- From: Brian Behlendorf <brian@organic.com>
- Date: Thu, 27 Apr 1995 11:49:05 -0700 (PDT)
- To: Bert Bos <bert@let.rug.nl>
- Cc: Multiple recipients of list <www-talk@www10.w3.org>
On Thu, 27 Apr 1995, Bert Bos wrote: > I don't think HTTP, with or without cookies, will ever be suitable for > electronic shopping. In the physical world, products are scarce, Not necessarily. There was a mountain of oranges at the supermarket last night. Now, in the case of something like that ultra-rare Jesus Jones remix album from Japan I picked up the other night from Tower, yeah, that's a situation where being able to put the product in my hand reassured me that no one else would get it before I did - but the greater reassurance was that I wouldn't leave the store without forgetting to buy it. Scarcity is a difficult thing to handle in any remote shopping situation - how many times have you watched the Home Shopping Club and seen "order now! We've only got three of 'em!" The market will find a solution for this. As long as the shopping cart application allows the user to buy things as soon as they want, it's not a problem. > You need not just a stateful protocol, but a permanent > connection: if the customer leaves the shop without paying, then you > can put the product back on the shelf. A magic cookie is like an > indefinite claim: if the customer is allowed to take it home with him, > you'll never know if he's planning to buy it eventually or not. Sounds like we're trying to get a little too literal here. "put the product back on the shelf"? If all the user is saving is a URL to the object... anyways, internet shopping is going to be fundamentally different from in-store shopping or phone ordering or infomercials or anything, and the "shopping cart" metaphor was not meant to imply we should build a system that exactly duplicates the in-store shopping experience. Though, the problem of putting objects "on hold" could be pretty easily handled with some simple CGI scripts. Brian --=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-- brian@organic.com brian@hyperreal.com http://www.[hyperreal,organic].com/
Received on Thursday, 27 April 1995 14:49:12 UTC