There is nothing worthwhile in diversity in and of itself

This is the attitude that needs to stop. Diversity may not be a value in your pantheon, but it's not social engineering to want an inclusive society. It's wisdom.

Why does it need to stop?

A huge problem -- that few people seem to speak about -- is that using gender, nationality, or, most frustratingly -- race, as a measure of "diversity" is implicitly bigoted.

The diversity that people _claim_ to want is one of perspectives, life experiences, etc.

The things that are relatively easy to bucketize - gender identity, race, socio-economic status, etc.... these things in and of themselves are not a valuable source of "diversity"

The implicit bigotry in the "diversity" argument says that, if you hire more black people, you'll get much different ideas than what you already have. Why? Because all black people are different from the white people you already have.

I've never seen a more stark illustration of _racism_ then that.

The conjecture here is that if a population distribution doesn't' look the way certain people expect it to, then there is some upstream social problem that needs tinkering with.

That conjecture is only ever true or false on a case by case basis. The real problem that needs to stop is for people to believe this conjecture in the general case; the real problem is that people don't even agree or are not willing to state what their expectations are for the "ideal" population distribution, but, are still willing to cry foul and to assert that a problem exists.

I wonder which Opera Execs received the goodies from google for them to fold their companies uniqueness/any reason to exist.

Sites not working and a mess of confusing features and slow growth is a reason to exist? Remember, after they dumped Presto they've started growing users again.

once it became a chrome re-skin

A skin is just a bunch of visual elements. Opera actually coded a new interface. Calling it a re-skin is just silly.

When exactly was it IE or nothing, pray tell? Was that before or after Netscape devolved into Mozilla? Was this on some magical timeline where Opera 2.0 was never released?

I think he's referring to sites blocking other browsers or not working. Mozilla and Opera weren't even relevant at all early on (no users = no compatibility). For a while after Netscape died there was basically just IE if you wantes to be able to actually browse the web.

they had the smallest, faster, most portable, most customisable browser which was *sold* as part of the Nintendo Wii launch (you call it The Internet Channel

And guess what, Nintendo dumped Opera when choosing a browser for the Wii U. Being small, fast and the most portable doesn't matter anymore. The hardware is fast enough to run just about anything anyway.

I'm suggesting that a company that makes MONEY by having users use it, should strive to keep those users. Rather than become yet-another-Chrome that even less people use.

Yeah, except Opera's reports to its owners indicate that the new Opera is growing faster than the old one ever did, and people who try it out are less likely to stop using it again.

They got bought out, they shipped off the developers that knew how to program, they ended up with a Windows-only Chrome frontend dependent on someone else to do the hard work of making them money.

Opera was never acquired. It's still an independent commpany.

They didn't ship off any developers, as most of the people who used to do development are still working for Opera.

Opera is not Windows-only. It was also released for Mac. and now Linux. And of course iPhone, Android, etc.

Someone else is not doing the hard work. Opera is one of the biggest contributors to the Chromium project.

But let's ignore the facts shall we...

And in the process lost a LOT of users, who are really their only revenue stream now that they DON'T pump out versions for other platforms like the Wii any more...

They didn't lose a lot of users. And besides, the new Opera is growing faster than the Presto-based Opera ever did anyway.

And of course, Opera's revenue has never been higher than it is now.

These "vouchers" that you are describing sound an awful lot like...money.

LK

there hasn't been an update since the 15 series that actually did anything, and most of those updates broke stuff

What stuff was broken with updates after 15?

They are trying to play catch-up from an unnecessary code-base change to what they used to have.

If they hadn't changed, they would have lagged more and more behind. At least now they get the latest web tech.

The coding team has changed. The company has changed.

The coding team hasn't changed more than a team normally changes in a couple of years according to the teams themselves. The company has changed? All companies change.

There is no interest in preserving users any more.

Really? Because switching to Blink seems to be preserving users in a better way than the old version. Opera's report to its owners indicates that people who start using the new versions are less likely to move on to something else than versions before 15.

Bug reports get answered with "We haven't got around to that yet" or "We never intend to put that functionality back in.

You get answers to bug reports? That's new. When did they start doing that? Sounds like a massive improvement. On the other hand, bugs seem to be fixed at a much faster rate now than they used to.

They removed every major feature that did something useful, so it's now a very, very poor Chrome clone.

They didn't actually remove any features. They just started from scratch. It's far from being a Chrome clone. Just becase it's a simple browser doesn't make it a Chrome clone.

We hoped the company would see sense and start re-using that codebase after they realised their catastrophic mistake. It never happened.

A "catastrophic mistake" which made the desktop version grow faster in number of users than any versions before it? Right.

The only patches they ever put out to the "real" Opera codebase broke it along the way, presumably because they just don't understand the code at all.

Why would they suddenly stop understanding the code they wrote? Most of the same people who worked on Opera 12 are still working for Opera.

How did they break it when patching it? Got any examples? Or are you just making up things.

Funny thing is, simple changes in the old Opera often broke things. You know, when all the developers you mistakenly thought had left were still working actively on Presto.

Corporations can be the targets of legal action precisely because they are persons under the law.

LK

Opera couldn't make any money. They're trying to survive.

Opera has been profitable for a long time. They've had tons of cash in the bank most of the time as well.

FIRST POST

(however, the apparent local time when you see this post may differ based on the apparently non-constant nature of c )

Well, not exactly a feature phone.

I use facebook, multiple account email, and Exchange calendar from my phone multiple times a day. Its just that, I'm usually at home or work, and both have WiFi.

Contract phone plans are absurdly expensive, and, I've been running a pre-paid SIM for over 7 years. I don't want to go back to a situation where I pay a high monthly fee for a limited selection of phones with phone company malware on them...

I am getting everything I need out of this smart phone WITHOUT a gmail account.

I'll tell you how I've landed on a Windows Phone -- one that I paid for out of pocket, and using a plan that I also pay for out of pocket.

(I mention this only because I'm an MS employee, and I want to avoid the problem of someone claiming that I am astroturfing here)

For the last year or two, I had been using a used iPhone 3G. I had to jailbreak it so I could SIM unlock it.

I never bought any apps from any appstores. Free apps, yes. Paid apps - no.

The basic problem with the iPhone series is that apple simply obsoletes its hardware too quickly. Most of the apps in the apple app store couldn't install on my phone, because my phone couldn't be updated to the newest OS. The phone was unbearably slow when browsing desktop-class pages.

I feel like apple is a premium-price for a below-average experience.

Regarding Android - every android phone I've seen has been completely different from the others. If I pick up an android phone, it always takes me a while to adjust to the quirks of that particular handset's UI. I'm attracted to the ease of "owning" an android device, but, ultimately, I want a phone that just works. I rarely want to tinker with it.

Finally, Android bothers me because I don't use gmail and I don't trust google. The people I've talked to claim that it is difficult to really make the most of an Android phone without giving your life over to your google account.

So, Microsoft finally comes out with the Lumia 521 -- a no-contract phone that is natively built for Windows Mobile 8. I really like this phone. It has a fast browser, and the 1st party apps are quite good. It is like $120 from Wal-Mart. The camera and photostitching apps are good, and it comes with a built-in Nokia mapping/navigation program that has complete offline capability. This is important for me since I don't have a data plan and I am often in places with no data service anyhow. The Nokia HERE DRIVE and HERE MAPS applications are fantastic.

The windows mobile UI is great. More consistent then Android, and better information density than iPhone.