Opera 8.50 was just released, with the most noticeable change being it'll be 100% free (still only as in beer though). This change in marketing and lack of ads is permanent.

Users having purchased licenses the past 30 days is eligible for a refund if they wish. If not, they'll get premium support services, like any users that keep paying will get.

Check out the browser with fewer known open security holes than Firefox here:
Opera.com

Yet another Slashdot.org topic, but they've done unusually many noticeable changes lately, and this time it's something I found annoying. Hopefully it's just a glitch...

Talking about:

Slashdot requires you to wait 2 minutes between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.

It's been 7 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment

Whaa... And I was sometimes annoyed by the 2 minutes thing already. And no, I don't use to spam replies without thought behind them, just type quickly. :-p

Using Google Fusion and adding the Slashdot RSS feed soon enough sent me to a page telling me I had been banned for "absolutely ridiculous amount of abuse". Apparently, one shouldn't keep the Slashdot feed there if you use it on a site you frequent, at least if you do it more than once every 30 minutes.

I'm not going to bother them with any unban procedures and will just restort to visiting them and loading the 10 KB web site with images even if they don't happen to have any news (I won't know). They seem to send the message that generates far less traffic than grabbing a KB sized feed more than once every 30 minutes.

... and it was as if a thousand trolls cried out in rage, and then went silent.

Finally one can actually browse at 0, or even -1, without wading through GNAA posts?

Unbelievable.

I love the service so don't think otherwise with me complaining about two things recently. :-) However, another peculiar thing -- they just refused to receive a mail with an attached zip file that had a single file in it -- a Windows Registry (.reg) file. In other words, not even a binary file.

I would understand this if they did it against viruses, but then shouldn't they just block executable files?

The error message:

<...@gmail.com>: host gsmtp171.google.com[64.233.171.27] said: 552
          5.7.0 Illegal Attachment

So now I'm only attaching 7-zip archives. :-P

Update: In other Gmail-related news, I just saw a page about operators you can use in both filters and mail searches that I hadn't seen before. Very nice. I only knew about from:, to: and OR before.

That's strange... A Nigeria letter just passed through the Gmail filter as legit mail. You'd think thousands of users have filed those as spam already. And that spam filter has generally been pretty accurate. I must've got a new incarnation of the mail, one with anti-anti-spam stuff inserted, or something... I'll attach the mail as a comment for anyone interested. Who knows, there might be spam collectors out there. :-)

I have heard concerns in the past that the quality on Slashdot.org posts have diminished the past few years, and the reputation as a true geek resource has faded somewhat. So I went to check some visitor statistics for Slashdot.org and it seemed to speak a clear language to me. Maybe it's just increased competition among news sites though; Slashdot-wannabe Kuro5hin.org showed some of the same trend. Or maybe I'm missing out some great site people are leaving for?

Honestly, I don't know much alternative well established and updated computer / science news sites, besides Arstechnica.com, which is mostly just about computers. What I like about Slashdot.org is its broad range of topics I'm interested in (computer tech, science, games, software development).

So, any readers of this have any personal favorites besides Slashdot? :-)

OK, I have 6 more invites to hand out if someone reading this still haven't got one but want one. Reply to this topic if you do.

And if qazmoe still hasn't got one and replies again, he'll be guaranteed one this time. :-)

Update: Gmail invites sent to the two who posted here. Sorry for the rather late replies. :-(

Someone still not got a Gmail account and want one?
Just reply to this thread, and if there is more than one reply, I'll just pick one. :-)

Hehe, I saw unusually many cliché's in today's news... The headlines were (translated from swedish):

- "Michael Jackson -- Whiter than ever" [he has apparently whitened his face since he thought he was starting to look like he was alive, or whatever]

- "Courtney Love to hospital after overdose" [I think a comment would be redundant]

- "Mariah Carey -- a diva" [this didn't exactly strike me as surprising either]

- "Britney thought she was going to get married" [we never tire of the eternal ramblings of Britney Spears' private life, do we?]

Opera 7.20 has been released (changelog 7.11 - 7.20).

Yes, this is the final release! Still only for Windows though, but you can bet on *nix releases following soon.

Opera 7.20 Beta 13 for non-Windows Operating Systems.

A pre-alpha version of Winamp 5 (not a typo) has been leaked.

- News post with direct download links
- BitTorrent link

Background info about Winamp 5, and how it relates to Winamp 3 and Winamp 2:

- Winamp.com Forum Thread #1
- Winamp.com Forum Thread #2
- Winamp.com Forum Thread #3

Today, we're reminded of a sad european law that might even let authors be prosecuted for the software they have written themselves. Christian Ghisler (author of Total Commander) is just one of thousands of developers participating in the protest taking place right now. An excerpt from his protest page:

"This page is temporarily closed in protest against software patents planned in Europe. Websites may soon be closed down regularly due to software patents. Shareware like Total Commander will then no longer be available. Software patents can get you prosecuted for publishing software you wrote yourself!"

Read up at FFII's Software Patent page for more information about the problem. You may also wish to sign a petition if you think this law will hurt innovation and competition among software developers. There are currently around 180,000 signatures.

Just noticed that I had just posted my 1000th post! I need to celebrate this... Hmmm... Somehow!

The useful search engine Google just became even more useful when the Google Team gave it the ability to calculate advanced formulae. Finally letting us avoid downloading those small conversion utilities or browsing the web for javascripts doing the job, Google now let us type the expression directly into its search field.

The following valid expression examples should give you a basic idea of what it's able to do:

• 78+44
• an inch in cm
• quarter of meter in yards
• 38.7 mph in km/h
• 7 au in light years
• 60 megabytes in bytes
• sqrt(2)
• sqrt(-2)
• mass of earth in kg
• (0.7*10^-12 kg) * c^2
• 0x2c + 0x0a