7 ms·

As someone who owns a dumb flip phone, it's funny to read someone's enthusiastic account of their life-changing experience of... living exactly the way I do. B

by Gracana 12y ago

As someone who owns a dumb flip phone, it's funny to read someone's enthusiastic account of their life-changing experience of... living exactly the way I do. But on the other hand, I get it. This sort of thing (facebook, hacker news, freaking imgur) sucks up so much of my time (albeit on the desktop), and for what? Occasional interesting tidbits, and frequent annoyance and frustration? Some of it is straight-up bad for me, no way around it, but the amusing little bits keep pulling me back. imgur is the worst one for me... the community is unmoderated and uncoordinated, it's a pile of least-common-denominator bs that's as bad as anything on reddit ever was, and yet the only way I've been able to break away from it is to block myself from viewing it.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
ggreer 12y ago
A stripped-down smartphone has quite a few advantages over a dumbphone. Notice which apps are installed: Google Maps, subway maps, Rdio, Uber, Instacart. As he says, these things are like living in the future.
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  It's still really hard to get around the privacy invasions of a smartphone, though. I'd like something without GPS and for which I can completely control the OS and environment. CyanogenMod seems to be as close as I'm likely to get to that at present.
  - kissickas 12y ago
    Any phone's location can still be tracked by cell tower. From whom are you trying to get privacy?
    - dredmorbius 12y ago
      If the phone's off, that's going to be less useful. And the tower-tracking location granularity's much lower than GPS Though I don't know what the reporting intervals are. Some smartphones (or their apps) were reporting location data every 10 seconds, with accuracy measured within a few feet. Can't find that article at the moment, though another reports that location information is logged "at least several times an hour": http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748703983704576277101723453610 http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405274870398370... Here: "In a six-month period — from Aug 31, 2009, to Feb. 28, 2010, Deutsche Telekom had recorded and saved his longitude and latitude coordinates more than 35,000 times." http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/business/media/26privacy.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/business/media/26privacy.h... That's every 7.5 minutes. I only wish I knew who I was hiding from ;-)
      - kissickas 12y ago
        While it is obvious that turning off the phone helps, it's good that you make that point as I cannot remove the battery from my smartphone, a problem most "dumb" phones don't have.
        dredmorbius 12y ago
        I can (and occasionally do) remove the battery as well. One "feature" of the HTC Incredible (my earlier smartphone) is that the battery is also fairly accessible and can be removed if desired.
      - at-fates-hands 12y ago
        Except in certain situations when you're probably pretty lucky to have it on. I had a friend who ran off the side of a mountain in Colorado. He called 911, but had no idea where he was (he was from the Midwest). Within about 40 minutes, they had triangulated his location and had a tow truck and emergency vehicles routed to get him out. Without his phone and the ability to locate him, he was pretty sure he wouldn't have made.
        dredmorbius 12y ago
  - ghshephard 12y ago
    Richard Stallman, as usual, was quite ahead of the curve on this topic when he noted that he didn't carry a cell phone of any kind because of the privacy considerations associated with logging your location, accurately with triangulation, against cell towers. The instant you start using a cell phone consistently, you've effectively handed over a log of your location history to whoever can convince the sysadmin in your cellular carriers NOC to to give them the data. And that's a pretty big list.
    - dredmorbius 12y ago
      Quite and absolutely. The man has an outstanding record for predictions. I wish he weren't so good.
      - w1ntermute 12y ago
        And yet he continues to be mocked on sites like HN.
        pyre 12y ago
        Things that don't help: - When people want to point out that "Stallman predicted this X years ago," they phase it as, "Richard Stallman was right, as usual." Richard Stallman is not infallible. Overstating one's case doesn't win any new friends. - There are many of Stallman's "followers" that are very aggressive at promoting the GPLv3 over all other open source licenses. While this might not be Stallman's personal position on the matter, if definitely doesn't win many people over (and probably pushes many away). - Richard Stallman isn't necessarily the most lovable and charismatic figure. While people shouldn't factor that in to things when evaluating his message, they do.
        Angostura 12y ago
        When people take the phrase: " Stallman was right, as usual." and suggest that this is a claim of infallibility. Overstating one's case doesn't win any new friends. The claim is that on these issues Stallman is more usually right than wrong. Do you have anything that suggests otherwise?
  - halfcat 12y ago
    >It's still really hard to get around the privacy invasions of a smartphone, though. I'd like something without GPS... I have only ever wished for the opposite, an app/feature that will log my location, frequently. I don't particularly care if it's stored in the cloud, as long as it's also stored on something of mine in a portable format (CSV, etc). I am thinking of this in terms of potentially catastrophic events where proving my location at some given time would be incredibly helpful, say, when the spouse/boss/police need to know, and the stakes are risking my marriage/job/freedom. Even more helpful would be if the app integrated with the fingerprint reader, to help prove that not only was my phone at this location, but with very high probability, so was I. Why are people so interested in destroying this information about themselves? Is it "because freedom"? Or is there a real, practical threat that we open ourselves to when this information is out there? I am genuinely interested in knowing.
- collyw 12y ago
  Dumbphone plus a GPS device, mp3 player could so the same. I still prefer my Sansa clip to my phone for music (I never even set the phone up for music). Small, battery lasts a while, and I basically don't need to worry about it. I even put one through the washing machine and it worked after a couple of weeks. As a side note, I find my Android phone a serious step back in usability. I would say I hang up rather than answer close to 50% of the calls. Can't I just get a physical green answer button back, rather than stupid swipe gestures.
  - maccard 12y ago
    That's terribly awkward to carry around. Also, a GPS device doesn't tell me when my next bus is due (there's about 45 minutes between my buses). I also now only require one charger for my GPS and MP3 player. I can also look at cat pictures on the bus.
    - jarek 12y ago
      > I also now only require one charger for my GPS and MP3 player. microUSB?
      - maccard 12y ago
        Well, my MP3 player is my phone. No, it's a 30piin (iPhone 4S)
    - collyw 12y ago
      The point in the article was to remove as many apps as possible, particularly the cat picture ones.
  - w1ntermute 12y ago
    > I would say I hang up rather than answer close to 50% of the calls. Then you're an outlier. Through common sense, it should be obvious that the vast majority of people don't run into such problems, or it would be a much more widely talked about problem. Hell, people made a huge fuss about "antennagate" when it was really only encountered by a fraction of iPhone 4 users.
- lifeformed 12y ago
  Regarding maps: is there an app that lets you save out Google Map info offline? I'd like to be able to type in a city and have it save all the data. I was thinking of having my setup just be a dumbphone plus a wifi-only tablet. The tablet would have utility apps, including this offline-map app. I'd just need it when I'm lost or need to find something nice to eat. It should also have Yelp data on it, and have the ability to update the map and Yelp data when I'm wifi connected. If I'm travelling to somewhere, I can preload the tablet with the new city info at home.
  - codfrantic 12y ago
    You can cache maps in google maps for android. https://support.google.com/gmm/answer/3273567?hl=en&rd=1 https://support.google.com/gmm/answer/3273567?hl=en&rd=1
dredmorbius 12y ago
I've rightgraded from smartphone to flipphone, and am mostly happier for it. There are a few exceptions, the principle one of which is transit apps -- NextBus and its kin are life changers when it comes to using and really being able to rely on public transit (and that's even though the apps and their interfaces still suck in many, many ways). It turns out that there is a minimal Web interface to the one transit app I've used to date that works with my flip-phone's very minimal Web browser. I'm not sure if that's sufficient for me or not (I'm starting to think that it would be really cool for local stores and such to post pending arrival times for nearby stops). I've also still got my old Android device which as a WiFi mini-tablet is still somewhat useful. Though I'm strongly favoring replacing that with a Nexus tablet. The ability to carry around the several thousand texts I'm currently researching would be a bit of a bonus.
- omaranto 12y ago
  NextBus also has text message interface. http://www.nextbus.com/wirelessConfig/sms.jsp http://www.nextbus.com/wirelessConfig/sms.jsp
  - dredmorbius 12y ago
    Thanks, that's very good to know.
thomasfl 12y ago
I am glad you're spending time on HN to discuss this. For me it's about finding the right balance between isolation and being part of communities. Take for example phinished.org. It is a completely anonymous community for stressed out phd students, that seem to be perfect for those day when you're just to stressed out or to damn bored to do anything really useful. Sometimes it can be extremely useful to be part of a community like that. Sometimes you need distraction free days. Smartphones, like iPhone, are only 7 years old. It will take more years for people to learn how to live with it. Smartphones have already been coined "the new cigarette", used by stressed out people to calm down on café's and public places. In the future we'll probably have professional help for people who want to quit fiddling with their phone all the time.
yodsanklai 12y ago
To me, the worst one are the regular news, especially if there are comments. Not only you don't learn anything, but it leads to bitterness and anxiety and give you a wrong perception of the world. At least, hacker news is informative and the comments are of high-quality. However, I wish I was able to read some articles more thoroughly rather that passively browse.
- computerjunkie 12y ago
  Agreed, I'm actually grateful that I stumbled upon HN last year. At first, I thought the content posted here would not suite my taste and then I checked HN comments on each post and I knew immediately that this would be my homepage. What I like about HN is the built in procrastination tool.The fact that the community knows that HN can be a distraction and they actually built a procrastination tool is awesome. You won't see Facebook, Instagram or Twitter give you an option to stop procrastinating. I stopped reading regular news and the comments, at most I will read articles from well informed media websites. Also over the years, the quality of articles from news sites has dropped massively. I feel like they are writing just to get hits on their websites. Add a misleading, controversial heading in the mix and it just makes the whole experience worse.
- donniezazen 12y ago
  You are right comments bring out the worse in you.
- nanidin 12y ago
  > To me, the worst one are the regular news, especially if there are comments. Not only you don't learn anything, but it leads to bitterness and anxiety and give you a wrong perception of the world This is known as Mean World Syndrome, and it's a real thing[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_world_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_world_syndrome
97s 12y ago
I am on a computer all day long, I still have a flip phone, and people look at me like I am crazy. They all know I am a tech type guy, but question why I have a flip phone. Thing is, when I am off the computer. I dont want to think about more computer things. Glad others are finally realizing how terrible this is. You go out in public and everyone is sitting down at dinner with their friends surfing the biggest social media site at the moment.
- ggreer 12y ago
  I apologize. I tried to click on your username and accidentally hit downvote. My bad.
sigkill 12y ago
The common factor in all these time-sinks is not the phone, but it's the internet. I have a smartphone and although I could definitely live without it, the only thing I've done is disable data. Rather, I'm too cheap to pay for data. What difference does that make, you ask? One, on messaging, people would use text to contact me or each other if they notice that WhatsApp/Talk message hasn't reached for a couple of minutes. And a call is very helpful to transmit high density info in short time. Two, I can still use my very nice phone with a large screen to watch videos, read ebooks on the go like if I'm in a bus or something. The difference here is that these things are not infinity-sinks in my experience - I can go 1 hour or so reading a book on a cellphone but then need to take a break which is when you look up and around. Also, subconsciously, the permanence of the book/video prioritizes real world interrupts (in an embedded programming context) rather than blocking them. Then, you always have music that you can copy to the phone and listen to if you don't want to put your face to the screen. This enables you to move your head around everywhere and still not be all that bored because you still have that music going on. If I absolutely want, which is almost never, I play games but I find that mobile games are not something that I like so it never comes up at all. But a lot of time, I've just noticed myself looking around, just absorbing the world around me and being in my own thoughts rather than a forced stimulus and I find that relaxing unless I'm stuck in a very noisy environment in which case the earphone doubles up as a noise blocker. And the general trend I've heard here is that you need to be on email. But work already has wifi and if you're at work your computer is right in front of you. Secondly, aren't you making a big mistake by configuring work email on your phone? Maybe I'm the second coming of RMS but I do not install Facebook and Twitter apps on my phone for privacy reasons. Checking at most once everyday seems to be enough for me but I know that's not the case with everyone. It seems a lot of plans are made over fb for you guys, which is understandable - we use hangouts and whatsapp over here, but primarily whatsapp. But more importantly, for immediate plans we generally use SMS and phone calls which might be why we're not as reliant on facebook. FB is considered more of a public 'show-off' billboard than a private friend group. So yeah, maybe this was worthy of its own blog-post but my gist here is that turning off the data does wonders. You still get to retain those handy unit converters, two factor authenticators, password wallets and other things that are yours without the Skinner box annoyances of the infinity-sinks. Of course, before someone rants "You don't know how important it is to have internet on my phone", I'd say you're obviously right. However, maybe after reading my post, you realize that it isn't all that important then kudos to you. You should atleast try it once before knocking it right? A lot of times we think "It's impossible to get through without X" but humans are surprisingly adaptive and can cope without X just fine. I'm just sharing my experience, hoping that it's useful to you.

by Gracana 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

ggreer 12y ago

A stripped-down smartphone has quite a few advantages over a dumbphone. Notice which apps are installed: Google Maps, subway maps, Rdio, Uber, Instacart. As he says, these things are like living in the future.

dredmorbius 12y ago
It's still really hard to get around the privacy invasions of a smartphone, though. I'd like something without GPS and for which I can completely control the OS and environment. CyanogenMod seems to be as close as I'm likely to get to that at present.
- kissickas 12y ago
  Any phone's location can still be tracked by cell tower. From whom are you trying to get privacy?
  - dredmorbius 12y ago
    If the phone's off, that's going to be less useful. And the tower-tracking location granularity's much lower than GPS Though I don't know what the reporting intervals are. Some smartphones (or their apps) were reporting location data every 10 seconds, with accuracy measured within a few feet. Can't find that article at the moment, though another reports that location information is logged "at least several times an hour": http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748703983704576277101723453610 http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405274870398370... Here: "In a six-month period — from Aug 31, 2009, to Feb. 28, 2010, Deutsche Telekom had recorded and saved his longitude and latitude coordinates more than 35,000 times." http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/business/media/26privacy.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/business/media/26privacy.h... That's every 7.5 minutes. I only wish I knew who I was hiding from ;-)
    - kissickas 12y ago
      While it is obvious that turning off the phone helps, it's good that you make that point as I cannot remove the battery from my smartphone, a problem most "dumb" phones don't have.
      - dredmorbius 12y ago
        I can (and occasionally do) remove the battery as well. One "feature" of the HTC Incredible (my earlier smartphone) is that the battery is also fairly accessible and can be removed if desired.
    - at-fates-hands 12y ago
      Except in certain situations when you're probably pretty lucky to have it on. I had a friend who ran off the side of a mountain in Colorado. He called 911, but had no idea where he was (he was from the Midwest). Within about 40 minutes, they had triangulated his location and had a tow truck and emergency vehicles routed to get him out. Without his phone and the ability to locate him, he was pretty sure he wouldn't have made.
      - dredmorbius 12y ago
- ghshephard 12y ago
  Richard Stallman, as usual, was quite ahead of the curve on this topic when he noted that he didn't carry a cell phone of any kind because of the privacy considerations associated with logging your location, accurately with triangulation, against cell towers. The instant you start using a cell phone consistently, you've effectively handed over a log of your location history to whoever can convince the sysadmin in your cellular carriers NOC to to give them the data. And that's a pretty big list.
  - dredmorbius 12y ago
    Quite and absolutely. The man has an outstanding record for predictions. I wish he weren't so good.
    - w1ntermute 12y ago
      And yet he continues to be mocked on sites like HN.
      - pyre 12y ago
        Things that don't help: - When people want to point out that "Stallman predicted this X years ago," they phase it as, "Richard Stallman was right, as usual." Richard Stallman is not infallible. Overstating one's case doesn't win any new friends. - There are many of Stallman's "followers" that are very aggressive at promoting the GPLv3 over all other open source licenses. While this might not be Stallman's personal position on the matter, if definitely doesn't win many people over (and probably pushes many away). - Richard Stallman isn't necessarily the most lovable and charismatic figure. While people shouldn't factor that in to things when evaluating his message, they do.
        Angostura 12y ago
        When people take the phrase: " Stallman was right, as usual." and suggest that this is a claim of infallibility. Overstating one's case doesn't win any new friends. The claim is that on these issues Stallman is more usually right than wrong. Do you have anything that suggests otherwise?
- halfcat 12y ago
  >It's still really hard to get around the privacy invasions of a smartphone, though. I'd like something without GPS... I have only ever wished for the opposite, an app/feature that will log my location, frequently. I don't particularly care if it's stored in the cloud, as long as it's also stored on something of mine in a portable format (CSV, etc). I am thinking of this in terms of potentially catastrophic events where proving my location at some given time would be incredibly helpful, say, when the spouse/boss/police need to know, and the stakes are risking my marriage/job/freedom. Even more helpful would be if the app integrated with the fingerprint reader, to help prove that not only was my phone at this location, but with very high probability, so was I. Why are people so interested in destroying this information about themselves? Is it "because freedom"? Or is there a real, practical threat that we open ourselves to when this information is out there? I am genuinely interested in knowing.
collyw 12y ago
Dumbphone plus a GPS device, mp3 player could so the same. I still prefer my Sansa clip to my phone for music (I never even set the phone up for music). Small, battery lasts a while, and I basically don't need to worry about it. I even put one through the washing machine and it worked after a couple of weeks. As a side note, I find my Android phone a serious step back in usability. I would say I hang up rather than answer close to 50% of the calls. Can't I just get a physical green answer button back, rather than stupid swipe gestures.
- maccard 12y ago
  That's terribly awkward to carry around. Also, a GPS device doesn't tell me when my next bus is due (there's about 45 minutes between my buses). I also now only require one charger for my GPS and MP3 player. I can also look at cat pictures on the bus.
  - jarek 12y ago
    > I also now only require one charger for my GPS and MP3 player. microUSB?
    - maccard 12y ago
      Well, my MP3 player is my phone. No, it's a 30piin (iPhone 4S)
  - collyw 12y ago
    The point in the article was to remove as many apps as possible, particularly the cat picture ones.
- w1ntermute 12y ago
  > I would say I hang up rather than answer close to 50% of the calls. Then you're an outlier. Through common sense, it should be obvious that the vast majority of people don't run into such problems, or it would be a much more widely talked about problem. Hell, people made a huge fuss about "antennagate" when it was really only encountered by a fraction of iPhone 4 users.
lifeformed 12y ago
Regarding maps: is there an app that lets you save out Google Map info offline? I'd like to be able to type in a city and have it save all the data. I was thinking of having my setup just be a dumbphone plus a wifi-only tablet. The tablet would have utility apps, including this offline-map app. I'd just need it when I'm lost or need to find something nice to eat. It should also have Yelp data on it, and have the ability to update the map and Yelp data when I'm wifi connected. If I'm travelling to somewhere, I can preload the tablet with the new city info at home.
- codfrantic 12y ago
  You can cache maps in google maps for android. https://support.google.com/gmm/answer/3273567?hl=en&rd=1 https://support.google.com/gmm/answer/3273567?hl=en&rd=1

dredmorbius 12y ago

I've rightgraded from smartphone to flipphone, and am mostly happier for it. There are a few exceptions, the principle one of which is transit apps -- NextBus and its kin are life changers when it comes to using and really being able to rely on public transit (and that's even though the apps and their interfaces still suck in many, many ways). It turns out that there is a minimal Web interface to the one transit app I've used to date that works with my flip-phone's very minimal Web browser. I'm not sure if that's sufficient for me or not (I'm starting to think that it would be really cool for local stores and such to post pending arrival times for nearby stops). I've also still got my old Android device which as a WiFi mini-tablet is still somewhat useful. Though I'm strongly favoring replacing that with a Nexus tablet. The ability to carry around the several thousand texts I'm currently researching would be a bit of a bonus.

omaranto 12y ago
NextBus also has text message interface. http://www.nextbus.com/wirelessConfig/sms.jsp http://www.nextbus.com/wirelessConfig/sms.jsp
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  Thanks, that's very good to know.

thomasfl 12y ago

I am glad you're spending time on HN to discuss this. For me it's about finding the right balance between isolation and being part of communities. Take for example phinished.org. It is a completely anonymous community for stressed out phd students, that seem to be perfect for those day when you're just to stressed out or to damn bored to do anything really useful. Sometimes it can be extremely useful to be part of a community like that. Sometimes you need distraction free days. Smartphones, like iPhone, are only 7 years old. It will take more years for people to learn how to live with it. Smartphones have already been coined "the new cigarette", used by stressed out people to calm down on café's and public places. In the future we'll probably have professional help for people who want to quit fiddling with their phone all the time.

yodsanklai 12y ago

To me, the worst one are the regular news, especially if there are comments. Not only you don't learn anything, but it leads to bitterness and anxiety and give you a wrong perception of the world. At least, hacker news is informative and the comments are of high-quality. However, I wish I was able to read some articles more thoroughly rather that passively browse.

computerjunkie 12y ago
Agreed, I'm actually grateful that I stumbled upon HN last year. At first, I thought the content posted here would not suite my taste and then I checked HN comments on each post and I knew immediately that this would be my homepage. What I like about HN is the built in procrastination tool.The fact that the community knows that HN can be a distraction and they actually built a procrastination tool is awesome. You won't see Facebook, Instagram or Twitter give you an option to stop procrastinating. I stopped reading regular news and the comments, at most I will read articles from well informed media websites. Also over the years, the quality of articles from news sites has dropped massively. I feel like they are writing just to get hits on their websites. Add a misleading, controversial heading in the mix and it just makes the whole experience worse.
donniezazen 12y ago
You are right comments bring out the worse in you.
nanidin 12y ago
> To me, the worst one are the regular news, especially if there are comments. Not only you don't learn anything, but it leads to bitterness and anxiety and give you a wrong perception of the world This is known as Mean World Syndrome, and it's a real thing[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_world_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_world_syndrome

97s 12y ago

I am on a computer all day long, I still have a flip phone, and people look at me like I am crazy. They all know I am a tech type guy, but question why I have a flip phone. Thing is, when I am off the computer. I dont want to think about more computer things. Glad others are finally realizing how terrible this is. You go out in public and everyone is sitting down at dinner with their friends surfing the biggest social media site at the moment.

ggreer 12y ago
I apologize. I tried to click on your username and accidentally hit downvote. My bad.

sigkill 12y ago

The common factor in all these time-sinks is not the phone, but it's the internet. I have a smartphone and although I could definitely live without it, the only thing I've done is disable data. Rather, I'm too cheap to pay for data. What difference does that make, you ask? One, on messaging, people would use text to contact me or each other if they notice that WhatsApp/Talk message hasn't reached for a couple of minutes. And a call is very helpful to transmit high density info in short time. Two, I can still use my very nice phone with a large screen to watch videos, read ebooks on the go like if I'm in a bus or something. The difference here is that these things are not infinity-sinks in my experience - I can go 1 hour or so reading a book on a cellphone but then need to take a break which is when you look up and around. Also, subconsciously, the permanence of the book/video prioritizes real world interrupts (in an embedded programming context) rather than blocking them. Then, you always have music that you can copy to the phone and listen to if you don't want to put your face to the screen. This enables you to move your head around everywhere and still not be all that bored because you still have that music going on. If I absolutely want, which is almost never, I play games but I find that mobile games are not something that I like so it never comes up at all. But a lot of time, I've just noticed myself looking around, just absorbing the world around me and being in my own thoughts rather than a forced stimulus and I find that relaxing unless I'm stuck in a very noisy environment in which case the earphone doubles up as a noise blocker. And the general trend I've heard here is that you need to be on email. But work already has wifi and if you're at work your computer is right in front of you. Secondly, aren't you making a big mistake by configuring work email on your phone? Maybe I'm the second coming of RMS but I do not install Facebook and Twitter apps on my phone for privacy reasons. Checking at most once everyday seems to be enough for me but I know that's not the case with everyone. It seems a lot of plans are made over fb for you guys, which is understandable - we use hangouts and whatsapp over here, but primarily whatsapp. But more importantly, for immediate plans we generally use SMS and phone calls which might be why we're not as reliant on facebook. FB is considered more of a public 'show-off' billboard than a private friend group. So yeah, maybe this was worthy of its own blog-post but my gist here is that turning off the data does wonders. You still get to retain those handy unit converters, two factor authenticators, password wallets and other things that are yours without the Skinner box annoyances of the infinity-sinks. Of course, before someone rants "You don't know how important it is to have internet on my phone", I'd say you're obviously right. However, maybe after reading my post, you realize that it isn't all that important then kudos to you. You should atleast try it once before knocking it right? A lot of times we think "It's impossible to get through without X" but humans are surprisingly adaptive and can cope without X just fine. I'm just sharing my experience, hoping that it's useful to you.