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For those of you who haven’t been keeping track at home, XUL Planet has a list of 101 things you can do in Mozilla that you can’t do in Internet Explorer.

Alexandra Pelosi has a piece about the making of her documentary “Journeys with George” up at the official site. One thing to note: you may like George W Bush more after watching this than you did before, but any thoughts you might have had about Carl Rove being a creepy asshole will be confirmed.

It was reported this week that drinking a lot of coffee could reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Of course it’s just one study and all we have right now is correlation, not causation, but slurping down several cups of coffee a day sounds like more fun than starting that exercise regimen that I keep putting off.

Hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Florence, Italy today to protest against invading Iraq (and globalization, Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, and other stuff). I’m definitely not sold on going to war with Iraq, but this protest has the feel of reflexiveness to me. How many of those people are against it because the United States is behind it? And I wonder how they recommend we treat Saddam instead? Surely none of those people think that Saddam Hussein should simply be left to his own devices, to make all the weapons he wants and continue to brutally oppress his miserable subjects. Protesting is all well and good, but there’s more to the world than just opposing the dominant agenda. That’s the problem that the Democrats ran into earlier this week. We need something more than “Bush is wrong” to carry us forward. ...

TRW has created a laser weapon that can shoot down rockets and artillery shells in flight. I’m not particularly sanguine about the long term prospects of this weapon as a useful deterrent against rockets and artillery used by decently equipped armies, but it’s still pretty cool. And it could prove very useful in one of its intended uses – defending towns in Israel against mortar and rocket attacks by groups operating out of the occupied territories and southern Lebanon. Unfortunately, it’s still at the proof of concept stage. I link to this mainly because I find it interesting that laser weapons look to be close to finding a practical application. Just another example of real life catching up with sci fi. ...

If you get the chance, you must watch the documentary Journeys with George, which is currently airing on HBO. It’s basically the video memoir of an NBC producer who spent the entire 2000 Presidential campaign as part of the press corps following George W Bush. Not only is it a well done documentary, but it provides some insight into the character and personality of our current President.

I’ve been ill for the past few days, and completely missed the leak of a new Halloween document from Microsoft.

Everybody already knows that the Democrats got hammered yesterday in the midterm elections. From what I could see from the predictions going into the balloting yesterday, few people on either side thought that it would go so well for the Republicans. Today, the bulk of the postgame analysis seems to be saying that the Democrats got clobbered because they didn’t have a cohesive story to tell the American people about how they would make things better, and I have to say, that makes sense to me. What is the Democratic policy message? That they’re against privatization of Social Security, that they’re against vouchers, that they can’t decide whether they’re for or against war in Iraq. Whether or not President Bush is responsible for it, the economy has really fallen apart since he took office, and the only thing he’s done to stop the bleeding is make some lousy protectionist trade policy and cut taxes. So what alternatives do the Democrats offer? Beats me. What yesterday’s election teaches us is that there aren’t enough people around who are offended by the many failings of the Republicans to elect Democrats. It also teaches us that the Republicans aren’t offensive enough to bring out the Democratic voters in high enough numbers to win elections. What remains to be seen is how the Democrats can pick themselves up off the mat and do some good over the next two years, and more importantly, put together a winning ticket in 2004. Hopefully one that can regain the Senate, if not the House, as well. ...

Hey, if you’re in America, go vote today. And take Russell Beattie’s advice on who to vote for while you’re at it.

You know I love The Register, but this story on Mozilla security holes is pretty pathetic. The story discusses six security flaws that were discussed on BugTraq, only one of which affects the current stable releases of Mozilla. A few weeks ago, Mozilla 1.0.1 was released specifically to fix the security holes mentioned in this article (along with about 20 others), so why is it news now that people are discussing these holes, which have already been repaired? I’ve heard that some old versions of Sendmail are subjec to buffer overflows, perhaps The Register should have a reporter call me. ...