well, opera used to have icq-support, so maybe it will survive this one too. And they prolly will make a version without it if the public demands it. Opera is from Norway, we always do what people tell us…


why am I the only one commenting, i might end up with issues…

I’ll drop a line as well… hehe… switch to firebird vegard, that’s my tip-of-the-day…

About the iPod-mini: A lil disappointing price tag, but it’ll most likely drop to 200$ within the year…not that i’m gonna buy one.. hihi

i’m insulted, hallvard… i try to comment on a regular basis as well, you know…

i’m with toro about the price they slapped on the ipod mini. it’s way too much when you can get an extra 11gb for only us$50 more.

but they are purrrty… real purrrty… :P

hey ian…a lil off topic.. hehe..but can you just explain to me how a team actually wins a cricket match? :-) i’m know how they get points and stuff… by running and hitting… but not quite sure when a game is won… sooo please… enlighten me :-)

well, toro, i’ve just written up my explanation for you, but it’s rather more than the 1000 characters which are permitted. at the risk of angering the semi-god vegard, i’ll post the thing anyway, in two parts:

one-day cricket, and test match cricket…

you know what? on second thoughts, i’ll leave it for now… post this thing some time tomorrow, perhaps… i will get back to you, though! :)

I’ve temporary increased the comment length limit to 10K characters, have a blast.

Yeah, Opera once had IM-support. Now they’re cramming it full of all kinds of shite, let’s hope it won’t last long.

thanks ian… …:-)

cheers….

one-day cricket: a side is given an innings of 50 overs (300 balls), or 10 wickets, whichever comes first, to score as many runs as possible. when they have completed the innings—that is, have used all 50 overs or lost all 10 wickets—the other team bats, and they must better the first team’s total, in 50 overs or less, without losing all 10 wickets. get the runs, and they win, by the number of wickets they had spare. otherwise, they lose, by the number of runs they needed to score. easy!

test match cricket: a little more tricky. these matches last five days, and at the end of that, sometimes nobody wins… there are no restrictions upon the length of an innings in test matches, so a team will bat until they lose all 10 wickets, or alternatively, they can choose to declare the innings closed before, usually because they have a big enough total and want to set about defending it. the other team then takes its turn to bat, but here it’s not crucial to outscore the opposition; there’s another innings for each team to come.

however, it’s important that they get within 200 runs of the first team’s total, or else the first team can enforce the follow-on. that’s when they have to bat again immediately after they’ve been bowled out in their first innings, and it puts a lot of pressure upon them. there have only been a handful of instances where a side has won a test match after being made to follow on.

anyway, the point is that there are two innings for each side in a test match, and the length of these innings are limited only by the 5 day restriction applying to them as a whole. to win, a team must outscore their opposition’s combined total from two completed innings (a declaration is a completed innings). sometimes they’ll only need to bat once to do this; in which case they have won by an innings (and x runs). usually, though, they’ll need to bat a second time. the win is measured by either runs or wickets, depending upon whether the winning team successfully defended or chased a target.

sometimes, though, wickets will remain to be taken as well as runs to be scored. which brings us to a draw. if, after 5 days (of about 90 overs each, usually), neither side has won the match, the umpires will always tell everyone to go home. end of match, nobody has won anything.

i think that should make things fairly clear. as clear as they can be, at least. :)

3 cheers for vegard, for making this comment possible!