More Opera News, and Also Aliens

Before I get around to the new Opera release, there's something more pressing I need to talk about.

Martians!

Maybe. But kinda likely, possibly. The details are technical and boring, but still, friggin' Martians! I really hope conclusive evidence of life on Mars is found, and the sooner the better. There's the whole staggering development in the way we view life itself on a cosmic scale thing, but there's also the prospect of watching a very vocal group of American creationists squirm while trying to explain why there's nothing in the Bible about life on another planet. Little green men! Suck on that!

Anyway, yeah, Opera 8 has gone final. Since one or two Mozilla people have mentioned this as being a pretty important release, I figured I'd take a look. So far, I haven't seen any significant changes between Opera 8 final and the first Opera 8 beta, and I wasn't too thrilled with that. It's pretty and all, but I agree with Asa: the UI is just not intuitive at all, and there needs to be a free version without that goddamn ad banner. Take away features, make it nagware, whatever. Just drop those ads. And how hard is it to make the status bar active by default?