Good luck finding that comment. Personally, I find that when websites have comment systems in place, like Youtube or Cnn, or (insert website here), then the comments tend to asymptotically approach pure nonsense as the popularity of the website increases.

That operating systems like iOS and Android even give someone the ability to see that certain permissions are required, and by the compliment, that there are permissions that are not required, is a step in a good direction. That granularity feature is absent in desktop applications--essentially all permissions are granted by default. For all I know pkunzip could have been keeping track of all those file_id.diz it encountered in order to build a profile of me, then dialing some BBS to upload the statistics to. That might seem implausible, but since there was no central authoritative repository to download pkunzip, it came from a BBS. That BBS could have replaced it with its own custom version for tracking.

The larger point is that desktop programs could have been doing for years what people are worried about with tablet and phone applications.

That said, it still creeps me out to see a solitaire game needing access to my address book. Maybe this is a case of "out of sight, out of mind."

I'm in the same boat, I just (two weeks ago) switched from 3.6 to 10. I still have 3.6 installed just in case, but so far I'm adjusting.

In order to have some stability though, try the ESR version, it's what I'm using. http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all.html And if you want to read the FAQ, go with http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/faq/

So far, there are a few hiccups. There were a few add-ons that didn't make the switch, but they were rarely used, so I haven't noticed their absence yet. The tab size is annoying and I haven't figured out how to fix that yet. The old about:config fix doesn't work, and the userchrome.css fix just screws things up more.

I did need to readjust the default layout, the lack of a refresh and stop button is just annoying, but they're easy to add back. I like having a user interface, so yeah, that.

Noscript and Adblock plus work. I recommend the "status-4-evar" addon to get the status bar back.

Overall, I haven't noticed the slowdown or memory consumption. Of course, everyone's mileage will vary.

One new feature, at least new for me, is that you have FF restore all your tabs after you close your browser, but when you start back up, the tabs won't load unless you click on them. I really like this feature. Back in 3.6, it could take a really long time to restore a browsing session.

Overall though, the shock of switching isn't as bad as you think.

I think I should probably end this post with instructions on doing a side-by-side install. Before installing anything, make a copy of your firefox profile. Then edit the 'profiles.ini' to reflect this, it's up a folder or two from the profiles. In the profiles.ini, make a new name, something like myff10stuff for your profile. Then, get the ESR build and install to a different folder, but do not start FF at the end of the install. Edit the existing FF shortcut or make your own, but put -P on the end. it should read something like
"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox 10\firefox.exe" -P myff10stuff
All that is because the profile manager doesn't let you copy an existing profile. You can delete, rename, or create a new one, but you can't copy. You'll probably want to do the same thing to the 3.6 copy and use the 3.6 profile.

For the very reason that Google wouldn't want to give Bing any sort of leg up on their own search engine. I think Mozilla could come out ahead if there happens to be any backroom bidding wars to keep that 3rd place browser out of the other big guy's hands.

In the registration process for getting an API key there is the following question and choices:

How many people do you anticipate will use your application?
1-10 (Just me and mine.)
10-100 (Intranet, protected access.)
100-1,000 (Slashdot me, please!)
1,000-10,000+ (Everyone, I hope.)

I'm sure there is some sort of semantic joke in their somewhere but I can't find it.