Indistinguishable from Jesse

Yesterday, Opera Software simultaneously released Opera 8.50 and made the ad-free version of the browser free of charge. Making the browser free should increase Opera's marketshare, forcing web site owners to take Opera more seriously.

Opera 8.50 also introduces Browser JavaScript, a set of compatibility hacks for a small number of web sites and popular scripts. Microsoft has used this strategy successfully for operating system upgrades, and it will be interesting to see how well it works for Opera. Like Firefox, Opera already has a quirks mode and encourages users to contact broken sites. One potential drawback of including Browser JavaScript is that web site owners might expect Opera to fix incompatibilities that they would otherwise fix themselves.

Opera users who liked the site-targeted Google ads should not continue using Opera 8.0x because it contains known security holes, but they are invited to switch to Firefox and install Adbar.

A high-level changelog for Opera 8.50 is available.

Mike Connor's cat is a natrual fuzz tester.

This letter was rubber-banded to my doorknob:

Dear Residents:

Thank you for your payment. We realize sometimes things can be over looked, however our records indicate that you have underpaid your account by $0.01. Please remit the amount due within 3 days in form of personal check(s) or money order(s).

[...]

Please feel free to contact me at  with any questions regarding your balance.
Your immediate attention to this matter is greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
[...]
Accounts Administrator

I went to the rental office, found the accounts administrator, and said "Apparently I owe you one cent. I don't know why, but here's a penny". He wouldn't take my penny; the payment had to be in the form of a check or money order. He looked at my account record and determined that I owned them a cent because when I first moved in, they made a rounding error and asked me for the wrong amount for my first (pro-rated) month's rent. He said they had to ask me to pay the cent I owed because of fair housing laws -- if they didn't ask me to pay the cent I owed, they couldn't ask other residents to pay money they owed.

I added a cent to my next month's rent check.