how to protect my system from third party apps crashes

[Michael]

Hello.

I'm having stability issues on my desktop system running FreeBSD 8.2-R 
on amd64. It happens quite often that some application (say web browser) 
goes nuts and totally locks-up my system.

When it happens it looks like the application is frozen but I can't kill 
it. WCPU usage goes up rapidly and after a while system doesn't respond 
to anything than brutal hard reset.

I guess it's not the system itself to blame, but it would be good if it 
could handle misbehaving programs. What I'm looking for is some kind of 
protection from system lock ups. I don't mind when the browser hangs, 
but I don't want it to kill my whole system.
Any suggestions, hints, ideas please?

I am aware that it's a workaround to the problem instead of a real 
solution, but that's what is needed.

Michael