Have you considered that maybe it's you, not Firefox? Have you got flaky plugins installed? Or flaky extensions? Some extensions have been known not to play nice with others.

I use Firefox heavily every day (always on the latest release) and I haven't had it crash in literally years. Nor have I found it a memory hog. As I type this I have 10 different sites open and Firefox is using ~400 meg.

Whereas capitalism, in contrast, is a tide that "raises all boats". Oh, wait.

Yeah. It's not exactly "boldly going where no man has gone before", is it?

Got bad news for you. While the activities of the NSA may be technically legal *inside* the US, they are certainly not legal anywhere *outside* the US. The same is true in reverse; the US certainly doesn't operate a "live and let live" policy towards foreign espionage agencies operating inside its borders.

In any event, the point here is that US companies operating in foreign countries can't use the Patriot Act (or any other US law) as an excuse for flouting local laws. The personal data of EU citizens is protected under EU law. If US companies want to do business in Europe then they must abide by those laws.

The US wouldn't tolerate foreign companies breaking US law in America. What makes you think other countries should tolerate US companies breaking their laws?

No, the trouble is that the jurisdiction of the Patriot Act (and all other US laws) ends at the US border; regardless of what agencies like the NSA like to believe. If US companies won't (or feel they can't) abide by the laws of the foreign countries in which they trade, then they'll just have to stop trading in those countries.

The economic impact on US tech companies of Prism, the Patriot Act, etc. is not exactly news; NSA's Prism Could Cost U.S. Cloud Companies $45 Billion - InformationWeek.

Well there has been analysis done that shows there is a direct relationship - worldwide - between the level of gun ownership in a country and the level of gun related fatalities; High gun ownership makes countries less safe, US study finds. And the US is top of the list.

Most countries in the western world have decided that any putative "right" to own a gun is far outweighed by the social cost.

(And before somebody says it, yes I know you can stab somebody with a chisel or beat them to death with a hammer. What you cannot do with either of those things is stand in a crowded space and kill people as fast as you can flex your finger; that requires a gun.)

My thoughts exactly. In 2010 the British Chiropractic Association sued Dr. Simon Singh for libel for suggesting (on his blog) that some of their claims and practices were dubious at best. The courts (which have tended to be quite plaintiff friendly in UK libel cases) initially found against Dr. Singh, though his legal team managed to get that overturned on appeal on the basis that his article was "fair comment". This smells like something similar.

You may have intended this as sarcasm. If not, I'd suggest you haven't fully understood the problem.

Look at the current UK government's record, for example. First they introduced mandatory "porn" filtering - which you must formally opt-out of - in the name of "saving the children"; of course, even in it's first incarnation, it was blocking things that were clearly not porn.

Then they swiftly moved to "leverage" that to block "extremist" material. The problem, of course, is that extremist is a nebulous term; UK politicians have described groups as diverse as the Countryside Alliance and UK Uncut (a tax pressure group) as "extremist", and it's these same politicians - not the courts - who are deciding what should be blocked.

Maybe you really do want to live in an internet bubble where the only things you see are whatever the government of the day has decided is "safe". But most of us would rather make our own minds up.

Eh, no. The point is there's nothing stopping you saying anything (and still isn't). But there's no magic amulet protecting you from the consequences of saying it either.

Agreed. I have a *lot* of CDs, but only started buying them seriously in the 1990s and they still play fine. It does depend on how you store them though; things like direct sunlight and extremes of heat and cold can damage the discs. And for discs you burn yourself, a lot depends on how you burn them; YMMV.

Ob. xkcd link Free Speech.

Fair point. I'd forgotten about ACS:Law. That said, there are still fans of draconian measures against file-sharers in the current UK government. For example Government "must consider" jail time for illegal file-sharers.

From TFA:

It's significant, I think, that he singles out the UK which is becoming increasingly like the 51st state in legal/civil rights terms.

In the rest of Europe I'd suggest they won't find the legal and regulatory environment anything like as forgiving of their methods as the U.S.

Apparently for some people it's a lot harder than you would think; Driver Dies After Posting Facebook Selfie.