Tetraca

Try to make a pong game. That's a very nice and simple beginner's program to make. Just learn a library like SDL or Allegro first, so you can display and move images. I just hope you're using C/C++ or FreeBASIC, or another respectable, compilable language when making it, and not VisualBASIC, because it is slow, bloated, and and creates executables that resemble that.

When I had dial-up, I had patience. :)Now I have a high-speed connection. Now I don't have patience. This is the upside to having a dial-up connection, because you aren't as ticked you don't have high speed internet. But after you have a high speed internet connection, the effect is magnified and it's not worth it unfortunately.

Unless you have a computer from 1998, 20MB is essentially nothing on your >80GB computer manufactured in the 21st century. You can install every major browser on your machine you can and you still will have plenty of room for other things, plus at least two Linux distributions. Firefox isn't the best browser. SeaMonkey is better. It not only is compatible with many Firefox extensions and has many of the features (including spellcheck), but it also has ChatZilla IRC client, an e-mail client, an address book, and an HTML editor all built into it. Plus, its initial theme is nice and light. You might need to configure it to work nice on your machine, though, since it doesn't use its tabs by default.

I can't wait until Half-Life 2: Episode III. I believe that is coming out in 2008 if I'm not mistaken. I hope Postal III gets released in 2008 as well, but there's no deadline on that project, so it may take a while even though they've got some promising screenshots. Those other games look very promising as well, and I might need to update my computer after purchasing a few of them. Maybe DN4 will be released in 2008 or 2009 and I can get my hands on that. That would be really great.

The best Antivirus is your own common sense. If you don't have that, you don't have the best protection against virii - preventing them from even being installed on your computer.

Ubuntu is good for those who don't game, and want their hand held while using Linux just like in Windows or OS X. However, some people are so stubborn and filled with FUD that giving them Ubuntu would make them go nuts because some things are different from Windows. I do not reccomend getting any Linux operating system if the machine does not have an internet connection. Otherwise, it's rather useless and package management becomes something between pulling teeth and banging your head against the wall. With an internet connection it's better than installing with Windows installation programs since you can install many of them from one source, dependancies are filled, and you can do it in two clicks.However, if you really want to learn Linux, BSD, or UNIX, the best way is to use an operating system which forces you to read the manual, and use a command line after installation. It makes you learn how to actually use a computer instead of letting the computer use you, but not a lot of people care to actually learn how to use their computer properly, unlike their car (well...that's debatable), or their stereo, or their excercise equipment. But then again, only a handful of Linux distros have good documentation to help you understand what everything is for, and even then not all applications have exactly the best documentation (tar comes to mind).But, if you're a gamer, XP is still the best option. Sure, Linux has games, but don't kid yourself: you're not going to get the best games on Linux with the exception of three or four professional games ported unto the the system, compared to the hundreds of great games that Windows can offer you.

You are using a table based design, which isn't very effiecient, but it's easy. Consider changing it to a div based design, and making the site have a liquid width. Your content does not contrast well enough with the background. It is hard to read. Consider shading in the container of the content a white color with black text, or changing to background color of the container to #333, bordering it all around and making the text white so it is easier to read. Make sure to make the area where the content fits stand out. You do not have a copyright on your page. Consider placing a copyright on your page. Your text has a serifed font. Consider using a more modern looking, sans-serif font such as verdana or helvetica as these fonts bring more professionalism to the design. That should make your design look better, and behave better to your consumer.

By the time they release it, Acid2 will be long oudated.

PHP is a nice language, but as you may or may not know there was an entire month where there was hole after hole found in the interpreter. I'm satisified with it and see nothing wrong with it, but people that like to define their variables criticize that you can't define them. Perl is another nice one, but it has a lot of shorthand available so you can make your code look extremely dirty and near unreadable. It's also very old - probably 20 - 30 years old, so it's pretty stable. Some people say it's slow, but it's also found frequently both on Windows and Unix/Unix-like servers. CGI is a library for Perl that extends its capabilities as far as I know. I don't really like python, but it's an option. It's relatively new and it works, from what I've heard about it, very well. But, it forces indentation of your code, which can be a pain at times if you don't like how they want you to indent it. It also doesn't really have a lot of support on many web servers. You may want to start your own if you like it enough. Ruby on Rails is another option. It's slow as tar from my experience but people really like to program in it. I don't like OOP either, so it's a choice I wouldn't do. But if you like OOP, go ahead and use it. It, too, doesn't have a lot of support. Some pros like to use ASP, ColdFusion, and JSP. These are rather expensive and work on a handful of servers (except for ASP) and unless you're making them for a client that specifically requests them, I suggest you don't even bother with them. Keep in mind that whatever scripting language you choose, you will need a markup language to go with it if you're designing a web page, or you'll make a bland, and very uninteractive site. This means HTML or XHTML with CSS. They are not programming languages, but you still need to learn them. No, no, no. This is a REALLY REALLY BAD idea. Programmers don't write code in C and then dabble with BASIC to make a good program. Considering that no matter which language you use, you will have relatively the same feature set and are capable of getting the same result, it is better to be consistent in what language you are scripting in. Otherwise, it can get really confusing, and even worse is when you try and interface the code together using only scripting languages (since you are dealing with an interpreter, you're really going to make it hard on yourself if you dabble with multiple scripting langauges on one site at times, unlike a programmer which can compile every object file into one file). Nearly everything these days is done with one scripting language - no matter if IBM's web page or Bob Smith's mega ultra super-duper homepage. The language, really doesn't matter. What matters is you, and what you can do in each language. Some people like Perl better than PHP, and can do better things in Perl than PHP because they are more proficient and like the syntax better. You need to find the language with the featureset that fits you best to make your site the best it can be.

Personally, I like Seamonkey better than Mozilla or Firefox, and I like Opera over that. But Opera isn't the best despite it's nice featureset. NoScript+Seamonkey is great. It has many of the features of opera (sans some things which I think would make better sense), but with the NoScript extension you get a nice amount of security as well.IE is a hock of pumice - it keeps afloat for a while, but then it ends up sinking to rock bottom. It's a hunk of junk and web designers (including me) hate it. Firefox and many other browsers render pages much better that follow web standards without having to hack code, and are more extensible with a richer featureset and more security.

[1] First of all it isn't mineral water, it's purified tap water. Second of all your refrigerator, or garage, or neighborhood isn't exactly a natural environment and so has things which would normally not be found in the natural environment, which may or may not be a good thing depending on how you look at it. If you buy them in plastic bottles it is said that the plastic can wear or absorb into the water which isn't exactly a good thing. [2] In order to live a psychologically good life, they must dream. How they dream might be different, however. I do not know the specifics of this, but visuals might be infantile in nature, or are based on what is felt rather than what is seen. [3] Because hot dog manufacterers do not make the bread that he hot dogs come in. There is no packaging standard, so each company packages a different amount depending on what makes sense to them and is economically feasable based on the machinery they use. It might be just that the packaging machine for buns handle ten buns at a time when it comes to packaging, and it might just be easier for them to package ten rather than eight, and vice versa for the hot dog manufacterer.

Clusty is the search engine which I like to use simply because unlike other search engines it clusters results into categories rather than spitting them out into one page of hundreds of results that may or may not be related to what you're searching for.

It doesn't, and shouldn't, matter which gender a president is. A president, no matter man or woman, should be well qualified to have that job in the first place before becoming elected, and neither will do their job better if they're incompetent in the first place. They should not decide foreign policy based on emotion, but logic based on what their advisors think and what they think, thus negating any difference in compentency a man or woman might have when sitting in the oval office. When I see a woman running for president which I can agree with in foreign and domestic policy, maybe I'll vote for her if there isn't already a candidate that I agree with. Hillary is not that person, being the two-faced neocon she is just like Rudi Guiliani. I will rather vote for Kucinich, Gravel, or Paul. I have not decided which one, but I'll probably go with Kucinich.