Little Asterisk

As much as I know about this (and it's not that much ), during the last few years (that is, when Beckham and the other *old* company started coming there) soccer (not football ) was popularised a bit in America. Maybe the fans were just one of those newly changed lovers of soccer (again, not football ).

I am now going to quote something I've read somewhere recently, and it goes like this: It's pointless to discuss weather or not Coke is better than Pepsi, when a glass of refreshing water beats both of them. (Any deviations from the previous quote are my self-interpretation of it )

These two I noticed, too. The site also does not allow you to edit your posts sometimes. Strange.

That is such a "Get a Mac" commercial thing to say. But I agree with you. When upgrading Windows from one version of 7 to another, it is just a matter of seconds between "updating" and saying "Your PC is now upgraded to Windows [ultimate/Enterprise/Home/etc]". Sure, the Windows OS did not ship with your brother's laptop. But, if a Mac shipped without OSX, it'd cost you a couple of bucks less. I also agree that a Mac is probably faster for some coding and such, and a Windows PC is definitely more appropriate for gaming (depending on your configuration, that can be either "serious" or "casual" gaming). I do not know much about the multi-touch trackpad, since I've only used a Mac laptop (Macbook) twice in my life, so I am going to take your word for it. Agree with you totally on these two. The UI looks so much nicer (okay, maybe SOME elements not), there is no discussion about that. And people will choose their OS depending on their needs. Basic users would probably go for Windows (like your, or my, or someone's grandmother ) and users that need a powerful machine for coding will use a Mac. But then again, ASP.NET programmers would choose Windows. iPhone programmers would choose a Mac (damn Apple! I would like to code for the iPhone, too, without buying a new laptop! ). So, personal taste, I guess.

I have not checked out the first one yet, but I can say for sure that Mac OS is not free. Sure, it comes "for free" with every computer it can be installed on (i.e. a Macintosh computer), but so does Windows come installed with most laptops - also "for free". It actually all counts up to the price. And also, albeit being a good OS, Mac is still far from perfect and Windows 7 (and not Vista or XP or anything below) vs. Mac OSX is a tight choice. I would, personally, like to have both, each on a separate computer. Maybe in a few months.

Hi web_designer, Yes, the effects on these are amazing. Most of them are made in Flash, but I particularly like http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/, which is non-Flash, because of the JavaScript effect that happens upon page load. From the others, http://www.nisgia.com/ has got a great effect with their projects all mixed up, allowing you to rearrange them. I believe that has a big effect on their possible employers/clients. Since I can see you like these Flash portfolios, here are a couple more that I find attractive, too: NickAD (http://www.nickad.com/), try to click anywhere on the page and hold your left mouse button. A nifty trick happens, where the menu appears for a few seconds and then you can position your mouse to go to another page. Narrow design (http://www.narrowdesign.com/) has this nice scrolling menu, that's got a neat effect to it upon clicking. Suggest looking at the John Travolta site there! Got Milk? (or Gotmilk, not sure - http://www.gotmilk.com/errors/browser) Notice that the icons turn to text when you roll over them. Another cool and subtle effect. Hope this helps a bit in your quest for an inspirational portfolio. If not, you know where to find me. I've got plenty of more where that came from. (No, really - my bookmarks are full of various sites I found to have beautiful typography or some other elements in them. Don't be afraid to ask )

Microsoft just became its own competition with Office 2010. People won't buy it unless they see many great new features implemented. And, to really face it; there are only a couple of new neat things.My favourite is that it loads a bit faster, but I wouldn't buy it just for that particular fact.In the end, you should really ask yourself; is Office 2010 really what you need? If you're actively going to use on line collaboration and its new features (like the a bit advanced image editor in Word), buy it! Otherwise, I don't recommend it.

Whoa, guys! Don't come at me so strong, I don't know if I can handle responding to all the posts you've put here! This topic is really heating up, so I'm going to post some more inspirational sites and screenshots. (This is a joke, you know? I'm not (that much) crazy ) So, next up... A couple of elements from various websites and Wordpress themes I've seen. From Squared eye (http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/), a design-studio... I like the numbered "step-by-step process", giving a transparent look and feel to it. Also notice the gridded background, with little squares all over the place. The nice big logo is also a good design element. Bada-bing (http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/), which features a nice and nifty vertical slider. A bit unusual, but very cool. Also notice the beautiful tooltips that appear upon hovering an image. Techi (techi.com) does this thing where the categories are nicely positioned within a grid. I also like the big icons, which clearly indicate what the particular category is about. This is a nifty little slider from a great Wordpress theme out there, called Urban 1.0. It's by Paul Bennet (from paulicio.us, another great and unique site). I have this particular element saved on my computer as "popular-fubis.jpg", but I don't know where it's from. A search for "Fubis" on Google returns some neutral results, not important or related to this "Popular posts" side-widget. Notice the use of big images: Okay, this was it. I hope this time the topic continues on with a bit more sparkle to it.

Maybe they tried, but they sure did not live up to their expectations. I wanted Brazil and Argentina to play against each other at some point in the championship, but that didn't happen. Maybe for the better, maybe for the worse. As I said, they did not play the best they could. And Brazil... Well, they've played a different (defensive, ugly, call-it-whatever-you-want football) kind of football than we were used to see from them.

It's not a plugin, Wordpress has this integrated in its back-end. You should go somewhere in the settings, I believe Reading or Writing, and then check "Automatically close comments after x days", and replace the x (which is 14 by default, I believe) with 60 or 90, or some other number.

Naaah, the players didn't give their best. Well, maybe Iker Cassilias (Spain or Spin, as you called it ) and Diego Forlan (Uruguay) tried. And also, Germany did their best. But, other countries (like England or Portugal, Brazil) - nada.

Maybe so, we'll see. I stand by the opinion maybe rotating banners aren't the best solution, but decide for yourself. Time will show.

Although this definitely is an efficient tool against spam, I have to disagree with using Captcha, reCAPTCHA or 1+1 assignments when letting the users comment. Quite simply, my theory is that you want to make the user's commenting process easier, not more difficult. If they want to leave a few words of courage (or complain about something ) on your site, you don't want them to quit because they've entered the reCAPTCHA words wrong. Especially if you're a relatively unknown site (A list apart, for instance, or some other well-known site, could afford reCAPTCHA), where users think this way: Chances are, if they enter the keyword wrong the first time; they aint' coming back. Unless they REALLY want to know and/or comment something. In the end it's all up to the site admin, but my advice is: don't do it.

I actually like yours best, rvalkass. I'm not sure why, but minimalism in design has always appealed and always will appeal (or at least I think so) to me. Another thing I wanted to say; although the logo-exchange thing OpaQue suggested a couple of days ago here at first seemed OK (due to the many logotypes we've received), I now think it'd be a whole lot better if only one was featured. It seems more professional, and wouldn't make a newbie confused in the sense of "Am I in the right place?". It would also decrease load times of the page (maybe not much, but at least a bit). This is my opinion, though, and I understand if OpaQue decides on logo exchange thing. After all, everyone who posted here did an effort to make the forum logo.

No, no.... You misunderstood me. When we were talking about Google in another topic, I also said that they wouldn't sacrifice their reputation just so they can collect information about their users (the comment is yet to be moderated, though ). The reference to Google was about reputation sacrifice, so to speak. I realise drugs weren't always illegal, but I also realize that now, when we've seen the bad influence they have on the behaviour of many people, It'd be bad publicity for a company to put drugs in their beverages.

Wordpress has a nice feature to block comments with two or more links (so spammers can't at least advertise many bad sites), and I thing that approving (moderating) comments would be the best way to make sure someone does not publish bad content in the comments. Akismet plugin (or Askimet, not sure ) is a must-have, also. Other than that, I don't know what much more could you do. Oh, yeah - and you can block IP addresses of the ones who regularly publish spam .

I can see right away I'm going to be one of the rare ones who'll support the "Global warming 'scam' theory", but I'll try to explain as good as I can. First; no one really knows what's going to happen in the future and what will we discover and survive (or not?). There are countless theories against Global Warming, but one closest to my heart is that the Sun gets closer to the Earth every couple of (Hundred? Ten? I'm not sure right now) years, and then the temperatures become higher. As the Sun goes further away, everything normalizes and goes back to its place. However, why am I fond of the entire movement? Even if we don't know what will happen, it's definite that pollution is not good for neither us, nor our planet. You can't really say you're feeling nice breeding all these gases in your system? In Tokyo, and a part of the East Asia, the smog (smoke and fog, but I think you already know that ) is so awful you practically can't see what's in front of you sometimes. It's horrible to see that kind of problems that occur in our planet, and that's mostly why I support the anti-Global Warming movement. As in everything, politics does have its finger involved. But then again, is that so bad? Some people will become richer, some won't but in the end it all comes up to the fact we want to do good to ourselves, and our children. There is a saying, and I'm not sure where from, but it goes something like this: And, oh, how true is that! I hope you see my support of the anti-Global warming movement.

You obviously don't know how to do that kind of games. You practically want to do a GTA with elements from other games, but that GTA would also be a kind of MMORPG, where you can race for cars and make images of users and a bunch of other things, and... It does not go that way. You CAN'T expect that someone will make that game for you, since an entire little studio is needed for that kind of game. And also, if that studio were to make a game; do you really think they'd give it to you just like that, for free? Money pushes everything, and without it you can do only one thing: LEARN ActionScript! For one, if you want to build games you should learn ActionScript. There are sites like Kirupa (https://www.kirupa.com/), which can teach you some basics. You can also visit ActiveTuts (active.tutsplus.com) to learn some more advanced stuff, but a book on that matter would be preferred. You should first buy Learning ActionScript 3.0: A Beginner's Guide, which will bring you the basics, and then continue on with something like ActionScript 3.0 Game Programming University.

I wasn't actively watching all of the games of this World cup (most of the time when I was watching, I was doing some work on my PC), but I can say that the only interesting games were when Germany played against someone. Still, I didn't want for Germany to win the World cup, but for either Spain or England (I was kind of disappointed when they lost against Germany, but it was better for the entire championship). Since England lost, it was obvious that I'll be supporting Spain. So... You could say a country I wanted to win, won.But when my country does not play, I don't want for anyone to win - I only wind against someone :DAs for the final game (or, the grand finale); I was hoping for a better game. Not for Netherlands to kill all the players, and for Spain to do almost nothing, with all the great players they have. I wanted 3:2, or something like that - which was kind of unrealistic. I mean, Spain scored that much in the entire knock-out phase.

What is there to talk about in a discussion Coke vs. Pepsi?Although I don't sense a particularly big difference between the two of them I'm almost positive I'd always drink coke instead of Pepsi. I don't know why, but I believe it's more because Coke is a more recognizable brand (i.e. they have commercials everywhere), which means I'm not just judging by the taste. I know, I'm not fair.As for the marijuana/coke and other drugs, like I said in another topic about Google (we weren't talking about drugs, though ); I don't think a big company like Coca-cola would sacrifice their presence on the market and their reputation by putting a known bad and addictive matter (not in sense of "it'll make you fat", but in the sense "it'll kill you") to their drinks.Coke FTW!

I don't know, to be honest...They DO invade privacy to some extent, that is certain. Only by knowing our location, and the content we search for, they already have a LOT of information about us.On the other hand, how do they generate Google ads? By using a script which they made. Does that invade our privacy, and do they collect the data (about the actual content of the e-mail messages), I do not know. But I still like to believe that a company like Google wouldn't allow itself to be exposed to the public about collecting private information on their users.It would bring them a lot of negative publicity and, trust me, no company wants that. However, I'd be really interested to hear (read ) what others have to say on this matter. Nice topic, OpaQue!

I, too, see where you're going with this. But... As anwii said, do it with real numbers so we can see what results you'd get. I don't know, I'm still closer to anwii's opinion (well, anwii's opinion that's also my opinion ) on this matter. And also, it'd be pretty painful to sort all posts by their length.

I just measured the color from my browser (so it may not be 100% correct), and it turned out you image background is #1D3752, and the banner is a similar color (somewhere around - #1C3752, for instance ), depending on the place I take the sample from. So.... I think it's OK

Sorry web_designer, but I think both of them are right (well, except for deadmad when he said the first equation for calculating myCents, but I didn't notice the mistake, either so I won't say he's bad at math )... Anyhow, you can't make groups since that would mean that every student should count their average by taking into account first the A grades, than B, than C and so forth. If you can prove me wrong, however, please do so! (But, really - if there's something I'm missing, please explain )

Oh, man... I thought there is something that does that for the admins. I'm not that eager to find out that I would like to go through all the posts and everything. Thanks anyway