Inside the Web's most misunderstood programming tool. Cookies have been praised as a powerful convenience-and damned as Big Brother's way of keeping intrusively close track of user behavior. Initially introduced in Netscape 1.1 as a way for developers to store tiny amounts of information on client computers, they have spread from CGI programming to JavaScripting, and are an important part of the toolbox for Microsoft Active Server Pages, Java servlets, and Netscape LiveWire development. They...