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.

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.

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.

I am for it, as long as it isn't also construed to discourage the boys. That's the last thing we need to do to our "educational" indoctrination system.

In fact, anything that undoes the dumbing down to match the lowest achievers that has been done in the last 80 years or more needs to be undone itself.
Reading comprehension for instance, went down when they dropped phonics back in the 40's. That was a monumental mistake IMO. So now, in 2014, we have 3+ generations of people who cannot read the daily fish wrap in 15 minutes, even if it doesn't have anything in it but Ford advertisements. Not only that, but the writers (I hesitate to call them Journalists) of 75% of that drivel have no real command of the English language, both in terms of sentence structure, and spelling.

Our present system sits heavily on those blessed with a high IQ, teaching them how to scam for welfare rather than how to use those smarts to move us ahead.
I don't personally care if the child with a lower IQ ever "graduates" from high school. But the child with an IQ in the 150 range looks at the subjects being required today, is bored out of his skull, and gets a poorer grade because he just doesn't care, there are many more important things to think about than a geography lesson based on a book whose copyright is 40 years old & 20% of the countries discussed don't even exist today.

I know something about that since I was one of "those kids". I quit school as soon as I could, and went to work fixing the then new tv's in the late '40's. Since, I've had fingerprints in some very unusual places, and eventually retired from a nearly 20 year stint as the very well paid, 30% above what the market size usually pays, Chief Engineer at a TV station.

Its a very short push to my 80th and having just survived a Pulmonary Embolism that about punched my ticket, I'm less inclined to STFU when something isn't right.

Your links are all to denialist web sites. Those are not "the scientists" at all. The actual scientists are the ones publishing actual science in actual scientific journals. And that research shows man-made warming.

No idea what you mean by "their own experiments have lower confidence." Seems like you're parroting something one of your non-scientists said.

Instead of a spectrum analyzer, you can use an RTL-SDR dongle as described here. Sure it has a lot of limitations, but it only costs you 10$, and with the scanner software you can get a very wide bandwidth.

7.5 million dollars just went down the drain.

I've been pondering on how toget rid of my facebook account. Is it possible to get your account suspended by posting filth and other matirial that's against their terms of use? I've heard about people getting their account blocked. Instead of panicking over it, I want to embrace it. Good idea?

Of course! Quantum effects!

Every quack claims "quantum effects" for justifying their quackery these days. Nothing new. Me is not impressed.

I'll sure 2nd that!

I tend to agree with the both are at fault scenario here.

But I'd be remiss to not mention one of apples former bad moves, trying to milk the makers of firewire equipt gear with a per socket royalty fee, the exact amount of which I have long since forgotten, after having effectively making it public domain by publishing the specs so every one would get it right.

In my limited experience with a Sony Handi-cam, sort of a compromise between very bad vhs, and hidef, a 720p digital video camera that recorded digitally on a metallic formulation of hi-8 tape, the firewire port on it Just Worked(TM), even for remote controlling the camera, using the now abandoned "kino" software package on linux. That camera is pretty good, putting its output on a dvd requires about half its sharpness to be thrown away in any format that will play on consumer grade dvd players.

Firewire had a huge advantage in that it did Just Work, and only one disadvantage that turned out to be pretty important, it didn't daisy chain like USB can.

USB, yet today, doesn't always work, primarily because there are so many excrement products for sale that should never have been allowed in the same room with a plastics molding machine.

But IMO, apple shot themselves in the foot on that one, guaranteeing that the standard would die with their outrageously priced royalty fee, so it died perhaps 5 years prematurely. Had they not done that, reneging of that unspoken promise of royalty free usage, its conceivable that it might have become daisy-chainable with hubs like USB is, but no one is going to put ANY R&D into something like firewire that is so encumbered by corporate greed. Their jacking it up to 800mbs was the swan song and a waste of time and resources. 400 worked just fine for hidef video work.

What we need now is a test suite for USB that will tell us instantly if that $10 USB dongle we just bought is fully compliant and will Just Work when we plug it in. But AFAIK, we don't have that yet. So we buy it, try it, and toss it when it doesn't work, because it costs more to take it back for a refund than the refund is worth, and somebody making shitty USB stuff gets to count the sale, when what they really need is a 4 year old kicking them in the shins.

Well, I wondered from the headline, how long it would take for the applicable quote to show up, turned out to be first post. Amazing.

But. if you are going to plagiarize from one of Sci-Fi's truly great writers, unfortunately now past tense, at least give him credit for writing it.

Sir Arther C. Clark, T.B.E.

Sheesh, the chutzpah of some who write on /. knows no bounds.