of ultimate origin
>than the more specific usage either for browsers or ftell.
Even if the story I cited from "Computer Lib" was apocryphal, the book was
influential enough to become canonical for these sorts of folklore.
Charles Packer
>those who know the PCC compiler pointed out comments in that compiler,
>of about the same vintage, using the same term with the same meaning.
>Who injected this term into Computer science? That's what we're
>after at this point.
If we can't attribute "cookie" to a particular cultural
phenomenon, are we left with plain old chance? (I can think of
a reason why "token" might have been avoided intentionally: it
was already owned by the lexicon of language processing.)
Maybe the guy who first used "cookie" had been playing
hide-the-cookie with his infant child. If, instead, he had
gone to a black-tie affair the night before, might it have
been "coat-check"?
The way that "magic cookie" was used in the cited ftell
documentation suggests that yes, it must have been a
well-known computer science term in that era. Then there
should be other published usage of the term that would help
zero in on its ultimate origin. Perhaps somebody can locate a
dictionary of computer terms _from that era_ that would shed
light on the matter.
gla...@glass2.lexington.ibm.com
>On Tue, 13 Jun 2000, Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote:
>
>> Charles Packer <pac...@clark.net> wrote:
>> > How did the term "cookie" come to be applied to the files
>> > that Web sites leave on your computer to keep track of you?
>>
>> Someone at Netscape thought it was a cute name.
>
>It predates Netscape by a good long time - I think I remember mention
>You Are Not Expected To Understand; you get it from some authority (an
>authentication server, perhaps), and when you pass it back to that
>authority, the authority knows what to do with it.
>
>those have the connotation that if you follow where they point you'll find
>something interesting. Cookies are opaque.
>
>
>
>--
>Charlton Wilbur | Wer bin ich, waer' ich deine Wille nicht?
>University of Massachusetts | -- Bruennhilde
>cwwi...@music.umass.edu | 1832 - 1841 - 1976 - 1992 - 2001
>
Could it have something to do with the "Cookie Monster" hack that is one
of the legends of early computing?
Dave
P.S. Standard Disclaimer: I work for them, but I don't speak for them.
gla...@glass2.lexington.ibm.com
>In article <slrn8kc60r...@clark.net>,
>>How did the term "cookie" come to be applied to the files
>>that Web sites leave on your computer to keep track of you?
>>
>
>/BAH
>
>Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.
Upchucking? One of the euphemisms for that is "Tossing your cookies".
Andrew Erickson
<wa4...@vnet.ibm.com> wrote:
>In <8i55r2$h5d$1...@bob.news.rcn.net>, jmfb...@aol.com writes:
>>In article <slrn8kc60r...@clark.net>,
>> pac...@clark.net (Charles Packer) wrote:
>>>How did the term "cookie" come to be applied to the files
>>>that Web sites leave on your computer to keep track of you?
>>>
>>Perhaps it had something to do with upchucking.
>>
>>/BAH
>>
>>Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.
>
>Upchucking? One of the euphemisms for that is "Tossing your cookies".
>
>Dave
I was under the impression (where from, I really don't know) that the term
cookie--as in an opaque data carrier thing--probably came specifically from
a connection with chinese fortune cookies. It's a little thing that
contains, in a way you can't see, a bit of information.
The man page for the Unix fortune program traditionally referred to
obtaining a fortune cookie from the cookie jar, if I recall correctly. I
generally thought that was a strange way of putting it; why not just say
it's a random fortune or proverb? Why drag the cookie jar into stuff?
Perhaps fortune cookies were more common among hackers than I realized.
--
Andrew Erickson
Alexandre Pechtchanski
wrote:
>Perhaps fortune cookies were more common among hackers than I realized.
Not surprising at all given popularity of chinese food among (american) hackers.
--
[ When replying, remove *'s from address ]
Alexandre Pechtchanski, Systems Manager, RUH, NY
Gene Wirchenko
[snip]
>I was under the impression (where from, I really don't know) that the term
>cookie--as in an opaque data carrier thing--probably came specifically from
>a connection with chinese fortune cookies. It's a little thing that
>contains, in a way you can't see, a bit of information.
This seems logical to me, but I have no proof.
>The man page for the Unix fortune program traditionally referred to
>obtaining a fortune cookie from the cookie jar, if I recall correctly. I
>generally thought that was a strange way of putting it; why not just say
>it's a random fortune or proverb? Why drag the cookie jar into stuff?
>Perhaps fortune cookies were more common among hackers than I realized.
Steven Levy's "Hackers..." and the jargon file have a number of
Chinese food references.
Sincerely,
Gene Wirchenko
Computerese Irregular Verb Conjugation:
I have preferences.
You have biases.
He/She has prejudices.
jmfb...@aol.com
gla...@glass2.lexington.ibm.com wrote:
>In <8i55r2$h5d$1...@bob.news.rcn.net>, jmfb...@aol.com writes:
>>In article <slrn8kc60r...@clark.net>,
>> pac...@clark.net (Charles Packer) wrote:
>>>How did the term "cookie" come to be applied to the files
>>>that Web sites leave on your computer to keep track of you?
>>>
>>Perhaps it had something to do with upchucking.
>>
>>/BAH
>>
>>Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.
>
>Upchucking? One of the euphemisms for that is "Tossing your cookies".
Right. And it leaves a bit of a mess.
jmfb...@aol.com
Alexandre Pechtchanski <alex*@*rockvax.rockefeller.edu> wrote:
>On 16 Jun 2000 13:54:05 -0500, aje...@osfmail.isc.rit.edu (Andrew
Erickson)
>wrote:
>
>
>among (american) hackers.
>
that I consider the last generation who worked on TOPS-10 were
into Chinese food. The groups before that weren't.
Ric Werme
Some of that was due to the lack of decent Chinese restaurants near
Maynard. I often joined some of the RT-11 group for a foray into
Cambridge for Chinese. Even sometimes from Marlboro with various -10
folk.
If you read Hackers by Steven Levy, you'll see that Chinese food was
as vital a component of the AI Lab as that bar in Maynard (I forget
it's name) where the -10 monitor got designed. Chinese food was also
important at Stanford, but not at all important at C-MU where there was a
single, not very good restaurant. However, a girlfriend introduced me
to Chinese food there.
All three sites discovered that Programming goes better with Coke, and
C-MU wins the award for the best Coke machine stories.
Stan Rabinowitz (PDP-8, VAX, and TECO hacker) still has a monthly dinner
at Ming Garden in Nashua to meet up with all his DEC friends. Engineers
from Alliant Computer (Chapter 7 in 1992) get together on a different Monday
at the Panda Wok in Chelmsford. (That way Stan can go to both dinners.)
--
Ric Werme | we...@nospam.mediaone.net
http://people.ne.mediaone.net/werme | ^^^^^^^ delete
hg/jb
>
> jmfb...@aol.com writes:
>
> >In article <heskksshe4c712of9...@4ax.com>,
> > Alexandre Pechtchanski <alex*@*rockvax.rockefeller.edu> wrote:
> >>On 16 Jun 2000 13:54:05 -0500, aje...@osfmail.isc.rit.edu (Andrew
> >Erickson)
> >>wrote:
> >>
> >>>Perhaps fortune cookies were more common among hackers than I realized.
> >>
> >>Not surprising at all given popularity of chinese food
> >>among (american) hackers.
> >>
> >I always thought that was a generational thing. The group
> >that I consider the last generation who worked on TOPS-10 were
> >into Chinese food. The groups before that weren't.
>
> Some of that was due to the lack of decent Chinese restaurants near
> Maynard. I often joined some of the RT-11 group for a foray into
> Cambridge for Chinese. Even sometimes from Marlboro with various -10
> folk.
opened.
>
> If you read Hackers by Steven Levy, you'll see that Chinese food was
> as vital a component of the AI Lab as that bar in Maynard (I forget
> it's name) where the -10 monitor got designed. Chinese food was also
> important at Stanford, but not at all important at C-MU where there was a
> single, not very good restaurant. However, a girlfriend introduced me
> to Chinese food there.
burned down,
was it the red door? Avalon? Soko's? Danny's Den (which later became
the the
little cabbage *la petit Auberge or something*) or the place on main
street between
the post office and copper kettle?
jchausler
Ric Werme wrote:
> If you read Hackers by Steven Levy, you'll see that Chinese food was
> as vital a component of the AI Lab as that bar in Maynard (I forget
> it's name) where the -10 monitor got designed. Chinese food was also
> important at Stanford, but not at all important at C-MU where there was a
> single, not very good restaurant. However, a girlfriend introduced me
> to Chinese food there.
Hi Ric,
I don't ever recall anyone mentioning Chinese food at CMU in the late 60's.
I don't even recall a Chinese restaurant in the Oakland area although there
may have been one. I know when working graveyard shift on weekends,
the Comp Center staff used to go out to "lunch" usually at one of two
places. One was in East Liberty on the loop and the other was a little
nearer on Baum Blvd. near Morewood IIRC. Nice fattening things like
hot turkey "sandwiches" and burgers were the typical fare.
> All three sites discovered that Programming goes better with Coke, and
> C-MU wins the award for the best Coke machine stories.
Ah yes, the CMU coke machine. Till the summer of 71 in the basement
of Porter Hall outside the CS Lab. I remember it was once threatened
because the school had signed an agreement with a vending company to
provide all the vending on campus. This company's machines provided
Pepsi in small cups rather than the 12 oz bottles of coke one got from
the CS Coke machine. It was decided that although available to the
public the machine was on the "private property" of the CS dept. and
so the school couldn't force us to abandon it. We thought for a while
it was going to have to be locked in the Lab. I also recall it was very
popular with the general student body but that they rarely returned the
empties, rather they would leave them in the classrooms, mostly in Porter
and the attached Baker Hall. Since the empties were bought back by
the distributor not getting them was a loss of money. We used to
go on midnight forays to retrieve them and threatened several times
to raise prices to compensate.
Ah well I can still remember living on Saltines and Coke, the
breakfast of champions.........
Chris
AN GETTO$;DUMP;RUN,ALGOL,TAPE
$$
jmfb...@aol.com
jchausler <jcha...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>
>Ric Werme wrote:
>
>> If you read Hackers by Steven Levy, you'll see that Chinese food was
>> as vital a component of the AI Lab as that bar in Maynard (I forget
>> it's name) where the -10 monitor got designed. Chinese food was also
>> important at Stanford, but not at all important at C-MU where there was
a
>> single, not very good restaurant. However, a girlfriend introduced me
>> to Chinese food there.
>
>Hi Ric,
>
>I don't ever recall anyone mentioning Chinese food at CMU in the late
60's.
>Ah well I can still remember living on Saltines and Coke, the
>breakfast of champions.........
Saltines??? Never heard of that. Now, cold pizza and
dill pickles...yum.
gla...@glass2.lexington.ibm.com
>jmfb...@aol.com writes:
>
>>In article <heskksshe4c712of9...@4ax.com>,
>> Alexandre Pechtchanski <alex*@*rockvax.rockefeller.edu> wrote:
>>>On 16 Jun 2000 13:54:05 -0500, aje...@osfmail.isc.rit.edu (Andrew
>>Erickson)
>>>wrote:
>>>
>>>>Perhaps fortune cookies were more common among hackers than I realized.
>>>
>>>Not surprising at all given popularity of chinese food
>>>among (american) hackers.
>>>
>>I always thought that was a generational thing. The group
>>that I consider the last generation who worked on TOPS-10 were
>>into Chinese food. The groups before that weren't.
>
>Some of that was due to the lack of decent Chinese restaurants near
>Maynard. I often joined some of the RT-11 group for a foray into
>Cambridge for Chinese. Even sometimes from Marlboro with various -10
>folk.
>
>as vital a component of the AI Lab as that bar in Maynard (I forget
>it's name) where the -10 monitor got designed. Chinese food was also
>important at Stanford, but not at all important at C-MU where there was a
>single, not very good restaurant. However, a girlfriend introduced me
>to Chinese food there.
>
>C-MU wins the award for the best Coke machine stories.
>
>at Ming Garden in Nashua to meet up with all his DEC friends. Engineers
>from Alliant Computer (Chapter 7 in 1992) get together on a different Monday
>at the Panda Wok in Chelmsford. (That way Stan can go to both dinners.)
>--
>Ric Werme | we...@nospam.mediaone.net
>http://people.ne.mediaone.net/werme | ^^^^^^^ delete
It was also CMU that had (has) the coke machine on the internet:
Charles Packer
The dust having settled, here is an attempt to summarize this
thread in language that a journalist would understand:
The term "cookie" has been used in computer science at least
since the 1970s to refer to some information that the user
receives from the system but that is not intended to be
understood by him or used directly by him. The system
subsequently retrieves the cookie to advance some process,
presumably for the user's benefit.
For example, a user might start an application program that
reads from a data file. Applications typically invoke
system-level software to perform the reading of a file. Unix
documentation from 1977 refers to a "magic cookie" as the
means by which the system saves a pointer to the current
position in that file so that it will know where to continue
reading when the application calls for more data.
The ultimate origin of "cookie" in this context is apparently
lost. A hacker stunt of the mainframe days was to insert code
in an application would demand "Give me a cookie" and not
continue until the operator on duty typed in "cookie".
Programmers are known to eat a lot of Chinese food, and so the
fortune cookie is a metaphoric possibility. The Cookie Monster
of "Sesame Street" has also been suggested as an influence.
Jacqui or (maybe) Pete
wrote:
...
>The term "cookie" has been used in computer science at least
>since the 1970s to refer to some information that the user
>receives from the system but that is not intended to be
>understood by him or used directly by him. The system
>subsequently retrieves the cookie to advance some process,
>presumably for the user's benefit.
More likely, originally, 'programmer of client program' - who can be
called a 'user' in this context.
However, to my understanding, this would have to be called a 'magic
cookie' - which is still my usage. I think it's clear that 'cookie' is
a shortened form of 'magic cookie', but of course I don't know where
that came from - I don't see any obvious way in which a magic cookie
could have evolved from a plain cookie. A cookie which the user can
manipulate or even understand isn't really a cookie at all.
jmfb...@aol.com
pac...@clark.net (Charles Packer) wrote:
>
>The dust having settled, here is an attempt to summarize this
>thread in language that a journalist would understand:
>
>
>since the 1970s to refer to some information that the user
>receives from the system but that is not intended to be
>understood by him or used directly by him. The system
>subsequently retrieves the cookie to advance some process,
>presumably for the user's benefit.
>
>reads from a data file. Applications typically invoke
>system-level software to perform the reading of a file. Unix
>documentation from 1977 refers to a "magic cookie" as the
>means by which the system saves a pointer to the current
>position in that file so that it will know where to continue
>reading when the application calls for more data.
>
>The ultimate origin of "cookie" in this context is apparently
>lost. A hacker stunt of the mainframe days was to insert code
>in an application would demand "Give me a cookie" and not
>continue until the operator on duty typed in "cookie".
>Programmers are known to eat a lot of Chinese food, and so the
>fortune cookie is a metaphoric possibility. The Cookie Monster
>of "Sesame Street" has also been suggested as an influence.
In our area, the decade of Chinese food was in the mid to late
80s. That's way too late to explain the usage. And I have no
idea when that idiot Sesame Street show got popular.
Jacqui or (maybe) Pete
wrote:
...
>The ultimate origin of "cookie" in this context is apparently
>lost. A hacker stunt of the mainframe days was to insert code
...
More speculation: perhaps 'cookie' is just the natural term for small,
mass-produced, widely available things of the same size. 'Cookie
cutter' can be used as an adjective to describe mass-produced and
apparently identical items.
Charlie Gibbs
(Charles Packer) writes:
>For example, a user might start an application program that
>reads from a data file. Applications typically invoke
>system-level software to perform the reading of a file. Unix
>documentation from 1977 refers to a "magic cookie" as the
>means by which the system saves a pointer to the current
>position in that file so that it will know where to continue
>reading when the application calls for more data.
I've used the term "magic cookie" to denote a data value that has
special significance. Years ago I started avoiding such "magic
cookies" in my programming, having learned that they are almost
invariably Evil. Unless you can guarantee that no input data will
ever match the magic value, sooner or later something bad is going
to happen to you. (The most notorious example is the infamous 0x1A
"end of file" byte used in MS-DOS/Windoze text files, which is in the
running for the award for the most data lost to a single design flaw.)
The Unix file /etc/magic contains offsets and data values used by
programs such as file to determine the type of various data files.
Has the term "magic cookie" ever been used for these values?
--
cgi...@sky.bus.com (Charlie Gibbs)
Remove the first period after the "at" sign to reply.
Eric Smith
> (The most notorious example is the infamous 0x1A
> "end of file" byte used in MS-DOS/Windoze text files, which is in the
> running for the award for the most data lost to a single design flaw.)
At least we can't blame MS for that. This "feature" came from CP/M,
which had no other way to keep track of file length with a granularity of
less than a 128-byte sector. And CP/M's use of the feature was presumably
inspired by the way various DEC OSes treat a control-Z from the terminal
to be an end of file.
Charlie Gibbs
m...@brouhaha.com (Eric Smith) writes:
Certainly we can blame MS. This is the premier MS-bashing forum,
after all. :-) They should have removed the 0x1A processing from
MS-DOS. It only existed in CP/M because CP/M's file system stored
file sizes as a number of 128-byte sectors, and there was no other
way to tell the exact end of a text file whose size wasn't a multiple
of 128 bytes. Since MS-DOS's file system stores the file size in
bytes, this kludge was no longer necessary. It causes the remainder
of a file to be lost should a byte gets corrupted to 0x1A. It's also
indirectly responsible for one of MS-DOS's other worst faults - since
a text file can conceivably never have a length of zero, it allowed
the bug to creep into COMMAND.COM that prevents it from copying
zero-length files (although it gladly deletes an existing file of
the same name before it fails to copy the new one). Failure to
correct those two faults rates a lot of bashing.
Ric Werme
>Ric Werme wrote:
>> If you read Hackers by Steven Levy, you'll see that Chinese food was
>> as vital a component of the AI Lab as that bar in Maynard (I forget
>> it's name) where the -10 monitor got designed. Chinese food was also
>> important at Stanford, but not at all important at C-MU where there was a
>> single, not very good restaurant. However, a girlfriend introduced me
>> to Chinese food there.
>Hi Ric,
>I don't ever recall anyone mentioning Chinese food at CMU in the late 60's.
>I don't even recall a Chinese restaurant in the Oakland area although there
>may have been one.
This was 1973/74 timeframe. We generally didn't bring other folk, and it
was a pretty far walk. I think in the same area as Arby's, but if I went
looking I'd miss it by several blocks. Hey, that was a _long_ time ago!
Remember the Henry Henry? Best and biggest hamburgers anywhere. (No
french fries, so people would get McDonalds' french fries and bring them
to H^2. That was when McD's was frying things in animal fat and the
french fries were still good.
The Engineering Lab had a Saturday evening Pizza bash timed to with
M*A*S*H. We were well enough known so that on any other day of the
week we could call up Gino's & Pete's after their normal cutoff for
phone orders and place any size order. I generally got 1/2 LPO (one
half large pepperoni and onion.)
>> All three sites discovered that Programming goes better with Coke, and
>> C-MU wins the award for the best Coke machine stories.
>Ah yes, the CMU coke machine. Till the summer of 71 in the basement
>of Porter Hall outside the CS Lab.
Don't forget the Scaife Hall one with the coin slot in a locker next to
the Coke machine (sans shell) next to it. The coin slot moved to a locker
across the hall after remodeling to make space for a card reader.
We both missed the Coke machine on the Arpanet.
Brian Inglis
(maybe) Pete) wrote:
>On Tue, 20 Jun 2000 12:47:03 GMT, pac...@clark.net (Charles Packer)
>wrote:
>
>...
>>The term "cookie" has been used in computer science at least
>>since the 1970s to refer to some information that the user
>>receives from the system but that is not intended to be
>>understood by him or used directly by him. The system
>>subsequently retrieves the cookie to advance some process,
>>presumably for the user's benefit.
>More likely, originally, 'programmer of client program' - who can be
>called a 'user' in this context.
>
>However, to my understanding, this would have to be called a 'magic
>cookie' - which is still my usage. I think it's clear that 'cookie' is
>a shortened form of 'magic cookie', but of course I don't know where
>that came from - I don't see any obvious way in which a magic cookie
>could have evolved from a plain cookie. A cookie which the user can
>manipulate or even understand isn't really a cookie at all.
ISTM magic cookies are cookies containing magic numbers.
Thanks. Take care, Brian Inglis Calgary, Alberta, Canada
--
Brian_...@CSi.com (Brian dot Inglis at SystematicSw dot ab dot ca)
use address above to reply
John Varela
Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879) wrote:
> the connection with
> the TV show Laugh In is very clear -- the line "what you see is what
> you get" spoken forcefully by a busty woman,
Wasn't that Flip Wilson as Geraldine?
--
John Varela
for e-mail add a to my user ID
Charles Richmond
>
> [snip...] [snip...] [snip...]
>
> ISTM magic cookies are cookies containing magic numbers.
>
>
have a series of lottery numbers printed there...so I guess that
*might* make it a magic cookie...if you won the lottery with
those numbers.
--
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
| Charles and Francis Richmond <rich...@plano.net> |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
jchausler
Ric Werme wrote:
> jchausler <jcha...@earthlink.net> writes:
>
> >I don't ever recall anyone mentioning Chinese food at CMU in the late 60's.
> >I don't even recall a Chinese restaurant in the Oakland area although there
> >may have been one.
>
> This was 1973/74 timeframe. We generally didn't bring other folk, and it
> was a pretty far walk. I think in the same area as Arby's, but if I went
> looking I'd miss it by several blocks. Hey, that was a _long_ time ago!
I do recall the Arby's. I ate there exactly twice, got food poisoning twice
too! (Why I went back there the second time......) To this day, I cannot
eat an Arby's.
> Remember the Henry Henry? Best and biggest hamburgers anywhere. (No
> french fries, so people would get McDonalds' french fries and bring them
> to H^2. That was when McD's was frying things in animal fat and the
> french fries were still good.
Yes I do remember Henry Henry. I ate there many times.
> The Engineering Lab had a Saturday evening Pizza bash timed to with
> M*A*S*H. We were well enough known so that on any other day of the
> week we could call up Gino's & Pete's after their normal cutoff for
> phone orders and place any size order. I generally got 1/2 LPO (one
> half large pepperoni and onion.)
This must have been after my time. I do recall the Original used to deliver
burgers, hots and fries. We used to do this a lot from the radio station.
I remember doing it a number of times from the machine room on the fourth
floor as well, and other places. The delivery guy more than once when he
would show up at some place he had never been before say the phrase,
"You guys again" :-)
> >Ah yes, the CMU coke machine. Till the summer of 71 in the basement
> >of Porter Hall outside the CS Lab.
>
> Don't forget the Scaife Hall one with the coin slot in a locker next to
> the Coke machine (sans shell) next to it. The coin slot moved to a locker
> across the hall after remodeling to make space for a card reader.
Oh yes......
> We both missed the Coke machine on the Arpanet.
Technology marches on.......
Alexandre Pechtchanski
[ snip ]
>I do recall the Arby's. I ate there exactly twice, got food poisoning twice
>too! (Why I went back there the second time......) To this day, I cannot
>eat an Arby's.
Poison me once, shame on you.
Poison me twice ...
;-)
Paul Grayson
> It's also
> indirectly responsible for one of MS-DOS's other worst faults - since
> a text file can conceivably never have a length of zero, it allowed
> the bug to creep into COMMAND.COM that prevents it from copying
> zero-length files (although it gladly deletes an existing file of
> the same name before it fails to copy the new one). Failure to
> correct those two faults rates a lot of bashing.
>
IIRC DR-DOS didn't have this problem. I had bad experiences when copying
OS patches to for customers, and then discovering that the patch didn't
work due to zero length files not being copied. Later WinZip had the
same fault when extracting .ZIPs with zero length files in them.
--
Paul Grayson - paul.g...@virgin.net
Brian {Hamilton Kelly}
cgi...@sky.bus.com "Charlie Gibbs" writes:
> The Unix file /etc/magic contains offsets and data values used by
> programs such as file to determine the type of various data files.
> Has the term "magic cookie" ever been used for these values?
No, surely they've always just been "magic numbers"?
--
Brian {Hamilton Kelly} b...@dsl.co.uk
"We have gone from a world of concentrated knowledge and wisdom to one of
distributed ignorance. And we know and understand less while being incr-
easingly capable." Prof. Peter Cochrane, BT Labs
Thomas M. Sommers
>
> However, to my understanding, this would have to be called a 'magic
> cookie' - which is still my usage. I think it's clear that 'cookie' is
> a shortened form of 'magic cookie', but of course I don't know where
> that came from - I don't see any obvious way in which a magic cookie
> could have evolved from a plain cookie. A cookie which the user can
> manipulate or even understand isn't really a cookie at all.
The term "magic cookie" had psychedelic connotations. Cf. Odd Bodkins.
--
I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance.
Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom
is gone.
-- Lady Bracknell
Jacqui or (maybe) Pete
Thomas M. Sommers <tm...@mail.ptd.net> wrote in message
news:39723853...@mail.ptd.net...
> "Jacqui or (maybe) Pete" wrote:
> >
> > However, to my understanding, this would have to be called a 'magic
> > cookie' - which is still my usage. I think it's clear that 'cookie' is
> The term "magic cookie" had psychedelic connotations. Cf. Odd Bodkins.
Never had a psychedelic cookie. I've had (and baked) *interesting* cookies,
but never psychedelic as such.
Of course, 'magic' makes sense in that 'you just pass it back and the rest
is magic' where 'magic' is "something you needn't understand", but cookie?
At least we know it's a US neologism, but I don't think the full answer will
ever be known (but re-raising this in case anyone's had further thoughts).
Samuel W. Heywood
> "Jacqui or (maybe) Pete" wrote:
> >
> > However, to my understanding, this would have to be called a 'magic
> > cookie' - which is still my usage. I think it's clear that 'cookie' is
> > a shortened form of 'magic cookie', but of course I don't know where
> > that came from - I don't see any obvious way in which a magic cookie
> > could have evolved from a plain cookie. A cookie which the user can
> > manipulate or even understand isn't really a cookie at all.
>
> The term "magic cookie" had psychedelic connotations. Cf. Odd Bodkins.
Do cookies contain "magic numbers", and aren't they used in some kind of
way for encryption? Hence the term "magic cookie".
A "magic number" is a term used in mathematics to describe a number being
a special factor of a prime number and having special properties that lend
itself to being useful in a system of public key encryption.
Sam Heywood
-- Message sent by PC-Pine, v.3.96 for DOS, http://www.washington.edu/pine
John Varela
<samuel_...@subdimension.com> wrote:
> A "magic number" is a term used in mathematics to describe a number being
> a special factor of a prime number
That certainly would be special.
--
John "and magic" Varela
Kragen Sitaker
I suppose you could say that, but not in the sense you define "magic
number" below.
>and aren't they used in some kind of way for encryption?
Something can certainly be a magic cookie without being used in any way
for encryption.
>A "magic number" is a term used in mathematics to describe a number being
>a special factor of a prime number and having special properties that lend
>itself to being useful in a system of public key encryption.
I hadn't heard that definition before. Cites?
--
<kra...@pobox.com> Kragen Sitaker <http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/>
Perilous to all of us are the devices of an art deeper than we ourselves
possess.
-- Gandalf the Grey [J.R.R. Tolkien, "Lord of the Rings"]
Kragen Sitaker
<fix...@bright.net> wrote:
>kra...@dnaco.net (Kragen Sitaker) wrote:
>>Samuel W. Heywood <samuel_...@subdimension.com> wrote:
>>>A "magic number" is a term used in mathematics to describe a number being
>>>a special factor of a prime number and having special properties that lend
>>>itself to being useful in a system of public key encryption.
>>
>>I hadn't heard that definition before. Cites?
>
Wow, I can't believe I missed that. OK, so Samuel has no idea what
he's talking about. :)
Jim Thomas
>> Samuel W. Heywood <samuel_...@subdimension.com> wrote:
>>> A "magic number" is a term used in mathematics to describe a number being
>>> a special factor of a prime number and having special properties that lend
>>> itself to being useful in a system of public key encryption.
fixxit> A prime has only 2 factors; which one is "special"?
1, it's the only factor of all numbers, including primes :-)
Marco S Hyman
> <fix...@bright.net> wrote:
> >kra...@dnaco.net (Kragen Sitaker) wrote:
> >>>A "magic number" is a term used in mathematics to describe a number being
> >>>a special factor of a prime number and having special properties that lend
> >>>itself to being useful in a system of public key encryption.
> >>
> >
>
> he's talking about. :)
On the contrary. He knows exactly what he's talking about. A third
factor would indeed be a "magic number" :-)
// marc
Samuel W. Heywood
> In article <6dafns85vqkloj08m...@4ax.com>,
> <fix...@bright.net> wrote:
> >kra...@dnaco.net (Kragen Sitaker) wrote:
> >>Samuel W. Heywood <samuel_...@subdimension.com> wrote:
> >>>A "magic number" is a term used in mathematics to describe a number being
> >>>a special factor of a prime number and having special properties that lend
> >>>itself to being useful in a system of public key encryption.
> >>
> >>I hadn't heard that definition before. Cites?
> >
> >A prime has only 2 factors; which one is "special"?
>
> Wow, I can't believe I missed that. OK, so Samuel has no idea what
> he's talking about. :)
True, a prime has only two factors.
Oh yes, I do know exactly what I'm talking about. I've been looking for
a book that I have somewhere and will send a cite to explain what I've
said. The subject is somewhat complicated. I'll get back to you guys
as soon as I find my book.
Later,
Sam Heywood
-- Message sent by PC-Pine, v.3.91 for DOS, http://www.washington.edu/pine
Ron Hunsinger
<tho...@atlas.cfht.hawaii.edu> wrote:
> 1, it's the only factor of all numbers, including primes :-)
Except that, at least according to the ancient Greek mathematicians, 1
wasn't a number. We usually think of Euclid's Elements being about
Geometry, but in fact there are several chapters devoted to (geometric
proofs of) things that we would call Arithmetic, Algebra, or Number Theory.
In the sections on Number Theory, he often proves each theorem twice; once
to prove that it's true for numbers, and again to prove that it's true for
1. I don't have a copy handy to check on, but I'm pretty sure he simply
defines a prime to be a number that is not divisible. He would have
considered saying "except by itself and one" to be superfluous, since 1 is
not a number and therefore cannot be a divisor of anything.
-Ron Hunsinger
Ron Hunsinger
>A "magic number" is a term used in mathematics to describe a number being
>a special factor of a prime number and having special properties that lend
>itself to being useful in a system of public key encryption.
Oh, I get it. Like (2+i) * (2-i) = 5.
Dunno what that has to do with cryptography. Sounds pretty complex, though.
-Ron Hunsinger
jmfb...@aol.com
fix...@bright.net wrote:
>Jim Thomas <tho...@atlas.cfht.hawaii.edu> wrote:
>
>>>>>>> "fixxit" == fixxit <fix...@bright.net> writes:
>>
>> >>> A "magic number" is a term used in mathematics to describe a number
being
>> >>> a special factor of a prime number and having special properties
that lend
>> >>> itself to being useful in a system of public key encryption.
>>
>>
>>1, it's the only factor of all numbers, including primes :-)
>
>easier if ol' Sam had said that!
>
>I used to think my girlfriend's address was a magic number. Every time
>I went over there I managed to get l--er, uh, have a good time. Back
>then, that was pretty magical!
I've got a perfect line for this one...but I promised my mother
I'd behave.
John F. Eldredge
<p...@gol.com> wrote:
>
>Thomas M. Sommers <tm...@mail.ptd.net> wrote in message
>news:39723853...@mail.ptd.net...
>> "Jacqui or (maybe) Pete" wrote:
>> >
>> > However, to my understanding, this would have to be called a 'magic
>> > cookie' - which is still my usage. I think it's clear that 'cookie' is
>...
>> The term "magic cookie" had psychedelic connotations. Cf. Odd Bodkins.
>...
>Never had a psychedelic cookie. I've had (and baked) *interesting* cookies,
>but never psychedelic as such.
>
>Of course, 'magic' makes sense in that 'you just pass it back and the rest
>is magic' where 'magic' is "something you needn't understand", but cookie?
>At least we know it's a US neologism, but I don't think the full answer will
>ever be known (but re-raising this in case anyone's had further thoughts).
>
One traditional joke program on multi-user computers was the Cookie
Monster, named after a character from the children's TV program
_Sesame Street_. It would respond to every command you typed in with
"Want Cookie", and you couldn't do anything else until you had first
typed in the word "cookie" to satisfy the program. I don't know
whether the Cookie Monster program preceded the use of "magic cookie"
to mean a byte sequence with special meaning.
Cookie, by the way, came into US English from Dutch, since the English
conquered the colony of New Amsterdam and renamed it New York. The
word means "little cake" in Dutch.
--
John F. Eldredge -- eldr...@poboxes.com
PGP key available from http://www.netforward.com/poboxes/?eldredge/
--
"There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power;
not organized rivalries, but an organized common peace." - Woodrow Wilson