Cookies messing the threads up again!

I can't even get 'Last Hour' - it says the webpage cannot be displayed!

When I try "last hour" it thinks i have done a search without putting anything into the search box, and raps my knuckles.

Tech says it is fixed now, It was because they were doing something.

Now I have to log in to see the 'last hour' - it was handy to check what was happening before!

I've had to accept the cookies again as well!

elegran, your comment is hilarious! I laughed out loud! Josie, DO NOT let Tech see it !

Now look, I am sitting here with a cup of coffee waiting for the cookies we have been promised, where are they and could I have chocolate chip ones please

Don't tell him to stop, Josie - just keep reminding him about our crescent moon emoticon!

Crescent moon, crescent moon, we want a crescent moon!

We promise not to use two together....

Do we?

Well, not often....

Well I for one will not accept the new cookie policy. So if I am not able to log out and continue to chatter with you lovely ladies and gents, then I shall say Good Bye now, and it's been nice meeting you. Just in case.

I am concerned that not only some of the threads have been sold for publication without members' approval or warning, And then this. Enough is enough.

granjura Have they really been sold? Is it not true that anything you write on the internet can be read by anyone at all anyway, so no-one needs to sell what has been posted.

Could you log out and still chat before? I couldn't. It has always been that you could read while not logged in, but to post you had to log in. That is the same on any forum.

The cookies are no different from what they used to be either, it is just that we are more aware of them now that the policy has been formally declared.

You are right, Elegran. Nothing has changed. It's just that websites now have to make users aware of the cookies. Some sites don't ask you to 'accept' because as long as they display a notice at the top of the page, your consent can be assumed.

They were published in the Guardian, and I am pretty sure a price would have been paid. I just hate being told, if you don't sign, you won't be able to post.
If I can't post, then fine, I won't

Almost every website you visit puts a little cookie on to your computer. A lot of them count visitors and log the numbers on a site like Google Analytics so that the site owners can see how many visitors they get. That is how Google ranks sites by their popularity and puts them in that order when you search so you see the most popular ones first.

The site owner can also see which of their pages is getting them most customers and so on. Have a look at Google Analytics to see what they offer - and not just to big sites, you can sign up to it for your little blog too. There are dozens of similar analysing application sites on the net.

They should not identify your personal computer, just count you, and note whether you return, what browser you are using and maybe what screen resolution. They have an expiry date, which can be anything from one session to a few years ahead. Some note which other sites you have visited before or after, and send you relevant ads.

You can choose what your own policy is to cookies, somewhere on your browser - whether to accept all of them, whether to just accept ones from the site you are looking at or also from related sites, whether they should ask you each time whether you want to accept, whether to only accept them for one session. If you have them ask you each time you will soon see how many hundreds of them appear.

If you block all of them, you will not be able to visit any websites at all.

Granjura whose byname were they under in the Guardian?

I've just Googled elegran and found pages and pages none of them about me

There seems to be a big real estate company called elegran. Pity I don't get some of the profits.

As far as we are concerned, there is only one Elegran.

Elegran - page 14 of my Google search led me to you! (Quite innocuous, of course!)