Need some clarification on the Forms Auth Tickets

I was always under the impression that the forms auth ticket issued by asp.net was encrypted using the server's machine key. But researching the new Idenity model I came across this: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/rickandy/archive/2012/03/23/securing-your-asp-net-mvc-4-app-and-the-new-allowanonymous-attribute.aspx
Many web sites log in via SSL and redirect back to HTTP after you’re logged in, which is absolutely the wrong thing to do.  Your login cookie is just as secret as your username + password, and now you’re sending it in clear-text across the wire.  Besides, you’ve already taken the time to perform the handshake and secure the channel (which is the bulk of what makes HTTPS slower than HTTP) before the MVC pipeline is run, so redire ...