The problem with early detection is that many diseases are actually benign in their early stages, and, when detected, their detection can actually cause more harm for the patient. For instance, early cancer detection increases the likelihood that the patient will start chemo. Some cancers wind up being handled by the body, but *all* chemo treatments harm patients. So, early detection sometimes leads to more harm than benefit (plus an unfortunate issue with "success" rates - the cancer treatments get to include in their "success" count cancers that the body would have cleaned up anyway).

"Or are those contracts written so horribly that the company gets paid for a nonfunctional product?"

The problem is that a lot of these types of contracts are written with a clause such that launching them publicly is an implicit acceptance of the project as a finished product. So, since they at least tried to launch it, that means that the project is "finished", and everything else is billed hourly on top of it.

It has been over a decade since I last worked with Oracle, so things may have changed. But when I worked on an Oracle project, it cost a huge amount of money, took way too long, didn't work well, and required double the number of staff to manage the application. After Oracle left, a second company came along behind who specializes in fixing stuff that Oracle broke. This company, I don't remember its name, literally does its business as cleaning up Oracle's trash. They didn't even promise good results, only "I know how much pain you are in, we'll make it not hurt quite so much." Interestingly, this particular project wound up as a "success story" on Oracle's website.

Must be nice to be able to fail at a project such that they owed you $69 million, but you don't actually have to make it work.

Perhaps states should make a rule stating that large projects must be broken up into deliverables of $1 million increments.

Yup, this was a glorious coup by company higher-ups.

Wait, what? Are you really saying that the people in charge of the company made decisions about the company?

Shock! Horror!

Even Wium Lie, the father of CSS and long-time Opera manager, backs the switch. But I guess he's part of the conspiracy too.

Grats, Opera management. You managed to kick out a good founder, kick out a good engine, and kick out any certainty that you won't be sold out to Facebook (Facebook, ffs!).

Facebook? Why? They said they weren't planning on getting aqcuired. Instead they've been making their own acquisitions.

You even made me wonder, between Tolfsen's account and the second engine change (from WebKit to Blink), if Google has simply stuffed your ranks with their management just to Elop the place.

Actually, there was no second engine change in reality. Opera used Chromium in the first place, so when the engine was forked it was automatically forked in Opera as well. There goes your crazy conspiracy theory.

But when we see them dumping their rendering engine developers instead of setting them out to do this

They didn't. Hardly any engine developers were let go. Of the 90 people who left or were fired in total (out of about a thousand employees), less than half were engineers. Engineers include testers and developers, so in reality maybe 20 or so developers out of several hundred actually left.

In fact, I read a while ago that Opera was one of the main contributors to Blink. How were they going to do that if they fired all engine developers? Obviously, they did not fire all of them. They fired maybe a fraction of them, if any.

we know that they have cash-flow issues, and apparently they're going to follow the death-march pattern that so many managers seem to choose when faced with such problems.

Whatever gave you that idea? Opera has been constantly been making record profits since a while before they dumped Presto. They are making money, and are growing fast.

Where are you getting your info from anyway? The Onion?

Since they changed to using webkit, they are, in my opinion, basically irrelevant now.

Since most people don't care about the engine, this is clearly not true. If more sites work they are more likely to get more users, and that makes them more relevant than before.

Say what you will about Presto not working on site x, y, or z, more diversity is good, and it helps keep real standard in check.

Yeah, but who is going to pay for it? They spent insane amounts of money trying to catch up with other engines.

I sent them an email or two with suggestions and bug reports and some of that stuff did actually find its way into the product. Seemed like excellent customer service to me, back then. So all I have going for myself is experience.

The problem is that you think that just because you said something to them, that was the reason why it was added in the first place. Also, they've been fixing bugs based on bug reports for ages, and are still doing so.

As for being paid for with google searches: that's adware. That's not a product. You know perfectly well how good adware generally is. Opera is just another example of how bad it is for everyone involved.

Yes, it is a product. All free browsers rely on revenue sharing from searches, including Firefox.

And the bottom line is that you did not have more input when you were paying. They're far more open and responsive to user needs now than they were when they charged for it. Also, had it not been free, Opera would have been dead by now.

The best I can tell, they get zero revenue from it. The money comes from the codebase they license to various embedded vendors, like Nintendo, for example.

Nope. Opera gets plenty of revenue from the desktop version. Every time you do a Google search, Opera gets money. Multiply that by tens of millions, and you get a nice amount of cash. How about reading up on Opera's finances instead of speculating?

I really can't fathom what's the use of desktop Opera other than browsing porn or similar image-heavy galleries

It's because it has tons of useful features that other browsers just can't match.

I would only use it as a main browser if there was a paid version available, where the users had some input into the direction the development is taking.

What makes you think paying for it gives you more input into the direction of the development? While Opera was payware you hardly got to give any input at all, and most releases were secret until the final version was out. After they stopped charging they started releasing early public test versions and set up a blog to gather feedback on those.

So where you got the idea that you had more input when paying, I have no idea. It's clearly not true.

They are not controlling anything. They are two of the organizations who have analyzed the proxy data. There are many more.

Eh, the proxy data is showing historical data. It shows what the other guy said: "People suggested it, so they checked a millennium's worth of proxy data, and they showed a marked disconnect between the trends in solar and climate activity that appears in the last 100 years."

Don't try to run away by derailing the discussion.

Scientists controlling interpretation of proxy data? The data is free for anyone to interpret. Of course, it's been done properly and correctly, and the results speak for themselves. See above.

Except that isn't how science works. Science tries to falsify itself not prove itself, so your analogy fails on a very basic level. Furthermore, this is not just about one piece of scientific research, but about thousands of them by thousands of independent scientists. Denying that science is indeed being a denialist.

It is false that there has been no warming the last 15 years. However, much of the warming is currently going into the oceans. If the sun was responsible it would have been getting colder for 40 years since that's what's happened to the sun.

Actually, it does mean it exists. When multiple sources of proxy data show the same thing it's pretty clear what the picture looks like. Only if one insists on denying reality will one come up with stuff like "proxy data sucks."

So in other words, 16:9 displays don't even make sense for movies (consuming content). It's even less understandable why they are trying to force 16:9 on everyone.