MajesticTreeFrog

lol.Cuong nhu is vietnamese. It means hard soft and it is basically a Mixed martial art, where you start with karate and then blend techniques from other styles.Wing Chun is a form of Kung Fu, its what bruce lee learned before be created Jeet Kun DoTai chi is also chinese, it is a very internal martial arts with very slow movements. I haven't taken much of this one, but I really liked it. I am trying to find another place to take it that fits my time/budgetKarate is a japanese martial art. What I took was a kick heavy form that was basically karate mixed with tae kwan do and was essential a sport style rather than actual combat.

Just curious how many people on here practice martial arts, and what they practice.I personally take Cuong Nhu, but I have taken tai chi, wing chun, and karate in the past.

granted, it appears nobody but me on here uses a mac, but you should have added safari. Still, even on a mac I use firefox.

CHEERWINE suckas.

for my desktop, I use win2k and use it mainly as a gaming/number crunching machine.For my laptop, I use a mac since it doesn't ever crash, get viruses, or other such problems, plus it gets about 5 hous of battery life even when Im doing work on it. I mainly use my laptop for getting work done and handling stuff at school, so these things are important. Other than that, I do graphics work, which macs are fantastic for.

Yes, echelon exists. Echelon is a massive data collection and retention project run mainly by the US and the UK. Use google and look around, there is plenty of info. It is no longer totally in the shadows like it used to be.

anyone on here know a good place to get OS X(mac) software?

I personally would get an ipod, except for the problem that it doesn't play Ogg vorbis files. Why it doesn't is a mystery to me, since ogg is a free codec and they would even get help from the ogg people to write the software to do it. I have looked at the Rio Karma, and it almost is good enough, but I understand it has a number of technical problems. so, if Rio can fix the technical problems before apple can fix the lack of ogg support, then I will get the karma/whatever it is that doesn't have the problems. I am not sure which I would prefer, as the rio has better sound quality and slightly better battery life while the ipod is better at connecting to my apple ibook and my PC desktop, while being nice and easy to use. Sigh....why can't people just do it right. Yeesh.

that sir, is some crazy stuff right there. One of these days I will try to learn linux..........just not today

Here is an idea: start a blog. Its all the rage and stuff right now. But more importantly, it gives you some idea of where to start, and its not super complex(auto blog software is, but I mean put it all together yourself). In order to do this, all you really need is the most basic of HTML, and from there you can just keep adding on till you have something fancy enough to make you happy. Then, when you have learned CSS and HTML, you can work on something harder.

I am trying to find a good peice of web page creation software for OSX. Preferably one that doesn't cost money(as in freeware or open source). Still, if there are any good under $100 dollar programs that someone could suggest, I would be interested. They need to be WYSIWIG(what you see is what you get, ie graphical interface).

unless you want to pirate photoshop, its pretty expensive at around 600-700 dollars. If, on the other hand, you buy a wacom tablet, it usually comes with a copy of photoshop elements. While not as powerfull as the full version, it will almost certainly do everything you need(well...since you were using PAINT it will do a LOT more than you need). This overall cost is the same as the price or cheaper than any other option discussed other than Gimp. Plus, you get the graphics pad, which I assure you you will love. So, if you have no money, use GIMP 2.0if you have some money, go get a wacom graphire tablet.

the wacom 'graphire' tablets (as opposed to the intuos tablets) are rather cheap, at $100 US for the 4x5" version. For anyone not doing a lot of hard core image editing, thats plenty. They too come with a pen and a mouse. the tablet connects via USB, but the cool thing is that the pen and mouse are wireless but do not need batteries or charging or anything like that. Also, for driver and program support, Wacom is king. Overall, its probably the best value, if you can afford the $100

AMD has faster outright performance a good deal of the time, provided you are doing just one thing. The difference however, is usually rather small. On the other hand, Intel's hyperthreading tech allows running multiple programs and multitasking to work significantly better than AMD. Things get more complicated when you look at the 64 bit arena. AMD64 is the clear winner in this arena, with the intel Itanium quickly headed for the trashcan. However, Intel recently, and quietly, added support for the AMD x86-64 command set to its lastest set of chips, so they will run the same stuff the AMD chips will. So, now the question is, for the next set of chips, who will be better? AMD has more experience with their command set, but Intel's hyperthreading and long pipeline may somehow give them a large boost in performance(or a terrible cut, I don't know which). Anyway, after all that, the question of which is better depends on what you are doing. For gaming, AMD is the way to go. For multitasking and similar, go Intel.

Google is the current best. Given the talent and creativity google labs is attracting, they will probably stay there. Still, I wish that it was better about getting less results rather than more sometimes. Specifically, I want it to be better at differentiating between different similar things, or have some better way of culling useless results.Darren, go get a mac. Seriously. They run BSD underneath so you can learn unix/linux at your leisure but while at the same time have all of the niceties of windows + no more viruses, spyware, crashing, etc.

Firefox is my clear favorite. I wish the OSX version was a bit faster, but then again its not really relevant since its plenty fast. I used to try opera, but something about its interface just didn't work for me. IE.....well, its crap. nuf said. Safari is pretty good, especially for a basic browser, but why use it when you have firefox?

The clear answer is to get a mac. It can run xfree86 and linux software, run mac software(duh) and run windows software with virtualPC(from microsoft, so it works). Maximum software choice, plus a very nice and stable OS with a simple, elegant and easy to use interface.Then again I am an artist so whatever.

really, MMORPGs have been around for.....a long long time. They just didn't have the fancy graphics, and had shorter acronyms like MUD or MUSH. The idea has been around for a while. If you wanted to make a MMORPG, going the text based route of a MUD or MUSH would be easier, much much much easier. There are also very good programs out there to do it. Even if you do plan on going down the graphics route, I suggest you start with a MUD, the time spent learning how to make a good one will pay off triple when you try to build the big complex one with graphics.

I would suggest you not try torque. I was a concept artist at NeuralForge before it died (rest in peace NF, we loved you well!), and we tried to see if we could use it because it was cheap. The reality is that it is very complicated and opaque for a starting programmer(at least according to our chief programmers at NF). So much so in fact that we decided it would be faster and cheaper in the long run to just write our own engine since we couldn't afford to license the unreal engine from Epic. For your purposes though, its going to be a LONG time before you will be able to program an engine. But the programming is just the beginning. Putting together the art and content is at least the same amount of work. Making a game, especially a good one, is very hard, and I suggest that you try to find some like minded people and get their help on your project. It could be that you could convince a good programmer that your vision is so cool that he wants to help you out, and maybe a few artists as well. It has happened before! Anyway, best of luck.

I was wondering if anyone on here has used python. I want to create a program to handle some stuff in my table top RPGs, and that language was suggested to me as a good combination of speed and ease of learning. What do people on here think? Have any of you used python before? if so, what is a good IDE for mac, if you know?

Its going to be a while before solid ports are done. The game has only been out a short while in its final form. Even those ports based on the beta that was leaked a year ago will probably need substantial changes. Even the mods that do rush out will probably need some time to mature. Go play neverwinter nights or something for a month, then look around.

I just bought a mac, an ibook to be exact. I like it a lot, though there are some things I wish worked differently. On the other hand, it doesn't give me the bs I get from windows sometimes. So, I plan to use it to just get work done. As for needing a new computer, getting a PC is much cheaper. If you are getting a notebook, then things are different, the ibooks(the new ones) are pretty well priced for the features. But do be aware of the software hole; there won't be as much stuff as on the PC, so make sure you know what you will need. That being said, most software like web browsing, chat, email, and wordprocessing is all available and at least as nice on the mac as on the PC. If you plan on doing much in the way of gaming, you should get a PC, the mac just doesn't have much game support. Anyway, I hope that helps.

Mainly, its just nice for Adblock. Get the extension and use it. You can shut off any banner ads or flash distractions that people put on their webpage. Just make sure to only shut off the ones that are actually distracting or irritating. If people block them all, then people will come up with something even worse. If you block only the annoying ones(unless you find all of them annoying) then that is an incentive for advertisers to stop being annoying.