"It's just pointing out that there is a difference between accepting help for a difficult struggle and letting someone else do most of the fighting."
When did the French let someone else do the fighting? The French resistance, risking their lives - many were slaughtered down, was monumental in providing the allied forces with details on German positions and movement, especially before D-day. Without help from the French, D-day might not have been a success.
The French also took heavy civilian casualties when the allied bombed French cities. Despite having been killed in the thousands by allied bombers, the French people greeted the allies with flowers, smiles and kisses.
To claim that the French waited for someone else to storm the beaches, that they let someone else do the fighting, is misguided at best, but closer to insulting and ignorant of the incredible sacrifices made by all countries during WWII, including the French.
The US lost about three thousand soldiers when storming the beaches in an operation where several countries were involved, IIRC. Soldiers who were sent in by their leaders, who knew well that it would be a slaughter house. These soldiers knew that they probably wouldn't make it back. The French, on the other hand, lost several thousand civilians - innocent people who were not soldiers, who were not trained to fight, who were not there to die. They were simply innocent civilians, including women and children. Entire families were wiped out.
Just because France was taken and there was no French army there doesn't mean that the French didn't fight.
The bottom line is that all countries made great sacrifices, and the allied worked together to defeat Germany. The US troops who lost their lives on D-day will never be forgotten by the French, or by anyone else for that matter. But the fact that the sacrifices made by other countries, French civilians in particular, are played down by people such as yourselves, is an insult not only to the French who gave their lives, and their families, but to the brave US, British, Canadian, etc. troops who gave their lives to rid the world of Hitler.
You are not a true American. You are a self-centered couch American who is proud of yourself for the sacrifice of others, yet you do not recognize the sacrifices of those who do not belong to your country.
We all owe each other something, but that's not the point. The point is that the silly jokes about French cowardice are getting tiring. The French resistance, for example, known for the excellent work it did and the dangers it exposed itself to. And France took heavy losses, especially during WW1. Try mounting a defense with large parts of the male population simply missing. And then throw them into another war, just to lose even more of your country's men.
The French didn't even complain after allied raids during WW2 killed thousands of civilians. They realized that they had to endure, that they had to keep up the fight, and that losses were inevitable. They didn't hate the allied forces for killing thousands of civilians either, but showed them incredible gratitude.
France was (un)fortunate enough to be the stage of the main invasion of Europe, made by not only US forces, but with help from many European countries. You think the US was the only country which took casualties? Think again. (By the way, one of the reasons why the US took heavy casualties on Omaha beach was that they lost many tanks at sea - they deployed them too early, before they were close enough to the shore for the floating tanks to reach it. Had the US command waited as it should have, they would have had an easier time, and would be able to clear mines, barb wire and blow up German strong points without too heavy losses. That is not to say that the US troops didn't fight bravely - they did. They did an excellent job, and their sacrifice will be remembered.)
Had the allies allowed Hitler to gain an even stronger foothold, the US would have been doomed, and the US knew that. So, the invasion was necessary for its survival. Don't try to give me that "we didn't do it to help ourselves" crap, because it's a tired old lie.
Why is the parent post a troll? Does the moderator assume that if Google enters the IM market, it will be out of the kindness of their hearts?:)
Google wants to make money, and they'll figure out a way to make money off IM if they decide to launch an IM service. Gmail uses text ads based on the content of your mail. Why couldn't it use text ads based on IM conversations? A Web based IM client (which would be neat, because everyone has a Web browser anyway) could easily do this.
Google might even merge Gmail and GM (Google Messaging), and let you archive your conversation in the same way you archive your mail, and they can serve ads based on that, too.
In fact, IM, e-mail and newsgroups are very similar - they are all forms of messaging/communication. You could use one interface and merge everything into an über messaging service, which would probably include Google Groups 2 or a later GG (Google Groups) version adapted for this purpose.
In fact, they could probably make everything look like it's the same thing (which it would be, really), and just let the user decide whether he wants to talk to one person or a group of people. If the person on the other end happens to be available right there and then, you would have realtime discussions (IM). If not, you'd probably get a message from him/her later (mail). Or you would get messages from groups of people (newsgroups/Google Groups 2).
Come to think of it, I think it is just a matter of time before something like this happens...
There are, say, 100 spammers. And 100 THOUSAND Slashdotters. Do the maths.
And I know for a fact that a few Slashdot readers are big, strong, and not exactly afraid of a fight. And they have big friends. I know this because a lot of people I know read Slashdot, at least every now and then, and they range from skinny nerds to huge body builder/street fighting dudes with connections beyond the law, if you know what I mean.
The "average" slashdotter you speak of is a quiet nerd who probably doesn't even think violence is the answer. The people who would do the spammer bashing are testosterone-filled people who thrive on hatred, and would love to punch the living daylights out of a spammer. If they all look like Ralsky, I know plenty of Slashdot readers that could take on five to ten spammers at a time.
Obviously it will never be perfect. Though, with the developer resources available to Microsoft, MSIE should actually be the most standards compliant browser ever. But they simply don't care. People want them to care and at least get the basics right. Why do they leave their CSS box model completely broken when it's obvious what needs fixing?
Just because no browser is bug free and there are tiny problems here and there with their standards support doesn't mean that Microsoft can at least try to be on the same level as the competition. We're not exactly talking about a tiny group of hackers coding away in their parents' garage here. It's Microsoft, with developer resources coming out of their ears.
So Microsoft should stop being asses and asking people to be "specific", because people have been very specific about what's broken for years now. They should start fixing it.
Dave Massy is either ignorant, incompetent and/or lazy, or he is completely evil and throws lies straight in our face. When he says that "the Internet Explorer team does exist and does care", does the fact that he hasn't even seen the many specific complaints about IE's standards support out there show that he is an incompetent fool, or is he a liar and just trying to blow off criticism with lame dodging attempts?
I don't know which is worse, but this guy is in a management position, and he's either a liar or incompetent. Sure gives me a lot of confidence is IE's further development! Oh yeah...
If you are claiming that Slashdot only cares about free as in beer, then your comment is even more silly. Did you know that the FSF encourages people to charge for software? That's right. The "free" part is about open-source, ot cost.
And if you did talk about free as in beer, as it seems like, strangely enough, did it ever occur to you that games cost money?
Never mind, I'm just likely to get another knee-jerk reaction from you anyway, seeing as you don't understand this...:)
"The slashdot crew will start caring about opera releases when it's truelly free and not add supported."
What does closed source have to do with anything? Doesn't Slashdot cover Apple stories? Games? Heck, what does anime have to do with software, open-source or closed-source (for example)?
Clearly, this has got nothing to do with open vs. closed source. Except Slashdot seems to be worried that closed-source Opera could be superior to their open-source Firefox, and therefore refuses to give it as much coverage. Oh well.
Also, ads are a problem? Have you never seen the ads on Slashdot?
What does closed source have to do with anything? Doesn't Slashdot cover Apple stories? Games? Heck, what does anime have to do with software, open-source or closed-source (for example)?
Clearly, this has got nothing to do with open vs. closed source. Except Slashdot seems to be worried that closed-source Opera could be superior to their open-source Firefox, and therefore refuses to give it as much coverage. Oh well.
"I'm not saying that whatever free browser replaces Opera will necessarily be based on Moz. Just that one will eventually emerge because everyone would win out that way."
One will eventually emerge? And how does this mean that Opera is "doomed"? In case you didn't notice, closed-source software is alive and well, and won't go away any time soon. Maybe if all closed-source companies die, Opera will die or go open-source too, but we are talking about a company which has been around for nearly ten years. Opera is not going to lose to some lame hobbyist open-source browser.
Because IE is bundled with Windows. Other bundles are unlikely to matter, because only Windows relies on user ignorance to keep its market share. Someone who chooses an alternative OS is likely to already know about various alternative browsers as well, considering how extremely important a browser is when you want to get on the Internet.
Also note that Google is a US site. As I said, Opera seems to have a higher market share outside the US.
In case you didn't notice, Minimo is far from ready for production use, and Opera's far below the projected minimum requirements for Minimo (which Minimo might be able to do some time in the future).
And Nokia is not Opera's biggest market. It is not the only mobile vendor out there!
It happens to be quite big in Europe, but its market share is falling rapidly, and Asia is a huge market as well, where Nokia is not currently very strong in. And of course, there's the US. And Opera/Nokia has stated that, Opera will continue to work closely with Nokia, and Nokia's donations to Mozilla has been known for a long time anyway.
Why the press is blowing this up now is beyond me. It is not exactly news.
And of course: This doesn't mean that Nokia will ditch other projects at all! They are working on their own browser in addition to working closely with Opera, and contributing with funding to Minimo. They are covering all their bases. If you think they are going to go only for Minimo, then you are rather naive. Why would they even bother to work on their own internal browser then? (A browser which, by the way, is already included on their current line of phones.)
And again, Minimo is far from ready for production use. Opera is, and its usage is increasing rapidly.
You are also forgetting that Opera is already becoming a household name on mobiles, which means that it is turning into a well known and popular brand. Nokia recently ran ads bragging about how they had Opera on their phones!
And with a household name comes more publicity. Opera has money to spend on advertising and aggressive marketing. Mozilla is an organization, and does not have that kind of monetary power.
Opera currently provides a superior alternative from a technological stand point, and with this they can build a strong brand name, and thereby build trust and consumer demand.
But seriously, your comment about Opera's biggest market (Nokia is not their biggest market) just getting "ripped away from them" just shows that you don't know what you are talking about.
Oh yeah, and Opera on the desktop is actually more widely used than Firefox in Europe - at least in Eastern European countries such as Poland and Russia. Huge, untapped markets. Firefox might be more widely used in the US, but then again, Mozilla is primarily a US organization.
And finally, ditch the silly eCS line of arguments. What matters here is not that you are bundled with some obscure operating system, but that there is demand for an alternative, and there is. Linux users usually get lots of different browsers with their distribution, yet many of them download Opera!
Please dude, at least get informed before you make silly comments like the above, OK?:)
Firefox is a different philosophy: Let the user figure everything out and wade through hundreds of extensions. Opera is convenience - everything right there when you install it.
Firefox won't "take over", because that would mean killing Opera, and that won't happen, as long as people like me prefer things to work out of the box instead of having to mess around with buggy extensions to get things done.
Nokia wants to keep different options open. They have Opera, which they will continue to work with, they have their own browser, and they have Minimo. It's a business move. They aren't putting all their cards on one horse.
It's not like Minimo will be the only browser used. After all, Opera is considerably smaller and faster.
You aren't getting modded up, thankfully, because you are jumping to conclusions and forgetting that Opera is under active development. Even if something is free as in beer to begin with, it takes time and money to do something sensible with it. Mozilla will never be as small and fast as Opera, obviusly. Opera was written from the ground up with size and speed in mind. Mozilla is a development platform.
So Opera will continue to be smaller and more efficient, even in the future, and on embedded devices, this does matter, a lot. And it might even be cheaper to buy a product from Opera than implementing it yourself with something like Mozilla.
The point here is that this is nothing but competition. It is expected, and it's not a disaster for Opera. There are still plenty of reasons to choose Opera. Remember, it's building itself a strong brand name. And people do pay for strong brands.
Except both Opera and Mozilla will need to support more things in the future, maybe things like SVG, which is potentially huge. So even if you have more powerful hardware, you will need small and tight programs, because they need to support a lot of things.
And claiming that Mozilla is "completely free" is not exactly the case. It will cost money to integrate Mozilla into an embedded device. Maybe it will be the least expensive in some cases, but maybe in other cases, they want a commercial product and a company which tailors their product specifically to fit your device.
Money talks, and if Opera can deliver a smaller, more efficient application at comparable prices to Nokia implementing an open-source application themselves, then Opera might just be the browser of choice.
It comes as no suprise since Nokia's strategy has clearly been one of standardization.
And what better way to standardized than to support an open source project?"
Sorry to burst your bubble, but Nokia's partnership with Opera continues, and they are working on their own browser in addition to this. This is not about standardization or kindness of heart. It's about covering all bases, to have something to fall back on.
I'm sorry, but your arguments are flawed, and so is your logic.
Do you really think Firefox is popular because it's bundled with an OS hardly any end-users use?
Also, Opera is not available for only one Nokia phone. It's available for Symbian Series 60 phones, and there are more than one Nokia phone based on that, as well as phones by other manufacturers.
Your list of "bundles and browsers" is basically seriously flawed, and your entire post falls apart. Firefox does not rely on eComStation to survive, and Opera does not rely only on Nokia.
So 7.51 being one of the last Opera versions unless it gets on eComStation(!) is pure nonsense and wishful thinking on your part. Why would Opera go away when its user base is growing and they are making more and more money?
Your post sounds a lot like a karma whorish post with some vague points that make sense unless you know a lot about this, in which case, it just sounds like nonsense.
Unfortunately, you managed to fool a few moderators...
Godwin's Law is just a "social experiment". Or to be more precise, he never said anything about the discussion ending when nazis or Hitler was mentioned. He just stated that the longer a discussion is, the more likely it is to mention these things.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but some people actually like innovative browsers that give you a many useful feature integrated into a tiny package.
Firefox is fine as a bare-bones browser, but it doesn't have M2, Notes, and all the browser features that Opera introduced and Firefox extension makers tried to copy.
You can download extensions, but it isn't quite the same thing. A lot of people just want something which works, and which works conveniently. And extensions can be buggy, and they are created by different people with different goals, whereas Opera is developed as one solutions, where all features work seamlessly together.
So for a lot of people, Opera is "actually pleasant to use", and the default 7.50 interface is not cluttered. Naturally, you have more buttons, but the panel selector on the left is very convenient, and gives you access to power features that you would have to spend quite some time downloading extensions for in Firefox. And they often don't work quite as well, especially together.
Firefox is nice in its simplicity, and it is nice for geeks to download the extensions they need, because they already know which ones are good and which ones are crap. But for most people, Opera might be the way to go. A full Internet suite with a groundbreaking e-mail client in a 3MB package? Yes please!
And yeah, Opera is usually the program which does the groundbreaking stuff first. Only now are other e-mail clients catching up on the "virtual folders instead of normal folders" thing. Unfortunately, they can't quite manage to get it right.
That's right. When MS was caught with their pants down, they started coming up with lame excuses - lies - like "Opera does not support XHTML", and similar nonsense.
Opera is clearly not "the evil corporation" here. That you claim otherwise just proves that you haven't even taken the time to inform yourself of the facts before posting about the subject.
1. They didn't try to support a beta version of Opera. The IE style sheet works perfectly in all versions of Opera, but they deliberately sent broken code to Opera instead.
2. Conspiracy or not, MSN.com was broken several times, and it was using browser sniffing to single out Opera. Recently, the same happened to MSNBC.com. Add to this Microsoft's lies to the press about Opera, and you get a pretty accurate picture of the situation...
3. The founders of the company still own the controlling shares.
5. (Skipping 4.) The shares are only available for purchase in Norway, on the Oslo Stock Exchange. Microsoft is a US company, a foreign company.
"Would we as consumers even have any way to know if some MS VPs purchased large chunks of Opera stock, say, a week or two before the settlement?"
You talk about conspiracies, but your conspiracy theory is the most ridiculous yet.
Hah. It is obvious that you haven't read all articles about this thing. The same day this was announced, an Opera exec was interviewed about it, and he mentioned how they would be celebrating this:
A single piece of ice cream for each employee.
So I don't think you have to worry too much about the company wasting the money:^)
Slashdot Mirror
Most likely, your site does not take this into account, so Opera use is likely higher.
The French also took heavy civilian casualties when the allied bombed French cities. Despite having been killed in the thousands by allied bombers, the French people greeted the allies with flowers, smiles and kisses.
To claim that the French waited for someone else to storm the beaches, that they let someone else do the fighting, is misguided at best, but closer to insulting and ignorant of the incredible sacrifices made by all countries during WWII, including the French.
The US lost about three thousand soldiers when storming the beaches in an operation where several countries were involved, IIRC. Soldiers who were sent in by their leaders, who knew well that it would be a slaughter house. These soldiers knew that they probably wouldn't make it back. The French, on the other hand, lost several thousand civilians - innocent people who were not soldiers, who were not trained to fight, who were not there to die. They were simply innocent civilians, including women and children. Entire families were wiped out.
Just because France was taken and there was no French army there doesn't mean that the French didn't fight.
The bottom line is that all countries made great sacrifices, and the allied worked together to defeat Germany. The US troops who lost their lives on D-day will never be forgotten by the French, or by anyone else for that matter. But the fact that the sacrifices made by other countries, French civilians in particular, are played down by people such as yourselves, is an insult not only to the French who gave their lives, and their families, but to the brave US, British, Canadian, etc. troops who gave their lives to rid the world of Hitler.
You are not a true American. You are a self-centered couch American who is proud of yourself for the sacrifice of others, yet you do not recognize the sacrifices of those who do not belong to your country.
Shame on you.
The French didn't even complain after allied raids during WW2 killed thousands of civilians. They realized that they had to endure, that they had to keep up the fight, and that losses were inevitable. They didn't hate the allied forces for killing thousands of civilians either, but showed them incredible gratitude.
France was (un)fortunate enough to be the stage of the main invasion of Europe, made by not only US forces, but with help from many European countries. You think the US was the only country which took casualties? Think again. (By the way, one of the reasons why the US took heavy casualties on Omaha beach was that they lost many tanks at sea - they deployed them too early, before they were close enough to the shore for the floating tanks to reach it. Had the US command waited as it should have, they would have had an easier time, and would be able to clear mines, barb wire and blow up German strong points without too heavy losses. That is not to say that the US troops didn't fight bravely - they did. They did an excellent job, and their sacrifice will be remembered.)
Had the allies allowed Hitler to gain an even stronger foothold, the US would have been doomed, and the US knew that. So, the invasion was necessary for its survival. Don't try to give me that "we didn't do it to help ourselves" crap, because it's a tired old lie.
Any URLs you could share with us on the matter?
Google wants to make money, and they'll figure out a way to make money off IM if they decide to launch an IM service. Gmail uses text ads based on the content of your mail. Why couldn't it use text ads based on IM conversations? A Web based IM client (which would be neat, because everyone has a Web browser anyway) could easily do this.
Google might even merge Gmail and GM (Google Messaging), and let you archive your conversation in the same way you archive your mail, and they can serve ads based on that, too.
In fact, IM, e-mail and newsgroups are very similar - they are all forms of messaging/communication. You could use one interface and merge everything into an über messaging service, which would probably include Google Groups 2 or a later GG (Google Groups) version adapted for this purpose.
In fact, they could probably make everything look like it's the same thing (which it would be, really), and just let the user decide whether he wants to talk to one person or a group of people. If the person on the other end happens to be available right there and then, you would have realtime discussions (IM). If not, you'd probably get a message from him/her later (mail). Or you would get messages from groups of people (newsgroups/Google Groups 2).
Come to think of it, I think it is just a matter of time before something like this happens...
There are, say, 100 spammers. And 100 THOUSAND Slashdotters. Do the maths.
And I know for a fact that a few Slashdot readers are big, strong, and not exactly afraid of a fight. And they have big friends. I know this because a lot of people I know read Slashdot, at least every now and then, and they range from skinny nerds to huge body builder/street fighting dudes with connections beyond the law, if you know what I mean.
The "average" slashdotter you speak of is a quiet nerd who probably doesn't even think violence is the answer. The people who would do the spammer bashing are testosterone-filled people who thrive on hatred, and would love to punch the living daylights out of a spammer. If they all look like Ralsky, I know plenty of Slashdot readers that could take on five to ten spammers at a time.
Obviously it will never be perfect. Though, with the developer resources available to Microsoft, MSIE should actually be the most standards compliant browser ever. But they simply don't care. People want them to care and at least get the basics right. Why do they leave their CSS box model completely broken when it's obvious what needs fixing?
Just because no browser is bug free and there are tiny problems here and there with their standards support doesn't mean that Microsoft can at least try to be on the same level as the competition. We're not exactly talking about a tiny group of hackers coding away in their parents' garage here. It's Microsoft, with developer resources coming out of their ears.
So Microsoft should stop being asses and asking people to be "specific", because people have been very specific about what's broken for years now. They should start fixing it.
Dave Massy is either ignorant, incompetent and/or lazy, or he is completely evil and throws lies straight in our face. When he says that "the Internet Explorer team does exist and does care", does the fact that he hasn't even seen the many specific complaints about IE's standards support out there show that he is an incompetent fool, or is he a liar and just trying to blow off criticism with lame dodging attempts?
I don't know which is worse, but this guy is in a management position, and he's either a liar or incompetent. Sure gives me a lot of confidence is IE's further development! Oh yeah...
What people want is that Microsoft would fix what's already there. Why have they left their CSS implementation broken for so long?
Sure, no browser is 100% bug free, but they could at least get the basics right, such as the CSS box model.
If you are claiming that Slashdot only cares about free as in beer, then your comment is even more silly. Did you know that the FSF encourages people to charge for software? That's right. The "free" part is about open-source, ot cost.
And if you did talk about free as in beer, as it seems like, strangely enough, did it ever occur to you that games cost money?
Never mind, I'm just likely to get another knee-jerk reaction from you anyway, seeing as you don't understand this... :)
Clearly, this has got nothing to do with open vs. closed source. Except Slashdot seems to be worried that closed-source Opera could be superior to their open-source Firefox, and therefore refuses to give it as much coverage. Oh well.
Also, ads are a problem? Have you never seen the ads on Slashdot?
Clearly, this has got nothing to do with open vs. closed source. Except Slashdot seems to be worried that closed-source Opera could be superior to their open-source Firefox, and therefore refuses to give it as much coverage. Oh well.
Also note that Google is a US site. As I said, Opera seems to have a higher market share outside the US.
In case you didn't notice, Minimo is far from ready for production use, and Opera's far below the projected minimum requirements for Minimo (which Minimo might be able to do some time in the future).
And Nokia is not Opera's biggest market. It is not the only mobile vendor out there!
It happens to be quite big in Europe, but its market share is falling rapidly, and Asia is a huge market as well, where Nokia is not currently very strong in. And of course, there's the US. And Opera/Nokia has stated that, Opera will continue to work closely with Nokia, and Nokia's donations to Mozilla has been known for a long time anyway.
Why the press is blowing this up now is beyond me. It is not exactly news.
And of course: This doesn't mean that Nokia will ditch other projects at all! They are working on their own browser in addition to working closely with Opera, and contributing with funding to Minimo. They are covering all their bases. If you think they are going to go only for Minimo, then you are rather naive. Why would they even bother to work on their own internal browser then? (A browser which, by the way, is already included on their current line of phones.)
And again, Minimo is far from ready for production use. Opera is, and its usage is increasing rapidly.
You are also forgetting that Opera is already becoming a household name on mobiles, which means that it is turning into a well known and popular brand. Nokia recently ran ads bragging about how they had Opera on their phones!
And with a household name comes more publicity. Opera has money to spend on advertising and aggressive marketing. Mozilla is an organization, and does not have that kind of monetary power.
Opera currently provides a superior alternative from a technological stand point, and with this they can build a strong brand name, and thereby build trust and consumer demand.
But seriously, your comment about Opera's biggest market (Nokia is not their biggest market) just getting "ripped away from them" just shows that you don't know what you are talking about.
Oh yeah, and Opera on the desktop is actually more widely used than Firefox in Europe - at least in Eastern European countries such as Poland and Russia. Huge, untapped markets. Firefox might be more widely used in the US, but then again, Mozilla is primarily a US organization.
And finally, ditch the silly eCS line of arguments. What matters here is not that you are bundled with some obscure operating system, but that there is demand for an alternative, and there is. Linux users usually get lots of different browsers with their distribution, yet many of them download Opera!
Please dude, at least get informed before you make silly comments like the above, OK? :)
Firefox won't "take over", because that would mean killing Opera, and that won't happen, as long as people like me prefer things to work out of the box instead of having to mess around with buggy extensions to get things done.
It's not like Minimo will be the only browser used. After all, Opera is considerably smaller and faster.
So Opera will continue to be smaller and more efficient, even in the future, and on embedded devices, this does matter, a lot. And it might even be cheaper to buy a product from Opera than implementing it yourself with something like Mozilla.
The point here is that this is nothing but competition. It is expected, and it's not a disaster for Opera. There are still plenty of reasons to choose Opera. Remember, it's building itself a strong brand name. And people do pay for strong brands.
And claiming that Mozilla is "completely free" is not exactly the case. It will cost money to integrate Mozilla into an embedded device. Maybe it will be the least expensive in some cases, but maybe in other cases, they want a commercial product and a company which tailors their product specifically to fit your device.
Money talks, and if Opera can deliver a smaller, more efficient application at comparable prices to Nokia implementing an open-source application themselves, then Opera might just be the browser of choice.
Do you really think Firefox is popular because it's bundled with an OS hardly any end-users use?
Also, Opera is not available for only one Nokia phone. It's available for Symbian Series 60 phones, and there are more than one Nokia phone based on that, as well as phones by other manufacturers.
Your list of "bundles and browsers" is basically seriously flawed, and your entire post falls apart. Firefox does not rely on eComStation to survive, and Opera does not rely only on Nokia.
So 7.51 being one of the last Opera versions unless it gets on eComStation(!) is pure nonsense and wishful thinking on your part. Why would Opera go away when its user base is growing and they are making more and more money?
Your post sounds a lot like a karma whorish post with some vague points that make sense unless you know a lot about this, in which case, it just sounds like nonsense.
Unfortunately, you managed to fool a few moderators...
Godwin's Law is just a "social experiment". Or to be more precise, he never said anything about the discussion ending when nazis or Hitler was mentioned. He just stated that the longer a discussion is, the more likely it is to mention these things.
Firefox is fine as a bare-bones browser, but it doesn't have M2, Notes, and all the browser features that Opera introduced and Firefox extension makers tried to copy.
You can download extensions, but it isn't quite the same thing. A lot of people just want something which works, and which works conveniently. And extensions can be buggy, and they are created by different people with different goals, whereas Opera is developed as one solutions, where all features work seamlessly together.
So for a lot of people, Opera is "actually pleasant to use", and the default 7.50 interface is not cluttered. Naturally, you have more buttons, but the panel selector on the left is very convenient, and gives you access to power features that you would have to spend quite some time downloading extensions for in Firefox. And they often don't work quite as well, especially together.
Firefox is nice in its simplicity, and it is nice for geeks to download the extensions they need, because they already know which ones are good and which ones are crap. But for most people, Opera might be the way to go. A full Internet suite with a groundbreaking e-mail client in a 3MB package? Yes please!
And yeah, Opera is usually the program which does the groundbreaking stuff first. Only now are other e-mail clients catching up on the "virtual folders instead of normal folders" thing. Unfortunately, they can't quite manage to get it right.
That's right. When MS was caught with their pants down, they started coming up with lame excuses - lies - like "Opera does not support XHTML", and similar nonsense.
Opera is clearly not "the evil corporation" here. That you claim otherwise just proves that you haven't even taken the time to inform yourself of the facts before posting about the subject.
2. Conspiracy or not, MSN.com was broken several times, and it was using browser sniffing to single out Opera. Recently, the same happened to MSNBC.com. Add to this Microsoft's lies to the press about Opera, and you get a pretty accurate picture of the situation...
3. The founders of the company still own the controlling shares.
5. (Skipping 4.) The shares are only available for purchase in Norway, on the Oslo Stock Exchange. Microsoft is a US company, a foreign company.
You talk about conspiracies, but your conspiracy theory is the most ridiculous yet.A single piece of ice cream for each employee.
So I don't think you have to worry too much about the company wasting the money :^)