Hackers: Firefox more secure than IE? Fuggeddaboudit!

Two hackers at San Diego's just-completed ToorCon conference claim to have proven that computers running the Mozilla Foundation's hugely popular Firefox Web browser, regardless of whether they use WinBlows, Mac OS X or Linux operating systems, can be commandeered by hostile hackers simply by ginning up a Webpage of malicious JavaScript. The story is reported by ZDNet here.

Am I the only one who notices the irony in this, Firefox having originally been conceived as an alternative to what its creators considered the hopelessly-insecure Micro$oft browser, Internet Exploder Explorer? That a browser designed deliberately to be more secure than IE should now be shown to actually be less secure -- and unfixable short of rewriting its decade-old base code from line one -- is hugely amusing to me. Or would be, if I didn't already find myself using Firefox way more often on both my XP and Mac machines...

Thursday is Protest Day. What should I do?

According to the website for The World Can't Wait/Drive Out The Bush Regime, this Thursday, October 5, the organization is staging a massive nationwide day of protest. TWCW is urging all citizens opposed to the abuses committed by the regime of Junior Bush, including but not limited to the newly-passed legislation authorizing torture, gutting habeas corpus and the Bill of Rights etc., to refuse to attend work or school and join in massive public assemblages to demonstrate opposition and galvanize a movement to remove Bush and his minions from power NOW, rather than wait for the elections this November and in 2008. They are also asking for donations to pay for the placement of a full-page ad in The New York Times that same day outlining the call to action for the movement.

I am in a mental and emotional state of conflict regarding this. On the one hand, I am wholeheartedly in agreement with them that Junior and his neocon buddies in every branch of government need to go, and NOW, not in a year or two. But there are several points of conflict for me:

1. The TWCW disdains any hope of using the existing political process to effect change, insisting that only disruptive social upheaval will work. I can't buy into the notion that working within the system offers no real hope at all, despite their (fairly) pointing out the Democrats' inconsistencies with their stated opposition to Bush vs. their actual votes and publicly documented statements. Nor can they agree, apparently, on what coherent and practical alternative to offer to electing either Republicans (never!) or Democrats (no good either, they say): a new third party (ask Ross Perot how well that works), voting Green/Libertarian/you-name-it (ask Ralph Nader about that one), or something else altogether. I agree that there is great value in bottom-up activism, but there is also something to be said for actually getting yourself or someone you support in a position to move the levers of power. Both are necessary, in my view, and neither can succeed alone, nor ever has.
   
   
2. I work for a Bush-supporting, Rush Limbaugh Republican (the guy even uses liberal-baiting quotes from El Rushbo as his laptop screensaver, fercryinoutloud) who is certain to refuse to allow me time off for such a protest and/or threaten me with loss of my job if I go anyhow. In addition, I an paid by the hour and even if he were willing to give me time off, it would be at loss of that day's income. Given my own checkered-at-best employment history and the fact that my partner faces the very real possibility of losing her job because of the current internal political shenanigans at her workplace, I cannot afford to screw up my livelihood. Or is this a sacrifice a real, hairy-chested political activist would not be afraid to make?
   
   
3. I am very uncomfortable with the strident, absolutist, no-compromise-whatsodamnever tone the group takes in its statements on its Web site, up to and including the Adolf Hitler analogy. Take-no-prisoners 'tude and rhetoric may feel good, but they can often be a stumbling block to real progress in politics, which has often been described as the art of compromise. When two people or parties oppose each other and neither gives even an inch of ground, the usual result is that nothing gets done for either side.
   
   
4. I do not want thousands of people to suffer disruption of vital services, especially in places like hospitals and burning homes or crime scenes, simply so medical personnel, firefighters and police officers can have a day off to make a political point. (My father and younger brother are both firefighters, so this is not just an academic question for me.) And then there is the always-present possibility that the protest marches may turn violent, especially if police and/or military forces are sent against them. If we bemoan the current regime's killing thousands with its policies only to kill thousands more with our protests, how then are we any better?

So what should I do? What would you do...or what will you do? Should I even give money to these people, knowing what may result in the way of unintended consequences? Is it time to go all Malcolm X on the status quo and say the end justifies the means? TWCW's leaders and sponsors seem to think so; I'm not so sure.