Opera Software reinvents complete irrelevance | Hacker News Reader

Opera Software reinvents complete irrelevance

theregister.co.uk

51 pointstwampss24 comments

He makes fun of Opera for one of their applications not working. I then click on the link to the website of the company he is co-founder of and get a page telling me that "an error has occured". Oh the irony.

"When engineers can't write code that normal people want to use, they lick their wounds by writing code that other engineers might want to use. API designers like to pat themselves on the back for producing something for smart people only, but really that's just masked guilt for a failed career."

yes yes, failed companies like Microsoft, Mozilla, Adobe and autodesk take this approach too.

</sarcasm>

This is not a good way to write about other people work. And his US-centric comments about ASCII are offensive.

EDIT: I forgot the verb "are" in the last phrase.

> This is not a good way to write about other people work.

I found it to be a quite humorous rant.

> And his US-centric comments about ASCII are offensive.

Thats called sarcasm, an oft used technique when ranting.

I also have a fondness for old Denis Leary standup, so I may be pre-disposed to hyperbolic ranting.

In any case, I find most of his actual points to be insightful. Opera released a non-product product - an SDK for making apps rather than apps that are useful in their own right. They didn't take the time to fix some of the deep flaws with JavaScript (namely the runtime libraries), I haven't heard anyone talking about an advanced debugger, and they invented Yet Another Template Library. There are all sound criticisms, on top of which no one has suggested why having a server in your web browser is even a good idea.

Maybe the good parts are kept secret for those in the Opera fan club, but being that I'm not a member, the whole thing seems silly to me.

_I also have a fondness for old Denis Leary standup, so I may be pre-disposed to hyperbolic ranting._

Indeed. That was the IT version of "You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna get myself a 1957 Cadillac El Dorado convertible. HOT PINK! With whaleskin hubcaps, an all leather cow interior, and big brown baby seal eyes for headlights! YEAH! And I'm gonna drive that baby at 115 miles per hour gettin' one mile per gallon..."

You've never read theregister.com before, have you? This is an average article from them.

Offensive? They were too stupid to offend me. Just another troll.

I wouldn't read too much into his style. This is par for the course for The Register.

eg.

Street View solves Dutch mugging

Google in good deed shocker

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/19/street_view_mugging/

I usually like his writing, but that's the single most badly edited article I've ever read.

No humor, no snark, no satire, nothing. Just some cheap half-baked insults. Ted should rename his column "Fail and Me".

It actually pained me to read that, feels like he threw it together while riding a blind horse and rolling a cigarette, and I agree with the comment about his offensive ASCII quip - ironic, verging on the edge of nonsense.

He might be on ok writer if he'd stop using the hate, putdowns and verbal assaults as a crutch. That stuff gets old, though, and when it's the average, rather than an exception for some exceptionally bad piece of technology, it suffers from "inflation" - it loses its impact and becomes just more 'blah blah' on the internet.

This is why I still read el-reg. Underneath the satircal writing are some very strong points (most notably - why javascript? Why bother? and what a bad idea!) :D

Oh come on, the article might benefit from some editing, but it was at least a little funny and technically informative. Opera Unite isn't an innovation by any measure. Worse, it could be disastrous if it gains any traction: http://hankejh.com/2009/06/opera-environmental-disaster/

Am I the only one who thought it sounded like a good idea? It sounds like popular social web site features brought down to my local box. I'd much rather be in control of my own data.

It sounds like popular social web site features brought down to my local box.

The thing that is appealing about social web site features is the fact that everything occurs at central hubs. It's a gathering point, which enhances the experience for most people.

I'd much rather be in control of my own data.

Giving people control over their own data is a good idea in theory, but fracturing the community to do so will ensure that an idea like this would fail, especially when all it would take is for one of the big social networking sites to commit to you owning your own data.

I saw Opera Unite and I really have trouble seeing the benefits of it, especially when you consider the scaling issues with bandwidth and home connections. This is why we have servers - high availability and high bandwidth.

It sounds more like a marketing attempt than anything and its definitely not a new idea, especially when you see things like POW for firefox.

http://groups.google.com/group/firefoxpow

>The thing that is appealing about social web site features is the fact that everything occurs at central hubs.

Yes, that's why I use Yahoo rather than Facebook, I don't like the way that Facebook have multiple datacentres! If you have a site that's about you does the world really care if your "MyFaceSite" isn't viewable if you aren't online? Paying some cloud service to host your little vanity page 24x7 is like having a secretary to receive your email while you asleep.

> If you have a site that's about you does the world really care if your "MyFaceSite" isn't viewable if you aren't online?

Nope - but your friends do. And you've identified why Opera Unite will fail. Because you cant host your content in any worthwhile fashion w/o leaving a PC on 24/7. And if you host GB's of photo's your going to end up with huge bandwidth bills if you have 100 friends all taking a look...

Opera Unite is trying to apply an "always on service" to a "real-time only" model. Hmm.

> Yes, that's why I use Yahoo rather than Facebook, I don't like the way that Facebook have multiple datacentres!

Yahoo certainly has multiple datacenters and probably has more datacenters than Facebook.

Why do you care how many datacenters Facebook and Yahoo have?

It was a comment on the previous posters claim that certain social sites were popular because the data was stored centrally!

You don't care where the data is stored as long as there is a common address for it,.

+1 for "When engineers can't write code that normal people want to use, they lick their wounds by writing code that other engineers might want to use."

If one could leverage the P2P computing and network power of the whole user-base, you'd have something significant. The problem is doing that in a way which you can charge money for, or drive advertisement.

The writer's persona is a shtick, I wouldn't take it too seriously.

I don't. When I see his name in the byline, I close the tab, as it's almost always going to be some spittle-flecked rant about just how much someone else's work sucks.

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