2-12-96. FinTim: "This bug in your PC is a smart cookie." Netscape Navigator contains a little-known wrinkle that increases the power of companies to find out who their customers are and what they are up to. It allows companies to track which Web pages an individual looks at, when, for how long, and in what order. The information is stored on the customer's computer as "persistent client-state hypertext transfer protocol cookies". 2-12-96. WSJ: "Consumer Privacy on Internet Goes Public." The advertising industry's response to the volatile issue of consumer privacy is drawing howls of protest from consumer advocates. The battle is over what should marketers be allowed to do with personal information they gather from consumers visiting Web sites. Marketers "want to have dossiers on people with incredible detail so they can pick and choose what they send to you." "Invention Machine's Software Wins Orders for Picking Brains of Inventors." A software program is being snapped up by a growing number of America's biggest companies to provide inventing partners for their engineers. The program codifies the invention principles behind some two million international patents and the inventive techniques of some of the world's greatest inventors. Mr. Tsourikov said the product grew out of his early studies under Genrich Altshuller, who posited that invention isn't a random process but has a certain algorithm which drives it. COO_kie