Is it possible to get rid of the bullets in the miniframes outer theme

Question

I actually like the bullets shown when using \useoutertheme{miniframes}, but for the long talk I have to give there are just ridiculously many.

Is it possible to keep the same theme and just removing the bullets, and then displaying slide numbers instead?

Here is a minimal example:

\documentclass[compress, final]{beamer}
    \usetheme[height=0mm]{Rochester}
    \usecolortheme{dolphin}
    \useinnertheme{rectangles}
    \useoutertheme[footline=empty, subsection=true]{miniframes}

\begin{document}

\begin{frame}{Test frame}
    \begin{block}<+->{Block}
        Beamer is cool
    \end{block}
\end{frame}

\end{document}

Answer 1

You can modify the headline. For example:

\setbeamertemplate{headline}
{%
  \begin{beamercolorbox}[ht=3.5ex,dp=1.125ex,%
      leftskip=.3cm,rightskip=.3cm plus1fil]{section in head/foot}
    \usebeamerfont{section in head/foot}\usebeamercolor[fg]{section in head/foot}%
    \insertsectionhead
  \end{beamercolorbox}%
  \begin{beamercolorbox}[colsep=1.5pt]{middle separation line head}
  \end{beamercolorbox}
  \begin{beamercolorbox}[ht=2.5ex,dp=1.125ex,%
    leftskip=.3cm,rightskip=.3cm plus1fil]{subsection in head/foot}
    \usebeamerfont{subsection in head/foot}\insertsubsectionhead
  \end{beamercolorbox}%
  \begin{beamercolorbox}[colsep=1.5pt]{lower separation line head}
  \end{beamercolorbox}
}

This is very similar to miniframes headline but it uses \insertsectionhead instead of \insertnavigation which includes those bullets.