I checked the board last night from my home computer though my ISP.
This morning I checked it from my work computer though the company’s ISP.
The message board had the correct time of my last visit. I had thought that this was stored in a cookie on my computer, but these were different computers.
This information must somehow be stored on the message board. Does anyone know what they store?
There are only a few items which we keep on hand in our database :
Screen name
E-mail address
Password
Date and time of your last visit
Phone Number
Social Security Number
Current hobbies
Whether you lift your pinkie when drinking tea
What kind of tea you prefer
Number of lifetime sexual partners
Names of lifetime sexual partners whose names end in vowels
Last known enema
Number of cars you drive
Number of undrivable cars you own
Number of cars on blocks
Number of cars made of Lego blocks
Whether you actually “leggo my eggo”
Religion
Religious conversion possibilities
Donut preference
Known associations with underage philosophers
Size of (or, in the case of women, number of) breasts
Chemical composition of belly button lint
It would also be helpful if members would submit an completely deciphered DNA sample.
I think that’s it.
Thumbprints, retinal scans and DNA coding are readily availble to the all powerful administration. As well as the usual mundane crap like SSN, credit card numbers, medical records, and the names of all the pets you’ve ever had. As soon as we reach 10,000 members were going into competition with the Illuminati. Those pusillanimous, poltroonish pantywaists won’t stand a chance.
And put down that axe—I know what you’re thinking, too.
Crap! Upstaged by my co-moderator by a mere 2 minutes. Clearly our organization needs a bit of leadership from the top.
Lynn? Tuba? Dex? Ed? Where the hell are all of you?
What’s that you say about a sinking ship? No one ever tells me anything.
starfish, the vBulletin software stores some information associated to your username in a relational database. I assume that this includes your last visit time. (assuming of course you logged in on both computers.)
I’m still sorting out that database of member’s dog’s names.
your humble TubaDiva
But seriously, your cookie just stores your username and password. Everything else the board stores (time of last visit, mother’s maiden name, credit cade numbers, etc) is stored on the server, and indexed by username. Hence, your work computer said, “This is starfish”, and the server said, “Aha! starfish! He last visited at 7:03 AM”
Got that?
Chronos is correct.
(The rest is just for fun.)
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
Still amazed by the high proportion of Teemsters that prefer paper to plastic.
I know the rest was in fun. I just thought that cookies were the easy way to keep track of member’s use.
I guess that for kid’s use [public high school or college] it would be better to store the time of last visit on the board. Then the kids don’t have to remember when they last signed on. [Back then it was hard to even remember what day it was, let alone the time of day.]
Maybe even web TV users; I guess they can’t store cookies. Next time I’ll think before I post.
Now I just need Euty or Unclebeer to confirm my suspicion that the SDMB has a team of covert operatives following around every board member. According to my “sources”, they have a sniper handy, just in case a board member needs–*
::BANG::
Aaack…!.. ::slump::
A true Doper to the end, typing “slump” even as life drains away…
I got that part, and maybe starfish is done trying to get a straight answer, but I’ll give it one more try,
StarFish’s original question
This information must somehow be stored on the message board. Does anyone know what they store?
I’ve noticed the moderators never give straight answers to straight questions on this forum, but maybe they can enlighten us this once.
Funny, I’ve also noticed that the Board administrators aren’t likely to give any answers at all to people who are deliberately rude and who try to pick fights. Go figure.
barflyer, speaking only for myself, lowly moderator Arnold Winkelried, I don’t know exactly what the information is that is stored in the back-end database by the vBulletin software. Maybe the folks over at vBulletin can tell you, and then again, maybe they don’t want to reveal the internal workings of the product.
http://www.vbulletin.com
(click on the “Community” link at the top of the page to go to their Q&A area)
Oh c’mon. Try thinking for yourselves. It really ain’t that difficult. If I were looking for info on a member, I think I’d start with the obvious. Yes! That’s it! I’ll peek at a the member profile. That might be a good place to start. Here’s mine. UncleBeer
Wow! Look at all that neato stuff.
We have the info you personally entered in your profile, the time, date and URL of your last post, total number of posts, and member status. What else might be lurking out there? We’ll really need to put our thinking caps on for this part of it. The logical reasoning process is hard.
Well, if you have chosen to not display your e-mail address, I’m certain it’s logged. How else would you have received your registration confirmation? And, if you look at any individual post, you’ll see that IP addresses are also logged.
Now that wasn’t so tough to figure out, was it? I’ll bet you could have done this yourself if you’d have taken a couple minutes to just think about it. Sheesh. The database can’t have anything more than you’ve given it, now can it?
Well, not as long as you always wear your (properly grounded) aluminum foil hat while you’re posting.
Screen name: Vestal Blue
E-mail address: lwl1@hotmail.com
Password: EdZottie1
Date and time of your last visit: Right now
Phone Number: 512-923-2394
Social Security Number:208-39-6527
Current hobbies: Electricity
Whether you lift your pinkie when drinking tea: Nope
What kind of tea you prefer: Darjeeling, or Earl Grey
Number of lifetime sexual partners: Too many to count
Names of lifetime sexual partners whose names end in vowels: Linda Lovelace, Debbie. Others I will not name because the statute of limitations is not up.
Last known enema: July, 1989
Number of cars you drive: 5
Number of undrivable cars you own: 1
Number of cars on blocks: 0
Number of cars made of Lego blocks: 0
Whether you actually “leggo my eggo”: Yes. Try it sometime.
Religion: Yes.
Religious conversion possibilities: None.
Donut preference: Glazed yeast, or bavarian cream filled.
Known associations with underage philosophers: Does Sanibel Man count?
Size of (or, in the case of women, number of) breasts: -AAA
Chemical composition of belly button lint: 35% silicon, 15% cotton, 25% dust mite exoskeletons, 24% waxy exudation, 1% plutonium dust.
It would also be helpful if members would submit an completely deciphered DNA sample. Ummm, where should I send the toenail clippings?
They keep:
Other pieces of info they have on file…
Name of the guy you sat on the bus with on Friday the 18th, August 1976.
Whether you’d save your dog or your ex-SO if you were in a [insert emergency]
If you find Charlie Chaplin’s films amusing or strangely disturbing.
If you flush your dead goldfish down the potty or bury them.
They’re still working on:
Do you fold or crumple up your TP?
Would you set up a beanie baby graveyard/crematorium?
Do you have any type of phobia about macarame or needlework?
Stay tuned, the Straight Dope will learn all! 
I just wonder if they store any information about whether or not the user prefers boxers or briefs.