For all the years I've been using the internet, I've never really taken cookies seriously. Recently however, they have become both a resource as a developer and a nuisance as a surfer.
As a developer, I've found cookies to be quite helpful when battling forum and blog comment spam.
As a user, I've found my browser so chock full of cookies that it runs slowly, and that some banks, Chase bank in particular, rely upon cookies as part of the identification process. I don't think that's a very good idea, but maybe its helping them in the fight against fraud.
The possible solution that I'm hoping will work is to use the limited cookie controls available in Iceweasel (Firefox) to cut down on the number of cookies that are saved, so that I can more easily manage them. When they get to be too many, I don't bother managing and cleaning them, and so the problem gets worse. Wish me luck!