KisenoSky on Opera

PCMedia, as always, announced the best freeware and hardware by the end of the year Opera and Mozilla Firefox seem to make a great competition. They are two of the bests!

It’s said that Mozilla Firefox has an effective pop-up blocker. Besides, this browser only needs 55 MB of our RAM to open 25 windows at once. Hmm… But in fact, my PC gets hang and the “Network Timeout” page appears if I open more than 15 windows. Well, maybe the problem is my PC or the internet connection, not the software.

The comment for Opera is not so good. Although the popularity is comparable to Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer, from the data in some sites, Mozilla Firefox has more users that Opera. I can see it… actually I myself use Opera to access my blog only. I prefer Mozilla Firefox for any download activity because if the download process is suddenly paused or stopped, it can be resumed without re-downloading the downloaded part of the file. While in Opera, it should be started from zero. But for the speed, Opera wins!

From the benchmark by PCMedia, Opera 9.6 shows a much better performance than the previous version, though. Don’t give up, Opera! Keep going forward! GANBATTE!


One thing that makes me so surprised is Maxthon 2.1.4.433, which also takes a place in Best Freeware 2008 as one of the best web browsers. The engine is based of IE’s. Wow, Internet Explorer works so slowly, eh? And I even never hear the name Maxthon before! Oops… According to PCMedia, this browser has a customable interface and tabbed browsing. It has other features like mouse gesture, privacy protection, AD Hunter, RSS hunter, etc. It doesn’t sounds so special. I’m not sure this browser can work well. But I think I should try it myself before judging.

Miff-Miff-san told me she went to the reunion of her elementary school few days ago. Most of her friends had changed. The hottest topic ever, as always, was the question, “Do you have Friendster?” One of her friends, I assumed her name is Sally, said that she had more than 1000 friends. Kind of odd… So Miff-Miff-san asked her, “How can you get a lot of friends?” Sally-san simply replied, “I added them, and they added me back.”

I got these questions:

1. What is the advantage of having too much friends?
   
   I myself is a choosy person. I prefer having few useful friends than too much useless friends. What I mean by “useful” is that I can talk with him/her in a good communication, that he/she can give me what I want. In this case, what I want is information that I need, related to my favorite topics. But I don’t mind having many friends to show that I’m kind and friendly.
   
   But having too much friends? What for? Pride? Popularity? With more than 1000 friends, the only possibility is that you can’t remember your friend one by one. The only well-remembered ones are just the ones who often have contacts with you. And the other? Sadly, they’re just a part of friends counter as page decoration to show your popularity. How poor…
   
   
2. How could Sally-san get so many friends?
   
   This is the most mysterious case. Sally-san added people and they added her back. For what reason they added her back easily? My earlier presumption is that they don’t care whoever they add. As long as they can looks cooler when they got more friends, why not? How fool… Browsing time can be used for more useful things, oh please…

Unfortunately, my presumption was totally wrong. But the real reason why Sally-san was added by so many people was apparently worse than I thought…

Miff-Miff-san and I was curious about why Sally-san had so many friends. Then one day we checked out her Friendster and what we found was satisfying enough. Sally-san’s photo on her profile was taken from above by using cellphone. She wore tank-top and I could see her bra. Crap! Of course, she got many friends. The guys add her because they liked seeing her bra! What stupid people…

I know now what’s the difference between friend-finder and blog. Friend-finder users judge you from the way you look. They will add or add back for these reasons:

• You are good looking.
  
• They want to get more friends for popularity and coolness.
  
• They’re just kind and friendly.
  

Ryan-sensei, my IT teacher, told me the same. And he never likes friend-finder.

But bloggers judge you from your knowledge and writing skill. And for me, that’s what make blog have a higher level than friend-finder. Because bloggers add or add back another bloggers for these reasons:

• You’re smart and your blog is cool.
  
• You have unique style in writing.
  
• They find something they need in your blog.
  
• They’re just kind and friendly.
  

And that's why I prefer blog than friend-finder. It's just more classy for me. But if you still look for girl/boyfriend in blog communities, then you aren’t a pro-blogger for me. It's not bad, but bye-bye…