Internet Explorer has a major vulnerability to a “man-in-the-middle” attack, and has for several years. This means that (for example) someone can set up a spoof version of a financial website (like your bank, or an ecommerce site from which you’re purchasing something), that will fool IE into sending your credit card data to it, instead of the intended recipient, because Explorer apparently isn’t rigorous enough about checking certificates on the Secure Socket Layer.

While this is irritating, even infuriating, in itself, it’s made more so by many site designers’ insistence on writing their sites to IE’s perverted version of HTML and other Microsoft technologies, so that one can’t even use other browsers (e.g., Opera) with them. I avoid using IE as much as possible (and once I finally get the Windows monkey off my back, it won’t be possible to use it at all), but there are some sites that are vital for managing my accounts that either don’t work at all, or are unviewable on any other browser. The Schwab site, for example, won’t do business with you in secure manner unless you have Explorer. They claim that this policy is in the name of “security.”

I hope that this will cause them to rethink that philosophy, given the self-evident irony of it with today’s news (and numerous other instances in the past of Redmond’s less-than-devoted commitment to security in general).

Some unemployed dotcommers have picked themselves up, dusted themselves off, and are learning what real businesses are about.

Where once a sales call meant driving to a mirrored glass building in Silicon Valley to pitch clients on $250,000 software packages, Mr. Ehrmann’s pitches now involve handing out little plastic cups of soup to people on the street.

“People love soup,” Mr. Ehrmann said. “I say I’m building a soup company and people say, `Soup ? that’s cool.’ It’s satisfying. You’re giving people something that affects them right away.”

Here’s a story that’ll warm the heart of monkey-man Ken Layne.

Monkeys are apparently using millipedes as an hallucinogen.

Doug Bandow, from Cato, lays out a case against a war with Iraq.

The problem with a lot of these arguments (not just Doug’s), is that they set up strawmen, in the sense that they describe the array of arguments against going after Saddam, and then knock them down, one by one. The problem with that approach is that no single argument is probably sufficient to justify it–it is the combination of them, in totality that justifies it (if it is indeed justified).

For example, he says:

Lots of arguments have been offered on behalf of striking Baghdad that are not reasons at all. For instance, that Saddam Hussein is an evil man who has brutalized his own people.

Certainly true. But the world is full of brutal regimes that have murdered their own people. Indeed, Washington ally Turkey’s treatment of its Kurds is scarcely more gentle than Iraq’s Kurdish policies.

Moreover, the U.S. warmly supports the royal kleptocracy next door in Saudi Arabia, fully as totalitarian, if not quite as violent, as Saddam’s government. Any non-Muslim and most women would probably prefer living in Iraq.

The point is not that Saddam should be taken out because he’s a brutal dictator–as Doug points out, that criterion applies to lots of thugs around the world.

The fact that he’s a brutal dictator is simply used to buttress the more important argument that he will have no compunction against using such WMD against us, if he can get his hands on them. Particularly if he can do it in such a way as to not leave fingerprints. Of course, that’s an argument that Doug doesn’t address.

Another point that Doug makes is that Saddam is rational; therefore he can be contained and deterred. However, there’s a lot of evidence to believe otherwise–he’s calculating, to be sure, and has a strong sense of self preservation, but he’s also liable to major missteps, and miscomprehension about just what he can get away with (the invasion of Kuwait being a notable example).

What needs to be done, and I don’t have time to do right now, is to lay out a whole series of criteria that one would use to determine whether or not to go to war with a despot like Saddam. Put them in a matrix, and come up with rules about how many must be met, or how many must be met in conjunction with others, to make a go decision. One would hope that someone is doing that in the State Department or the Pentagon or the White House Security Council.

That will be a much less assailable argument for those who are opposed to the war, than allowing them to go after rationales piecemeal.

Vodkapundit has returned, apparently refreshed, from his honeymoon. But posting will be reduced (the free ice cream cones will be 27% smaller, as Lileks says), due to more pressing matters (I know that story). Belated congratulations to Steven on the getting-married thingy.

Vodkapundit has returned, apparently refreshed, from his honeymoon. But posting will be reduced (the free ice cream cones will be 27% smaller, as Lileks says), due to more pressing matters (I know that story). Belated congratulations to Steven on the getting-married thingy.

Vodkapundit has returned, apparently refreshed, from his honeymoon. But posting will be reduced (the free ice cream cones will be 27% smaller, as Lileks says), due to more pressing matters (I know that story). Belated congratulations to Steven on the getting-married thingy.

In the comments section of this post on Friday, a reader argued that scientists ignore inconvenient facts in their defense of evolution.

Charles Murtaugh has responded.

Check out these commercial satellite photos of the buildup of the US air base in Qatar.

I believe that, under the 1992 Remote Sensing Act, the US government does have de jure shutter control over this type of imagery. I’m wondering if and when they’re going to exercise it, or at least purchase the rights to the photos themselves from Ikonos and Quickbird (as they did during the Gulf War, and more recently, in Afghanistan last fall). The fact that they’re not makes me think that they don’t mind folks (and particularly folks in the region, e.g., Riyadh) seeing them…

Friday’s Boston Globe has the latest developments in the Ted Williams case, and in the elder daughter’s continuing attempts to have him thawed and burned, eliminating whatever chances he has for reanimation in the future.

Basically, it looked like things were settled last week, when after being persuaded by the younger daughter, Claudia, that this really was what Mr. Williams wanted, and forensic analysis that showed that his signature on the document was authentic, the executor of the estate withdrew his request to the judge to adjudicate the matter. This had the effect of denying Ms. Farrell’s attempts to have the body cremated.

Now she says she’s going to sue. One of the defendants will be Alcor itself, the cryonics provider that took custody of the patient.

According to the article, there was a reluctance to take this step, because it will now involve calling Claudia a liar. Up till now, all of the vitriol and ad hominem attacks have been focused on the son, John Henry. If this lawsuit goes forward, it could get really nasty, and provide a lot of publicity for Alcor and cryonics.

Here’s my take, given what we know. It appears to me that John-Henry and Claudia sincerely wanted to both be frozen themselves when their time came, and to be able to join their father in the fridge, and reunite with him in the future. John-Henry is certainly not a model citizen, but I don’t see how that’s pertinent. The talk about preserving his body to sell the DNA was just that–talk. Alcor will not allow that, and it’s not a part of the contract. Take that away, and I can’t see any other motivation for their actions. Perhaps someone else has other theories, but I don’t have any.

Ms. Farrell, on the other hand, could have a couple motivations. One is that she is simply so emotionally distraught that her father will not get what she believes his final wish–to be cremated, that she’s willing to do legal battle with her half siblings over the issue, at great cost, both financially and to everyone’s reputation.

I’m still holding to the theory that this is at least partially an extortion attempt. She was cut out of the will. She’d still like to get what she considers to be her share. Her legal case is poor, but it’s a nuisance for the defendants. She’ll ultimately settle the lawsuit in exchange for some amount of money for “emotional pain and suffering” at the thought of her father being upside down in a tank of liquid nitrogen, instead of properly scattered over the Florida Keys. Ted will stay in the vat.

You heard it here first.