The first casualty of the browser war isn't Netscape or Microsoft--it's us. The two software companies have been releasing revisions to their Internet browsers at a hellish pace, leapfrogging each other with new features so quickly that the things aren't adequately debugged. And now we learn that for the past year, their free e-mail programs have contained a dangerous defect that allows any bad guy to send e-mail that can crash your computer. (It's so easy, even I can do it.)
In more sophisticated--and malicious--hands, the defect can be used to insert a "Trojan horse," a program that can stealthily take...