After further inspection, it isn't an Opera bug, but that case does appear different, here's why.

Inspecting the elements in Opera vs. Chrome (FF and IE don't have 'built in' stuff), suggests that Opera defaults to a 10px margin-right, while Chrome defaults to a 40px margin-right, on the CSS regarding the blockquote, at least on 7chan/hi/.
Live-editing the CSS to 40px (lovely Opera feature), makes it render identical.

The 'user agent style sheet' is explicitly left up to the browser, and most things say if you -don't- want the margins and padding left up to the browser, you're supposed to reset with margin:0, padding: 0.

For sites where small layout elements are emphasized in such a way...did nobody notice (or report this to the site owners) in the last 6+ years or so?

The specification doesn't mandate that a browser do anything other than accept the tag. It doesn't specify how, when, or why it does or doesn't render it. The site(s) in question should be relying on browser-independent behavior, including -probably- not using blockquotes in such a way, when it's deprecated.

Tested on FF, Opera, Chrome, and IE8. The only difference in rendering the blockquote appears to be based on font and relative sizing, determining at which point the text wraps and how far over it is when it does so.

Opera 10.60 is still roughly twice as fast as Firefox 4.0b1, and less aggressive gobbling memory than either Firefox or Chrome (the hog) on average.

You generally only need extensions if something's already broken; on Opera, you can load up an ad blocking filter+CSS element hider, enable/disable both per-site, enable cookies/JS/etc on a per-site basis, and run many but-not-all user javascript. All of which require 'extensions' on Firefox.

It's also widely accepted to be the most standards compliant browser on virtually any comparative time frame, and also typically gives equal treatment to all supported OSes, so there are lots of reasons to use it and enjoy it.

People seem to like to complain about Opera, like they like to complain about XP x64. They heard about it once and so it just must absolutely be horrible, because giving it a real chance is too much work.

The last time I had any rendering/formatting problems was with old buggy javascript layout in 2006. Those were with Opera 9 beta(ish) I think? By 9.5 the problems (on minor, entirely non-public code) were gone again. And now (as in, for all of recent memory), like most browsers, you can report websites that don't work directly (and can post code snippets on the forums, IIRC).

BitTorrent sites do not have the movie files on them. Users share them at their own expense and risk. They use blockable advertising to offset hosting costs.

Streaming sites obviously do have the files on them, and by using ads embedded into the stream, they were presumably attempting to directly make a notable profit off of the movies and TV shows.

So why were BT sites traditionally the main target instead of profiteering streaming sites? Nevermind how numerous and over-the-top most of the streaming sites seem.

An issue with the default settings/software (which is almost never 'upstream' default settings/software), as has cropped up on Ubuntu and OpenSuSE many times over the years, is much more likely than random, sudden, otherwise asymptomatic hardware failure.

Sometimes if you're just doing everything right, some guy who thinks he's a real genius programmer has added a bizarre, buggy, dubious patch to glibc or the distro's kernel which causes problems for some software for some users (at best).

Random utility/security software used to be an issue (in particular; in some cases still is), but that's true of any non-mainstream, non-workstation edition of Windows as well.

Drivers were more of an issue -before- Vista came out, since people were still trying to figure out x64 drivers in general. About the same time Vista/WDDM x64 drivers stopped flaking out constantly, so did 64-bit XP drivers.

I wouldn't want to try to connect a random WLAN USB plug to XP x64 (or Vista, for that matter), mind. I never had issues with 'drivers in general', though. Everything I've tried to run with it that was supported by Server 2003 and/or Vista has been well supported on the 64-bit version too. Why, there was even one odd ancient analog brooktree TV tuner that strangely worked fine on XP x64 (using direct capture) but not on Vista (using anything).
(And strangely, all of my video playback software insists on internally/externally using NV12 on Vista/W7 instead of RGB32, sure makes screenshots unhappy.)

Vista advertising (for x64) was virtually mandated. To get almost anything certified (of which seemingly all companies have to care about), you had to support it. And if you had to support it, of course you're going to loudly trumpet the fact that you're cool and hip and on the cutting edge of innovation in OS support. People are predictable, and Microsoft knew what it was doing. XP x64 was merely an OEM product, so while it didn't have the mainstream coverage, it certainly wasn't XP Embedded.

I'm glad Vista/etc work for you. For me, it actually loses track of memory during runtime (not boot), on a remarkably standard classification gaming machine.
Having 4GB of RAM, and having to consult Available memory table to be able to run anything more than basic IM (and still going OOM frequently on games, web browsers, etc) was enough for XP x64 to reclaim its old spot, and make me consider buying a CRT (and conversion) just to avoid the rock and hard place of "windows classic" LCD issues vs. "windows new-style" memory "disappearing" issues.

But, at any rate, every time the mere version is mentioned, people seem to get some kind of complex about how horrible it -must- be, when it's merely middle ground somewhere somewhere between running XP SP3 and Vista x64 SP2.
All available RAM, without having to spend at least 800MB-1GB of it (more in my case) on services just booting to the desktop.

Consistent, unremarkable behavior tends to be considered a feature that most OSes strive for in new and improved versions.

People always say that, but never explain "how it's a mess".
This currently being written from XP x64, I've never seen what all of the fuss is about.

The only thing (generically speaking) that it seems to lack vs. Vista as far as an Actual Problem, is direct support for various AHCI drivers, so assuming you CAN install it (not that hard to figure out), it's hard to see how it could be considered 'a mess' otherwise, given that everything works, everything's compatible aside from a few (rare) outliers.

If you put middle aged women who constantly attend social functions in a padded cell, I bet they'd have 'withdrawl' too.

People crave interaction and attention. The internet can merely serve as a bridge to that for some people.

Some people of course take it rather far (constantly checking faceyspacey even when nothing happens), but the 'media' always links using any computer with 'internet addition' nowadays.

Grandmothers. Grandpas. Aunts. Uncles. The people who aren't close enough to you to care, and not with-it enough to do robust things like check, credit transfer, or god-forbid, an actual thoughtful gift. ^^;

Given the mention of PC...there's a good reason why it's #86 on PC (4 times lower than San Adreas), instead of #1.

The PC port was just unjustifiably buggy and lame, with Rockstar withholding fixes for months at a time.

Given that it's based on critic (not popular) review, you could even say that the 86 position is too damn good for it, especially since USERS give it a mere 4.6/10. http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/grandtheftauto4
  That, is a freaking trainwreck, especially given that it used particularly invasive form of SecuROM DRM which was the principle reason generally agreed upon (perhaps wayback has archives of the GTA4 forums just after release) for it performing so slow. http://www.pcgamefuntime.com/2008/12/grand-theft-auto-iv-drm-debacle/

You could throw a monster machine at it, and get 14-20FPS, even on low detail and low resolution.

If you point to how well received console versions were when somebody references the PC port, you clearly don't know what the hell you're talking about.

A decline in usage of IE6 doesn't mean XP is used any less, given that IE8 is available for XP as well.

Even according to the CLAIMED numbers, IE8 rose by 1.5%, Chrome rose 1%, and others mostly remained unchanged.

That would make IE8 the fastest growing browser, not Chrome. And a small increase on a web browser that nominally has 5%, tends to be within the realm of statistical noise, especially when all of the major browsers/OSes besides IE/Windows have seen fairly random multi-percent gains and drops over the last few years, with occasional hiccups in samples that seemed to mean something, but never panned out as a long term trend. And before somebody chimes in, it's a fixed "pot" of 100%. A growth of 1% on that scale is absolute, regardless of how much percentage you already have. 1.5% always means faster growth, even if you already have a high percentage.

This is a single snapshot, and one that's being mixed in with grease to turn the wheels. The numbers and claims are basically meaningless, and are the sort of "OMG!" story that turn up on reddit at least once a month.

There are even a few flubs, like saying that Firefox 3.6 was released mid-December, and they don't appear to include "IE8 compatibility mode" as part of IE8's numbers, despite it being the same browser, despite hitslink, what they're basing all of the data on, considering them different versions.

Chrome 4.0 and Firefox 3.6, released nearly the same time, both have very similar market share. 1.16% and 1.07%, respectively, which is impressive for new versions not even a week old.

On the non-version-specific list, IE has 62%, FF 24%, Chrome 5%, Safari 4%. As far as FF "declining", there just isn't that much room to grow if you can't wrestle it away from people who use Internet Explorer. Hitslinks' own TREND charts point out that FF has grown from 23% from March 2009 to 24% now. Hardly the loss these PC Magazine goons are pointing at now. Only IE suffered a meaningful loss, 68% to 62%, which is where all of the gains of EVERY other browser are coming out of.

Somehow, I think the real loser here is the integrity of tech journalism.

That sounds an awful lot like that old thing people haven't talked about since the 1990s...you know, a RENTAL. o.o

Given that he apparently believes that Earthquakes are the work of the devil...somehow, I don't see Pat Robertson advocating for proper physics education.
Also, who the HELL watches MTV anymore? Seriously. I don't even think MTV4 still plays music videos (I remember when MTV2 had music videos! Gosh...and apparently I'm too young to've ever paid attention when MTV itself had music videos), and even VH1 stopped some years ago.
Then again, I don't even know anyone who watches TV anymore, since the quality and level of intelligence displayed is so very...'lowest common denominator'.

If you're accusing an entire nation of 'sitting around all day watching MTV', you might just be projecting -a bit-.

That's why generally the extensions get approved after proving themselves stable/useful/coherent to the spec by the OpenGL ARB...and then still aren't supported by ATI.

ATI's OpenGL support has infamously been bad since the beginning, when I was getting backported support for OpenGL 1.5 on my Geforce 256, and it beat the Radeon 32DDR in support, stability, and driver support.

If Nvidia is the only one really putting backing force behind OpenGL (due to XGI's acquisition and S3's backing out of desktop graphics), that isn't the fault of the Khronous group, the ARB, the specification, or Nvidia. People always blame the predominant company if its competitors have simply made business decisions that made business analysts turn purple in confusion.

OpenGL 3.0 might have watered itself down to appease CAD, but all of the hooplah is largely years old, and irrelevant. It's also apparently largely ignored that 3.1 and 3.2 have been out for quite a while, and largely improved against 3.0 (and that Nvidia supported it rather quickly).

If you're still bitching about OpenGL 3.0 as an excuse, you're obviously in the DirectX-banner-waving-camp to begin with.

When it comes down to -my- personal opinion, for clarity, I think OpenGL is less obfuscated, and better focused (on graphics). The perk that you get software updates per-version, and don't require an entirely new revision of hardware in general to fully support new minor versions and major updates to functionality, API, and performance, is also something that rarely (if ever) happens with DirectX.
Basically everything you need 'for OpenGL' is also supplied with the driver directly. How many people always complain in forums and troubleshooting tickets that "OMG, I haven't updated DirectX on this fresh install, how come it's not the latest version of special hack-on DLL that this game from 4 years ago needs, but is largely the same as all others??".

It's not officially supported, because it's a hacked implementation from the "Alky Project", and I doubt even the final source code they released after going under and not being able to stay funded.

It's not real DirectX 10. No hardware acceleration, just an API wrapper from an incomplete project that couldn't get funding, which noone has continued (despite source being out there). It doesn't work with most games, and can cause severe stability problems.

DirectX 10/11 for XP will not be possible unless Microsoft releases a service pack enabling WDDM drivers, which they've stated repeatedly they will not, will never do.

SeaMonkey (2.0) is based on the same components as Firefox (3.5), but the UI response is normal because it's extended from the original Mozilla Suite. Firefox, since its inception, has had single-thread, single-engine-for-entire-browser JS engine, which the UI (written in XUL) also uses. That typically leads to crap response, hanging if something doesn't expect that to happen.

SeaMonkey doesn't have that limitation. It doesn't have a 'faster JS engine' than FF (though Opera's is much slower), but responds much snappier, never 'hangs' if you have some JS taking up a lot of CPU time. It also generally uses less memory per-tab than FF, sadly enough, while being compatible with the most popular extensions (and there being extensions on addons.mozilla.com and xsidebar site making it act just like FF).

As perhaps the one caveat, though, certain Microsoft software (virtualearth/bing maps) refuse to recognize it or that it can handle SVG, throws a silent exception for which it -silently- mangles certain sites that use its service for mapping basic addresses and forms (cough, Pizza Hut, cough).