Joe, it's not that easy to build a non-cookie solution into the current OpenACS solution. There is a *lot* of legacy code that would make this task painfully difficult and time-taking. It is clear that you are unfamiliar with OpenACS internals. That is perfectly okay, and I'm happy to have people like you on board to discuss other perspectives.
What irks me, though, is that instead of asking questions, you are making assumptions. You assume that we are simply refusing to do this. You assume that it would be easy to do. You assume that since other sites have this feature, that OpenACS can and should have it, too.
Things aren't that way. I (and I expect others in the community) have no objection on principle to the non-cookie idea. It is simply that it would be a time-taking endeavor while more important tasks are on our list. Also, you claim that features of cookies can easily be duplicated as shown by the 1995 site I helped build, yet you do not know either system nor how such an add-on might affect the current OpenACS architecture! I am happy to help teach you how this stuff works, but I don't see you eager to find out.
At the end of the day, the OpenACS team has to prioritize. Refusing to use existing browser functionality in order to recreate a hacked-up version is not high on our list. We cannot spend time downgrading OpenACS to the lowest commond denominator while neglecting much needed features.
I want people like you on this community who can stir things up and offer new ideas or better ways of doing things. However, your contributions will be much more effective if you also try to learn and understand why things are the way they are. Until you do, I don't think it's too much to ask that you trust the decisions of more experienced developers.
