[thechat] Magic Cookie?

Bruce Heerssen bheerssen at visualbridge.tv
Fri May 18 09:52:42 CDT 2001


This thread sparked my curiosity, so I did a quick google search.
http://www.google.com/search?q=magic+cookie+origin

Here's what I found:

http://www.sls.lib.il.us/reference/por/features/97/cookies.html#cookieorig

The leading theory seems to be that Netscape borrowed the term from the Unix
"magic cookie", which is a type of authentication token for X windows.
Netscape apparently says there was no real reason for it.

I also found something called the "Cookie Monster", also a Unix cretin. This
one was called the first computer virus and it replicated itself on magnetic
tape which was then transfered between computers manually.

http://www.lilli.com/cookie.html


Then there's http://www.cookiecentral.com/ for all cookie related things.

ME WANT COOKIE!

-Bruce

Judah wrote:
>
>
> The thread about cookie files on thelist brought an old question to
> mind.  Why were the files called cookies?  If I recall correctly, cookies
> (originally called Magic Cookie?) were another Netscape invention, but I
> can't find anything on their site about the origin of the term.  Anybody
> happen to know?
>
> Judah
>





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