Or, even better, just don't use uTorrent.

I understand. I think perhaps where we differ is that I see a pretty huge difference between a company and a brand.

That's a matter of opinion. As a developer that has been using Java for years now, my opinion is that Java is simply awful.

And I disagree. The product that Sun created clearly still exists in a meaningful way -- but that's the product, not the company. The company no longer exists. What I hear you saying is that if I buy a coffee maker from a company and the company goes out of business, the company actually still exists because the coffee maker still exists.

Products and the companies that make them are different things.

In all fairness, if you want a decent experience in Firefox you have to change a number of other things in about:config anyway (since Mozilla has apparently decided that they don't want anyone to be able to improve the settings in a way that is actually convenient). As long as you're there, changing one more thing isn't that big of a deal.

I don't know if it always will be, but it's certainly a piece of crap, I agree, and getting crappier with each release. The problem with Firefox is that it's not much better than IE and is following the exact same trajectory of constantly getting crappier. Although, admittedly, each browser has its own unique flavor of crappy.

We might be getting tripped up on nomenclature.

Polaroid and Indian Motorcycles are defunct. That some other company picked up the names and started producing products under those names doesn't change that (even if the products are identical to what was originally produced). The original company is long gone regardless, so it's defunct.

Since always. When one company acquires another, the acquired company ceases to exist in any way that is meaningful for their customers. It is just becomes a brand used by the company that did the acquiring.

My theory is that every release of Firefox that has come out for a few years now has been worse than the one before it. Their switch to rapid release has just made the situation worse. And the mobile version of Firefox is horrendous and borderline unusable.

Only if you count a file as "special equipment".

No, instead it exposes your payment information to Google or Apple.

I will do this, yes. All of the "digital wallets" are just proxies for using a card. I prefer to pay cash. If we get a digital option that replicates the advantages of cash, then I'll happily use that. Nothing like that currently exists or is even on the horizon yet.

Because I already have enough businesses spying on what I do. I don't need to invite another one in on the game.

Why would you have to carry multiple cards around? It seems that one would do the job quite nicely.

It's not much of a hassle, really. I pay cash for nearly everything, but I only need to run to an ATM every three days or so because I make sure to withdraw enough cash to last me that long. Carrying bills is hardly a big problem, and I avoid carrying coins at all by leaving them behind.

Not my problem. In fact, I don't see why I should be subjected to the problems of electronic payments just to relieve businesses of the problems of handling cash.

But that still doesn't address the major privacy issues around these systems. It's that aspect which is the reason I won't touch these sorts of payment methods with a ten foot pole.