I agree that's perfectly fine, aside from the whole bit about security of saving a password (store it in a secure manner and each time check it against the secure form stored in the user database). How does it save that information in a persistent way that uniquely identifies the computer you're using? That's the role sessions fill. Without the data persistence, refreshing the page would just show you the page as if you weren't logged in. Without the unique identifier (e.g. a session cookie), how does the server know that you're logged in or out in the first place in order to show you something like user preferences instead of a log-in page or error page when you try to visit the user preferences page? An entry in a database perhaps? Sure. Let's go with that. So which computer are you at, and how are you uniquely identified to keep someone on the same connection or even halfway around the world from being served YOUR user preferences page? Sessions fill this role, and to do this, a "cookie" gets created. The cookie acts as a liaison between the server and your computer for the duration of the session that basically identifies your computer in a unique way to prevent the server from serving you or anybody else someone else's user preferences and such.
If this is coming from an "I can SSH to a box and stay logged in just fine" perspective, you're only doing two things in that case: logging in, which spawns a shell or other process presumably, and logging out. With a Web page, you're logging in, but there's no shell or other process that keeps your session alive, so you'd automatically get logged out if it wasn't for something like session cookies.
(warning: rant follows)
Nearest HTML manual...generated using info2html. Seriously, using the mouse will interrupt your workflow as well because it takes more time to scroll and slide and click than it does to press keys.
By the way, here's a quick list of key bindings for you:
* - In the standalone info browser, it's actually a regexp I-search while in the info browser in GNU Emacs, it's just a string I-search; use C-M-s and C-M-r in GNU Emacs.
By the way, C is the Control key. Also, M is the Meta key, which is bound to the Esc key. You can also use the Alt key instead of Esc, but this may pass the key combination such as M-Tab as Alt-Tab in a GUI environment, so the Esc key works best.
Overall, both man pages and info documentation have their places. I personally feel that it's simply a case of knowing where certain information fits in a certain medium. You wouldn't use an encyclopedia to find a definition or a dictionary to learn about the variety of bears throughout the world, so why would you expect every bit of library documentation to be in man pages?
In order to make a post, you need to be logged in, assuming anonymous/guest posts aren't allowed. How does the server keep track of the fact that you're logged in and who you are? Your time spent on that site is called a session, and the server sets a session cookie to say, "Okay, you've already logged in, so I'll save you the trouble of doing it again." Some sites use that information to reveal things like user preferences, which wouldn't ordinarily be available to a guest user.
The only alternative I can think of is the server responding to your log-in action with "Okay, I got your IP address, so I'll just make a note in my database that you logged in from IP address [IPaddr]. This way I can save your information and know who you are." The problem is that means you need to log out when you're done to protect your information if you're on a shared computer, or if you're using a shared Internet connection such as that in a café, people visiting that site for the first time would be already logged in--using your credentials (e.g. if they went to Facebook, they'd be logged in as you). Another issue with that is the fact that IP addresses change.
Sessions have their problems, but ultimately you are the one who says, "Keep track of me," whether that's an implicit request by just logging in or an explicit request by checking a box that says "Remember me" when logging in. The implicit request is considered a convenience to users while the explicit request allows users to control things themselves.
Agreed. Australia and its citizens should switch to GNU/Linux and OpenOffice.org or LibreOffice or KOffice or Google Drive or
Oh, and if their printers, fax machines, etc. don't have instructions for Linux and they can't get them to work any other way, they'll need to buy new accessories like that. You know. Because Australia is an extremely wealthy dictatorship that can ban all of that stuff from Microsoft, Apple and Adobe overnight and reimburse all of its citizens for such a drastic change.
On second thought, let's see what the corporations say before such measures are initiated.
my friends pay money for every little thing I download for free with my android phone. sucks to be them
He gets for free everything he downloads with his Android phone thanks to his friends paying money in his stead. Honestly, that's not what was meant, and that's easy enough to see. However, the statement can be interpreted in both ways. English language, how I loathe thee.
"This document contains macros which may harm your computer. Do you wish to allow them to run?" (Clicks "Yes" blindly.)
Some (or maybe all...IDK) Word documents that were actually templates contained macros in the absence of an actual wizard. This meant that in versions of Office that recognized the security hazard, you got a pop-up before the document actually opened. I personally clicked "Yes" or "Open Anyway" or "Allow" or whatever it said without even bothering to read it because I usually got the document from a trusted source (as in someone I trust, not someone a company/corporation trusts using an actual whitelist/blacklist). I presume many got tired of seeing the message as I did, and they did the same thing. Similar events will probably happen with this Flash issue. Your aunt sent you an e-card for your birthday from her virus-infested computer? Sweet! Allowed!
And before people ask, yes I was speaking in the past tense. I no longer use Microsoft Office, in favor of Google Drive's Office-like features that started out as "Google Docs & Spreadsheets". It may not be as full-featured, but I don't need it to be either.
Memory fault - where am I?