Re: Log on (in), sign on (in) -- technical distinction?

[Peter Neilson <neilson -at- windstream -dot- net>]

I can only give the techie distinction, which is stateful vs stateless.

On a computer, or perhaps on a local network, logging in creates a 
state. A process for the user is established, and continues until the 
user logs out. Over the Internet, http connections are deliberately 
stateless, which is to say that your http request is treated as a single 
entity that is not intended to create a state (or a process) in the 
targetted host. It is a request, it gets a reply, and it is done.

The burgeoning need for stateful connections over the http has resulted 
in various methods for signing in, where the host system establishes a 
cookie within the user's browser, or does some other action to identify 
and remember a particular user. It's not a trivial problem, because a 
server that's taking care of sequentially related transactions for 
thousands of users must recognize each and distinguish among them, even 
in the face of some of them trying to steal the identities of others.

Those who are in charge of systems where users log in and log out, such 
as the Linux system I'm using right now, do not like to see the term 
"log in" used for stateless Internet connections. Hence "sign in." The 
rest of the world apparently see the terms as indistinguishable.

Historically, the terms LOG ON versus LOG IN (and the commands LOGON 
versus LOGIN) tended to be IBM versus most everyone else. But that's 
outside the current discussion. Gee, I'm doing a lot of that, recently.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Free Software Documentation Project Web Cast: Covers developing Table of
Contents, Context IDs, and Index, as well as Doc-To-Help  
2009 tips, tricks, and best practices.
http://www.doctohelp.com/SuperPages/Webcasts/

Help & Manual 5: The complete help authoring tool for individual
authors and teams. Professional power, intuitive interface. Write
once, publish to 8 formats. Multi-user authoring and version control! http://www.helpandmanual.com/

---
You are currently subscribed to TECHWR-L as archive -at- web -dot- techwr-l -dot- com -dot- 

To unsubscribe send a blank email to 
techwr-l-unsubscribe -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
or visit http://lists.techwr-l.com/mailman/options/techwr-l/archive%40web.techwr-l.com


To subscribe, send a blank email to techwr-l-join -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com

Send administrative questions to admin -at- techwr-l -dot- com -dot-  Visit
http://www.techwr-l.com/ for more resources and info. 

Please move off-topic discussions to the Chat list, at:
http://lists.techwr-l.com/mailman/listinfo/techwr-l-chat