Well, wait I think you missed one thing actually allo. As shown at spikes.com, put the hardened linux browser outside your firewall and access it over the network. Add in intrusion prevention, data scrubbing, and NOW you're getting there. :)

As founder of a new startup which solves this, I am pleased to say the answer is simple: www.spikes.com | the only secure browser. Secure by design. Private by design. For enterprises now, but consumer cloud coming soon! </shameless plug>

But even we would cooperate with the government in criminal cases where warrants are provided, but our encrypted tunnels should keep the casual sniffers at bay.

You got it! That's certainly the most secure/private design. Check out www.spikes.com for a professional example of this. We're launched with an enterprise product now, but consumer cloud coming soon.

Hehe this made me chuckle. I guess WiFi is technically an "air" gap, but using WiFi is not what is meant by this. For the intended, metaphorical meaning of air gap, run your browser on another computer and access it via a remote desktop. Wipe it back to zero every now and then to clear it of malware, and make sure that other computer is outside your firewall and can't access your network. For example of this: www.spikes.com

<shameless plug>
As founder of a new startup which solves this, I am pleased to say the answer is simple: www.spikes.com | the only secure browser. Secure by design. Private by design. For enterprises now, but consumer cloud coming soon!
</shameless plug>

But even we would cooperate with the government in criminal cases where warrants are provided, but our encrypted tunnels should keep the casual sniffers at bay.

I'm surprised Bartle neglected to mention the most incredible thing about MUDs, which to this day has yet to be surpassed by even the most advanced MMOs. Once you reached the maximum level in MUD, you became a "Wizard". This gave the user access to the filesystem, and code-slinging capabilities. Since MUD runs an interpreted language, edits to the codebase could be seen immediately, in real-time, to the users. Wizards could essentially change the world as it was being played, creating endless opportunity for creativity and spawning some of the coolest MUD "worlds" imagineable. Of course, this presented a whole set of issues with ethics, balance, and cheating, but those got resolved by the best MUDs over time. Imagine if the next generation of MMO, or Diablo 4 or whatever, allowed for the players to graduate to "Wizard" status and create new worlds for people to play. Maybe then, these games could still be played over 20 years later like MUDs.