Number 205 - June 2000

Cookies and Shortcuts and DOS (Oh, My)
by Jean Wilcox, Mar 2000 SunCoast Beeper. St Petersburg, FL
Are you still thinking about cookies, maybe worrying about them, trying to decide whether or not to delete them? Like everything else in life, there are (at least) two sides to the story. Cookies, used properly, are harmless, static text files. They are very useful, both to you as a site surfer and by the site owner who uses them to tailor to your satisfaction what you see by using your past visits as a guide.     Cookies are made up of four parts, the first of which is a security flag. If this flag is set, then the information in the other sections will only be transmitted via encrypted Web connections. The second part is the name of the Web site creating the cookie, because, with the flag set, the balance of the information in there will only be transmitted back to the site that created it.     The final parts are the value and the data name. The value is the actual data stored in the cookie. It might be an account number, a name, or some other information the Web site feels win enable it to keep you from getting mixed up with someone else. The data name is just a name given to this chunk of information, to distinguish it from other bits of knowledge the Web site wishes to store. Data names could be almost anything, from "username" to "OwnerSessionId" to less obvious words like " AA002" and "GUID." Most cookies have a single data name and value pair, but a jumbo cookie can have as many as four. So far, so good.     But these little text files we call cookies can be mishandled. DoubleClick is being sued for violating the Michigan Consumer Protection Act because, in addition to implanting, quite properly, cookies on the computers of site visitors, it is claimed that they "failed to disclose" that they were doing so. It is also claimed that DoubleClick then compiled personal user profiles on consumers that potentially could be linked directly to a consumer's name, home address, and e-mail account. Whether they did or not, of course, has yet to be proven.     Remember that there is no problem with cookies per se, but only with their possible abuse. If DoubleClick has messed around with the normally built-in anonymity and safety, then there is certainly a concern. Keep in mind also that these little files are a big part of what makes online commerce possible, along with bunches of other normal Web activities. Each of us will have to weigh the good with the bad and arrive at conclusions that put our own minds at rest.     You can set up your software to refuse cookies entirely. That will put big-time limits on your browsing. You can delete all cookies at the end of each session, which is both time consuming and means that each time you go to a favorite site it will load more slowly than if you had left it alone. It also means that many features you are used to accessing must be individually chosen afresh every time you return, which costs you more lost time. You could selectively delete the files, keeping only the ones you trust not to misbehave. How do you decide that? It's almost enough to make you stop and think, isn't it?     Well, don't worry; be happy. On to better things, like another way to use an old DOS quickie command	in Windows. Not everyone papers over their desktop with Shortcuts like I do, but enough of you do that this might come in handy. Even if you don't need it, you ought to try it one time because it is soooo neat! Old timers will remember how we used to go backward up the directory tree with the "dot" or "dot dot" commands which moved you progressively nearer to the root directory.     I'm assuming here that you have things set up such that your bottom TaskBar is either always showing or will appear when you move your mouse to the bottom of the screen. When you have a number of open windows working and can't easily get to one of your desktop shortcuts, then, on that TaskBar, click START, then RUN, and type a single period, or dot, in the RUN box and click OK. Like magic a display of all your desktop icons will pop up. This is a good one. DOS to the rescue again!     On the subject of open windows, I hope you're not still changing the size of them with that miserably small little icon, the middle one of three, in the upper right of your screen. When I do that I always miss the one I'm aiming for and end up either closing the window or minimizing it down to the TaskBar. A better way is to double-click some place on the title bar at the top. It's a big target, almost impossible to miss, and it behaves the same way, as a toggle to make the window either full screen or normal-sized, whatever you have decided is normal at your house. This is a big nuisance eliminator and I've been using it exclusively since I first heard about it. You might like this, too.     I use Microsoft Office and lots and lots of other MS applications. I had noticed for a long time that they each seem to have one or more files called Mscreate.dir associated with them, but I never knew what their purpose was so I figured I'd better leave them alone. I have 93 of these files on my hard drive. They were all zero byte in size so theoretically they should be unimportant and could be deleted. Ziff-Davis in one of their tip files just recently explained them to my, and I'm sure your, satisfaction. So, thank you, ZD Net, and here's the answer for the edification of us all. Understanding the Mysterious Mscreate.dir Files     You may have noticed a bunch of 0-byte hidden files called Mscreate.dir in various folders on your system and wondered what these files were and where they came from. You probably also have wondered if you can safely delete them. Here's the scoop:     Mscreate.dir files are special files that let Microsoft applications remove all appropriate folders during an uninstall operation. When you install a Microsoft application, such as Office 97, the Setup program creates one of these innocuous files in each folder it places on your hard disk. If you later run Setup in Maintenance or Uninstall mode, it looks for the Mscreate.dir files to determine whether it can delete the folder.     If you delete these files now and someday run Setup in uninstall mode, Setup won't delete the empty folder. Since these hidden files don't take up any hard disk space and are important to the uninstall procedure, we suggest you leave them where they are.
Number 205 - June 2000