Paul Boutin welcomes back the browser wars, and sings the praises of Mozilla’s Firefox.

But six years later, the surviving members of the Mozilla insurgency are staging a comeback. The latest version of Firefox, released this Monday, has a more professional look, online help, and a tool that automatically imports your bookmarks, history, site passwords, and other settings from Explorer. Meanwhile, all-conquering Internet Explorer has been stuck in the mud for the past year, as Microsoft stopped delivering new versions. The company now rolls out only an occasional fix as part of its Windows updates. Gates and company won the browser war, so why keep fighting it?

The problem is that hackers continue to find and exploit security holes in Explorer. Many of them take advantage of Explorer’s ActiveX system, which lets Web sites download and install software onto visitors’ computers, sometimes without users’ knowledge. ActiveX was meant to make it easy to add the latest interactive multimedia and other features to sites, but instead it’s become a tool for sneaking spyware onto unsuspecting PCs. That’s why the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team, a partnership between the tech industry and Homeland Security, recently took the unusual step of advising people to consider switching browsers. Whether or not you do, US-CERT advises increasing your Internet Explorer security settings, per Microsoft’s instructions. (Alas, the higher setting disables parts of Slate’s interface.) Even if you stop using Explorer, other programs on your computer may still automatically launch it to connect to sites.

The security bugs are the main reason why I’ve switched form IE to FireFox, but now that I’ve made the switch, I doubt I’ll look back anytime soon. FireFox is just an excellent, fast browser, and since I switched it’s been a lot easier keeping spyware off my computer.

That doesn’t mean I’ll write off IE completely–if FireFox gets popular enough, hopefully MicroSoft will rise to the challenge and make some great improvements to their browser. That’s what they did back in the 90’s, and hopefully they can keep it up.

Since Kevin Drum is once again complaining that Bush should have attacked Ansar al-Islam seperately before the Iraq war, I feel once again obliged to point out that when this came up the first time, Kevin Drum was implicitly opposed to it because it would never get U.N. approval.

It’s a hard question to answer in isolation, since at this point I think everyone would simply assume that the U.S. was using such a strike as the thin end of a wedge toward full war on Iraq. So it’s almost impossible to evaluate this on its own merits.

At the same time there’s also a larger problem. Since al-Qaeda is a global organization, approving U.S. military action against Ansar al-Islam could be taken to imply approval of any U.S. action against any suspected al-Qaeda group anywhere in the world. It therefore seems unlikely the UN would approve of this, and in turn the U.S. would surely never ask the UN for approval, since it would limit our freedom of action in the future if the request were turned down.

Or so it seems to me.

I don’t mean to specifically pick on Kevin, here, but it’s rather annoying to hear somebody advocate something in hindsight that, at the time, they had very serious reservations about. People are entitled to change their minds, of course, but in this case you’d think an acknowledgment of his previous position would be in order…

Caught a showing of Spider-Man 2 last night. Needless to say: awesome. It might well be the best comic book superhero ever made. It perfectly captures the essence of the early Spider-Man books. Of course, by now everyone’s seen the trailers, so you know the essence of it–after just being basically trampled by his dual life as Spider-Man, Peter Parker gives him up. But the heart of his journey to be Spider-Man again. In between action sequences and some genuinely funny moments (there’s much more of JK Simmon’s J. Jonah Jameson in this one, not to mention a hilarious cameo by Bruce Campbell) is basically the story of a man who gives up everything precious in his life to do the right thing. And in the end… well, you’ll just have to see what choice he makes, don’t you?

But this isn’t just a pathos-ridden story. The action in the movie is intense, and Alfred Molina gives a genuinely menacing turn as Doctor Octopus. The special effects are much better than the first movie–Doc Ock’s arms look real. So don’t worry–there’s plenty of Spidey-action, too. Bottom line: go see this movie.

(And if you’re the kind of movie snob who wouldn’t sink to watching a comic book movie–while you’re friends were watching, anyway–fear not: Spider-Man 2 scores at 97% at Rotten Tomatoes. So you can go with your snobbish feeling of superiority intact.)

“Whatever life holds in store for me, I will never forget these words, ‘with great power comes great responsibility.’ This is my gift, my curse. Who am I? I’m Spider-man.”
- Peter Parker

Saddam will be handed over to Iraqi custody tomorrow.

Prime Minister Iyad Allawi promised an open proceeding when Saddam faces war crimes charges, including genocide.

Eleven other “high-value detainees” also are expected to face justice, he said at his first news conference since the U.S.-led coalition handed over sovereignty to his government Monday.

“I know I speak for my fellow countrymen when I say I look forward to the day former regime leaders face justice,” he said.

Saddam will be transferred to Iraqi legal custody on Wednesday and face arraignment before an Iraqi judge on Thursday, Allawi said. Soon after the end of the press conference, Iraqi authorities announced arrest warrants for Saddam and the 11 others, including former Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz.

This was expected, but it’s nice to see it confirmed.

These comments by James Taranto on Best of the Web regarding the Gitmo cases illustrate exactly why they were so important:

The U.S. Supreme Court handed Osama bin Laden a victory this morning, ruling that terrorists and Taliban held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have the right to sue in U.S. courts. “Military officials and lawyers for detainees . . . are bracing for an explosion of litigation,” says the New York Sun. Our ambulance-chasers might want to reflect on just how apt a metaphor that is, since Islamist terrorists are known to use ambulances as weapons.

Note the automatic assumption that everyone at Gitmo is a terrorist. Look, I’ve no doubt that most of them probably are. But the whole point of allowing hearings is to make sure that they’re terrorists. After all, what national interest is served by the detainment of innocent people? Answer: none. [Not to mention the fact that detaining innocent people is, you know, immoral. - Ed. Well, I figured that was obvious. Not in a political climate where people are discussing where and when it's proper to inflict excruciating physical and psychological pain on people for the sake of what is usually completely unreliable information. - Ed. Good point.]

Discover has posted a follow-up article on Changing World Technologies’ efforts to turn waste products into oil. (For more info, check out my earlier posts here, here, and here.) There have been some setbacks at their plant in Missouri due to construction problems, but it looks like the outlook is positive.

The latest target date for opening the Carthage plant is now this fall. Engineers have already run the plant at capacity for as much as 12 hours at a time, and preliminary tests show the equipment works efficiently. Out of 100 Btus in a given unit of feedstock, only 15 Btus are used to power the process, with the remainder residing in oil, gas, and chemicals. Most important, the oil produced in these tests easily meets the specifications for diesel fuel. “The main process chemistry does exactly what we thought it would do,” says Appel.

Officials of ConAgra Foods, who formed a joint venture with Changing World Technologies called Renewable Energy Solutions to operate the Carthage plant, remain as upbeat as Appel. “We now know that the technology is sound and the science really works,” says Michael Walter, ConAgra Foods’ senior vice president for commodity procurement. “The front end of the plant is producing organic liquors and free fatty acids, and the back end does make a diesel fuel product.” He adds that Renewable Energy Solutions has spent “a fair amount of money” on pre-engineering a second plant, which will probably be located near Longmont, Colorado, and process both turkey and cattle slaughterhouse waste.

If Changing World Technologies process ends up working as advertised, it’ll provide a great solution to our foreign oil dependence without actually having our economy suffer the high cost of making a sudden transition to more environmentally benign energy sources. And we get to eliminate some nasty organic waste products, to boot. I wish these guys all the best.

Michele Catalano has a good roundup of Iraqi bloggers’ reactions to the sovereignty transfer.

While I certainly have my doubts as to the wisdom of the early, secret handover, I am pleased to know that Iraq once again has a government. And hopefully, the elections will go without a hitch.

There’s still a lot to do in Iraq, but it’s also important to note that a lot has been done in Iraq. And now the fate of Iraq is in the hands of its people. That’s a good thing.

“Mary Jane says I’ve got a really bad attitude when I’m around other superheroes, but how can I spill my guts to some guy that built a helmet so he could talk to ANTS?”
– Spider-Man

“Many think it not only inevitable but entirely proper that liberty give way to security in times of national crisis-—that, at the extremes of military exigency, inter arma silent leges. Whatever the general merits of the view that war silences law or modulates its voice, that view has no place in the interpretation and application of a Constitution designed precisely to confront war and, in a manner that accords with democratic principles, to accommodate it.”
– Justice Antonin Scalia, dissenting in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld