Oh the irony. The little browser I loved, supported for years, version after version, then ultimately gave up on after tiring of all the sites that wouldn't work with it (surrendering to Firefox, which for some odd reason got the user base in months that Opera couldn't get in years), gets bought by a service I cannot stand. Hell, Opera might as well be bought my the Redmond Beast.

Ah, there's someone still reading Slashdot who actually remembers this stuff, even used it. These young folks speak of the Zenith tuning fork remote as if it were a relic unearthed in an archaeological dig, and are as unaware of why we call it the "clicker" as they are wondering why we say "dial" the phone.

By 2050 disease and war will have reduced the global population to a fraction of what it is today, and whoever is left will not be wasting energy on heating and cooling McMansions and feeding oversized vehicles and toys. It won't be that we've managed to move to renewables on a scale that can keep up with the population, just that we've reduced the population to the point that renewable energy will have no problem keeping up with demand.

Exactly. Look at Opera v. Firefox. I hung in with Opera for years, version 1.x through 8.x, waiting for it to "take off," and for my bitching and moaning to sites that wouldn't work with it to finally pay off. Never happened. Along comes Firefox and, for a time, same story. But FFox, for whatever reason - some mention of an alternative browser in the mainstream press to "regular" people? - did take off. And it did seem like once it crossed that magic 1%, fewer and fewer sites were forcing me to launch the demon IE, or render pages with IE Tab (not an option when I'm running Linux).

Someday Red Hat is going to decide who they want to be. But until then, I'm keeping them out of my systems, and out of my portfolio.

Confusion is their middle name. If I had a buck for every time I asked someone over the phone to start Windows Explorer, and they started Internet Explorer instead....