Spudd

I had McAfee for over a year, and I was pretty pleased with it for a while. My sister had the same program, and she got a virus though, and McAfee did nothing to stop it. See, that's the thing. An antivirus software may look good up front, but until you actually have a virus, it's hard to know how it'll stand up. McAfee didn't even have a way for me to quarantine or delete the file that I KNEW was infected, which was absolutely maddening. McAfee also gives you no way to flag any file as safe, so if McAfee thinks it's a virus, it doesn't matter if you know it's safe or not. I don't feel safe using McAfee anymore, thanks to that incident. Now I've been using Avast!, and it seems to work alright for now. As we know of course, I won't know unless I get a virus. (And I certainly hope I don't). Avast! is good though, in that it does allow you to quarantine infected files manually, and choose to ignore warnings, so I am pleased with that. It also plays some fancy sound effects when it finds a virus, it's skinnable, and it looks like a media player, so I love it.

No, why would anyone use Internet Explorer if it wasn't bundled with Windows? I've asked some people why they don't want to try Firefox, and the reason is always something along the lines of "I don't feel like downloading a whole new browser when I already have one that seems to work just fine." If they didn't have that excuse, anyone would take Firefox or Opera, unless of course they'd only heard of Internet Explorer.

Been home schooled for most of my life, since my teacher had me pegged with a disorder and wouldn't stop nagging my parents to get me medicated, in spite of our family doctor saying otherwise. So kindergarten *BLEEP*ed. But now I'm in a community college, and it most certainly does not *BLEEP*. The professors are great, always willing to help clarify things, no matter how obvious it may seem. I have some great friends there who share my beliefs and generally put up with my tendency to ramble. I get to choose my own schedule, and take the classes I want, which gives me a sense that I'm in control of my education. And of course, the free food that they give out regularly is a plus.

Opera is good, and admittedly it is the fastest, but I still love Firefox. The extensions, the themes, I like the Firefox ones better. When I want widgets, I have Windows Sidebar there anyway, and FireFTP is an extension I couldn't go without. I have Opera on my computer, for emergencies, and when I feel like shaking things up, but my primary browser is still Firefox. Gotta admit, though, Opera looks very slick.

Yes, they can, but the kind of people who are really into WoW don't quit, they have to be pried away from it by their loved ones. It's not an easy task either, it's like trying to remove the little alien thingies from Alien; they don't go without a fight, and in many cases tryinh to remove them can kill the host. Woah woah waoh, back up, FPS games are not better than any other genre, it's a matter of preference. RPGs, platformers, and puzzle games are all still selling, and do you know why? People do play them. If your sentence had ended at "like i play just FPS games," that would have been okay, but since it didn't, I felt the need to call this out. I don't think this is true either. That's like saying you can't quit drugs, smoking, alcohol, violent movies, coffee, or loud music. You CAN quit, it's just hard when you're addicted, and for some things it is harder than others. Quitting gaming is harder than some things, and easier than others, but you can quit. The reason you don't see people quitting very often is that it doesn't have as many adverse effects on your daily life (as long as you aren't losing sleep) as something like alcoholism. I have seen people start playing games less when it becomes destructive to their relationships, but an hour here or there doesn't hurt. Are you talking about this clip: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Look at the views, over ten million. If this was a daily occurrence for teens all over the country, this video would be nothing special. People don't upload videos of themselves sitting in a corning and feeling minor sadness over a lost WoW account, they upload outrageous outbursts that are seriously out of the norm, most of which are fake. Yes, WoW can be addictive, but only if you make it to be so. If you're obsessed with maxing out your level and being #1 on the PvP rankings, you are going to be spending 16 odd hours per day during the weekend. If you're only in it to have some fun and see your buddies online now and then, it'll probably be very easy for you to quit if you need to. Have you quit playing games? Have you tried..? You are not a gamer if you play games 1-2 hours a day. You are not a gamer if you don't play games at least 5 days a week.

Well, it would be totally wrong for illegals to benefit from this healthcare, no matter which side of the debate you're on. The system is coming out of taxpayer pockets; regardless of Obama's claims that it won't, we all know better. (Even if it wouldn't raise taxes, "the government's money" comes out of our wallets.) The illegal aliens don't pay taxes, and shouldn't even be here, so we really shouldn't go out of our way to make them comfortable. What I heard was that while the bill never said it would cover illegal aliens, it didn't have any clause that said they couldn't be covered. Here's an article that I found that illustrates this well: http://obamayoulie.com/ The site will most likely be edited at some point, so here's what it said to anyone reading this in future (This is a direct quote from the article): Anyway, apparently Senator Wilson had a little chat with Obama, and they will be adding some enforcement measures into the bill, which is a step in the right direction. Personally, I think the idea of government controlled healthcare is a terrible idea though. It's a waste of taxpayer dollars, and most of the uninsured are people who either don't want/need healthcare, or are between jobs and will get healthcare in the future. Either way, I don't believe it is a right for every American to be insured under healthcare, nor should it be required. At what point do we draw the line between what is privilege and what is a right? Should home insurance be a right? How about life insurance? Do we need the government to pay for our food and electricity too? Also, this healthcare bill won't even kick in until 2013, so why is Obama in such a hurry to get it passed? The answer is simple: He can see that the debate is starting to turn in favor of abolishing his "public option," and that is why he wants to see it go through as soon as possible. Notice from truefusion: Direct quotes should be placed in quotes.

I'm American, so English is my native tongue. My mom tried to teach me and my siblings Spanish a long time ago, and I've retained some of it, but I don't speak it fluently. I also had some friends in my neighborhood from Russia, so I tried learning that for a few months. I only remember a few words of Russian though. Then last year, I took a Japanese class at the community college. I passed my first quarter by some miracle, but flunked the second, so I only know about 15 Kanji. Still, I speak more Japanese than the other languages I've gotten hints of, so I guess you'd call Japanese my second language. I'm considering retaking that second quarter this year, to raise my GPA.

That's pretty cool. Of course, it's more than I'd probably need in a long time, but hey, games and programs are getting bigger and bigger. Speaking of which, I wonder if you can run games off of it. It would be really need to have a whole load of games on a tiny thumb drive, and be able to pop it into a computer anywhere and just start playing. Flash drives are usually way to slow to do that, but I wonder if this one could pull it off... Hm...

He didn't say she used Game Maker; he said she made over $100 each game she made, and wanted to know if he could do something similar with Game Maker. My answer is that it would be a first, it's highly unlikely that you could make that much money for a single sale on a Game Maker game. You do have the rights to your own games, and you can sell them for whatever price you choose, but it's hard for an independent developer, not only with Game Maker, but with any game making tool, to make a huge profit on a game. Just look at the 360's indie games up for sale. Those games were made in C# with XNA's libraries, highly professional tools, and they're selling for about $5-10 USD. Game Maker has quite open possibilities, it can make games of any genre, 2D or 3D, (though it'll lag like crazy in most 3D games) so it's not a matter of "you can't make a professional and graphically pleasing game with Game Maker." It's just that doing so with any tool on your own is quite a feat.

In years past, before anyone knew it caused so many health issues, it was considered fashionable and cool. Now we know better, but even still, it retains some of that image. Nowadays, pressure from friends and other people who the naive might consider their friends can push one to smoke. There's also the curiosity factor, wondering what it's like, and of course being arrogant and thinking "I'm just gonna try one, it'll only be one, as if one cigarette can hook me? Pshh, yeah right." Of course, I'm not speaking from experience, as I've never smoked, and I never plan to. It's a dangerous addiction that can substantially shorten your lifespan, and the upsides to it are few (if there even are any). It's not something worth getting started on, as it's easy to get into an addiction, but hard to get out.

I'd have to say Fallout 3, there's an amazing amount of content in it, and the game just never gets old. If you want a game like Oblivion, this is a good choice considering it was made by the same people. It's placed in the future, so it won't have that fantasy RPG feel to it, but it is a blast, and something all serious gamers should look into. There's over 100 hours of gameplay, and you can make it even longer with the five DLC packs available. You also get to choose your own path; you can be a friendly do-gooder, or an evil chaos creating maniac. The characters are fun and well thought out, and it has one of the best storylines of a western create-your-own-character RPG that you can find. I could go on all night about it, it's amazing.Just a notice for parents, however, it's rated M, and it well deserves that rating. There's graphic violence, a lot of swearing, and some... Errr... Highly suggestive themes. It's not a game for the kids.

Well, I've never heard of anyone selling a Game Maker game for anywhere close to $100 USD. I've seen them sell for $20 though, so if you were to sell five copies at that price you would make $100 USD, right? Anyway, most Game Maker games are free, some are even open source. The vast majority of GM users are in it for the fun and experience. However, there are people who sell their games, and they generally do okay with that, so yes, it's totally possible.

Of course I would buy that if I could! Can you imagine all the amazing things you could do with such a car? It would seriously cut back on the morning (and evening, for that matter) commute. You could drive to any nearby island you wanted. It would be truly amazing. Unfortunately, I don't have the funds for such a car, and I probably won't for a rather long time. But hey, one can dream.

Ah yes, I almost forgot about XBox Live. I love the game service itself, but the community is... Something else... I know what you're saying, the games are populated by a bunch of kids. (Very young kids in most cases.) They don't seem to have even the slightest sense of sportsmanship or common decency, and just spout random trash talk by the minute. It's for this reason that it's best to play Halo 3, or any similar games with a friend. It's quite surprising how much less that sort of thing bothers you when you have your buddies around to laugh with you. It also doesn't feel as bad when you lose fifty times in a row. (True story.) Guess that relates to what you said about the LAN parties. Anyways, yeah, Live can get pretty bad, it does vary from game to game though. I'd have to say Halo 3 was the worst, but then there's games like Soul Calibur IV where people rarely talk at all, which is actually probably for the best most of the time.

Thanks. And I did mention rooms, but only briefly: I made the images myself before releasing the tutorial, actually. Well, since they weren't necessary I didn't feel the need to mention them. I myself generally do use semicolons, but I usually just use = in my own code. I noticed that bug shortly after posting. Oh well, I'll probably revise that later, but for now I'm tired out just writing that behemoth. I probably will do that; a more advanced platformer tutorial. It could have slopes and the like. Thanks for the suggestion Anyway, once again thanks a lot - I will be looking forward to your next tutorial smile.gif Keep up the good work! You do have the rights to anything you make, there actually are a few Game Maker games that are being sold as we speak. (Untitled Story, 10 Million BC, and Bumps to name a few.) In the lite version, you're required to mention that you used Game Maker somewhere in the credits should you sell your game for actual money, but it does that automatically on the loading screen. The Pro version lets you do whatever you want.

But it's so much fun for parties to show off your mad GH skills. :PIn other news, I've been trying out Expert again. I'm able to pass a few songs now, but it's still awful shaky. Does anybody happen to have any tips for getting a high% in Expert? I struggle the most with those solos and such at the moment, you have to have real quick reflexes for those. I wanna be an epic Guitar Hero master like those guys on youtube.

Tutorial: Making a simple platformer in Game Maker. (I know this is a tutorial, but it's directly linked in with Game Development, so I wasn't sure which forum to post it in. I hope this is okay.) ________________________________________ This tutorial is for anyone looking for a way to make their own computer game; more specifically, platformers. It is seriously basic stuff, but it should help get you started in the world of Game Maker. _________________________________________ First off, if you're going to use Game Maker, you should know what it is. Game Maker was made in 1999 by a guy named Mark Overmars, and is one of the most popular pieces of game development software for amateurs due to it's easy to use coding language and interface. It's great for people with no programming background to use when they want to get their toes wet with game design. First things first, you need to have Game Maker to start. You'll find the download here: http://www.yoyogames.com/gamemaker You can get the pro edition which comes with some extra features for $20, but you won't need it to make games, nor will you for this tutorial. ________________________________________________________ Once you've got that installed, open it up, and proceed to the main screen. It should look like this: http://i32.tinypic.com/28itfe0.png For starters, lets get the graphics out of the way. Click the icon in the bar towards the top of the screen that looks like a red pac-man. You'll end up here: http://i29.tinypic.com/10xstvr.png Now for the fun part. Where it says "sprite0,"enter a name for the sprite. It's a good idea to use the prefix 'spr_' in sprite names, so that if you happen to have an object and a sprite with the same name, you won't run into problems. You can name it "spr_player," or whatever else you want. I will assume you called it spr_player for the remainder of the tutorial, so do remember what you called it if you went with something else. Once you have the name out of the way, click "Edit Sprite." You will then see a green square in the middle of the new window, that is the sprite the game will use for the player. Now you certainly don't want a green square to be your character, do you? Of course not. So double click it, which brings you to a window that should feel a lot like MS Paint. From there, you can draw your protagonist. Or you can simply copy and paste one of the sprites listed later in this topic if you're feeling lazy. When you're done, click the green checkmark button in the upper left. Once you're back at the main sprite screen, uncheck the box that says "Precise Collision Checking," having this turned on can cause some issues with our platforming code later, depending on the sprite you chose. When that's taken care of, you can click "OK" if you're done, you can always bring this back up to make changes by double clicking the sprite's name in the list on your left. Create a second sprite now, and name it "spr_enemy," (Or whatever else you like) this will be our enemy sprite in case you hadn't already guessed. You'll do pretty much the same thing as you did for your player sprite, so just repeat the steps listed in there if you forgot anything. And we come to our third sprite. We need to make a goal that the player must reach in order to complete the level. I'm pretty sure most platformers have those. anyhow, I'll assume you called that one "spr_goal," but again, you can name it anything. Now you'll need some sprite for the ground. You will follow similar steps, but there are some things to keep in mind. You want the ground sprite to fill up the whole image, so that you can have them side by side with no breaks. The problem with this is that Game Maker automatically sets the transparent color to the color of the bottom left pixel. This can present a problem if you don't take that into consideration. So once you're done with that sprite, make sure you uncheck the box on the sprite properties window that says "Transparent." So you have the sprites you need all set for now, you can start on coding these objects. Most tutorials will have you start off with a nifty little feature Game Maker has called "Drag and Drop," which allows you to simply drag the icons that tell your object what to do into the window and start testing. I am not going to show you how to do it that way, however. Once you get started on D&D, it'll be very difficult for you to switch to using the code later, and coding gives you so much more freedom. So let's get started. Now you can click that icon in the top that has a little blue sphere, this is the object icon. You'll be using objects for pretty much everything, you can't have a game without those. After clicking that icon, you should have a window that looks like this: http://i31.tinypic.com/ht5q8p.png First, where it says <no sprite> under the name of your object make sure you click it and select your spr_player. Also, let's give the object a name besides object0, I'll be using "obj_player". Now, I've highlighted three important buttons there, keep those in mind. What you should do first is click "Add Event," which I've highlighted with the number '1.' Then click the button with the light-bulb that says "Create." This means that the code you put in the box to the right will be executed as soon as that object is created. Now click the "Control" tab to the right, which I've highlighted with '2.' Then drag that little page icon that I highlighted as '3' into the box on the right. You'll get a new window up. The next part is a bit tricky, so I'll show it to you all at once, then show you what each part does one by one. Put this code in: can_jump=1gravity=0.3gravity_direction=270Here's what they all do: can_jump=1; This is just a variable. A variable is a word that game maker reads as a value. Because of this code, Game Maker now knows that whatever "can_jump" is, is equal to 1. This doesn't do anything yet, but it will. It'll make more sense later. gravity=0.3; This tells game maker to set the force of gravity on this object to be 0.3. We could set it to anything; 0 for no gravity, or 1000 for super intense gravity. (But you really, REALLY, don't want to set it that high.) You can even set it to negative gravity, and make objects float up into the air. Anyway, you already know what gravity does, so I think I've explained all I have to. gravity_direction=270; This code may seem a little confusing. By default, the gravity_direction is set to 0. It's an angle, and that angle is the direction of the gravity. At 0, your object will go falling off to the right, and that is NOT what we want at all. 270 degrees should bring us to an angle that points downwards, which is the way we want our gravity to go. Did I move to fast? Hope that all made sense. The next part gets a little tricky. Create a new event, (remember the "Add Event" button) and make it a "Step" event. (Not thtend step that will also pop up when you press that button.) A step event executes itself every single frame. This is useful in a lot of cases. Anyway, here's the code I want you to put into it: if place_free(x,y+1){gravity=0.3}else{gravity=0}Do you see what I did there? As foreign as the code may seem to you, you can probably derive a few things from this. I'm asking the game a question, is the place with the coordinates (x,y+1) empty? x and y refer to the object, the player's, horizontal and vertical position. (X being horizontal, Y being vertical.) So we're asking if the position that is horizontally the same as the player's, but a little bit farther down, is "free". If it is, it must mean that we are not on solid ground. So now we have those brackets. The brackets right after this code say to do whatever is between them if the place is free at x,y+1. In this case, it's setting the gravity to 0.3, the value we decided on in the create event. That makes sense, right? Now we have this other bit of code right after. "else" with the brackets means to do what is in these brackets if the expression mentioned above is NOT correct. In this case, we ARE on solid ground. Having the gravity on when you're touching the ground can cause some glitches, so we want it off in this case. Simple, no? Now, the next bit of code I want to do is going to require we make a new object, so click that blue sphere icon again. We'll call this one ob_ground, and make sure you select the spr_ground for it's sprite. Before you click "OK," make sure you check the box that says "Solid," this is very important. Now let's go back to our obj_player window. Click "Add Event," and this time click "Collision." You should see two things appear in the drop down list, your "obj_player," and "obj_ground." Select obj_ground. Now create a code block by dragging the page icon again. This code will activate whenever the player collides with the ground. If the player is on the ground, it will activate every frame, just like the step event. Here's what you'll want to put into your code box: vspeed=0can_jump=1Can you guess what these are for? vspeed=0 set the player's vertical speed to 0, that means if the player is falling, this tells it to stop. can_jump=1 sets that variable that we initiated in the create event to 1. We do this because we don't want the player to be able to jump whenever they press up, then you could do infinite jumps in midair, making the game excruciatingly easy, and unrealistic. Since the player has touched down on the ground, we change it from 0, to 1. We'll be using this variable later, so keep it in mind. Well the physics are taken care of now, but out player can't really do anything but fall, and that makes for a pretty boring game. What we need to do now is allow for some user input. What that means is that when the player pushes a button, something will happen. Let's start with moving left and right. So click "Add Event" once again, and click "Keyboard," then select <Right>. After drag your page icon to the right hand box again, and put in this code: if place_free(x+5,y){x+=5}What this does, is first checks to see if we have room to move to the right. If the place is free, meaning no solid objects, at the coordinates x+5,y, we move there. This'll move us five pixels to the right. You can make your player faster or slower with this code by changing the 5 to a higher or lower number, just be sure to change both the 5 in the x+=5 and the place_free(). Do the same thing create a Keyboard event, but do <Left>instead, and use this code: if place_free(x-5,y){x-=5}Now for the jumping. After all, what platform game is complete without being able to jump from... Well... Platforms? Make another keyboard event, this time with <Up> as the key being used. Here's the code you'll want in there. if can_jump=1{vspeed=-8can_jump=0}Remember can_jump from earlier? We set it to 1 when we collided with the ground. If it's 1 when we're on the ground, and being on the ground means we can jump, then we should be able to jump as long as can_jump is equal to 1. Once we start this code, we set can_jump back to 0, since once we've left the ground we can't jump again. We set the vertical speed to negative 8, since we're not falling, we're going up. So I think our player is fully functional for now, so you probably want to test him out. How do we do this though? Well first we need a room for our player. Click the icon just to the right of the one we used for objects that looks like a window. (Windows OS window, not a window window. =P) You'll get a screen up that says "Room Properties." There will be a gray area in the window, a grid, and you should see your obj_ground in the window to your left. Click around on the gray area, and you'll see your obj_ground appear on there. If you have any issues with them deleting when you want them to overlap, uncheck the "Delete underlying" box. Once you've got a good supply of ground, click the little preview of it in the window to your left, and select your obj_player. Now click wherever you want him to go, just make sure it's somewhere over an obj_ground. Also, if you misplace anything, remember you can right click to delete stuff. Once you've done that, click the green play button icon in the bar up top, that says "Run the game" when you hover over it. (Or you can press F5) It will load a few things, and then you should see the gray room you just made, with your player in it and all. You can even move around. Pretty cool, eh? So that's nifty and all, but there's no danger. What kind of game has no risk? We need obstacles, and other ways for our player to meet his doom. I'll start with an easy one, let's make it so our hero can die when he walks off the edge and falls below. So go back to the obj_player window, and create a new event. Select "Other," then <Outside Room>. Create a code box, (you know the drill) and put this code in: if y>room_height{show_message("You are dead!")room_restart()}So here's what this code does. When you're outside of the room, it does a check to make sure you've actually fallen to the bottom, and haven't just jumped off of the top part of the screen, by checking if your vertical coordinate is lower than the rooms height. If it is, we display the message, "You are dead!", a reference to the Resident Evil games. You can, of course, put whatever game over message you want here, just make sure you have it in the quotation marks as shown in my example. Then, we restart the room. This puts the player and everything else back the way it was before we started. You can test this code if you like now. So that's pretty cool, eh? Well it isn't enough if you ask me, we need more danger! How about an enemy, bent on one thing and one thing alone: Taking out our hero. So let's make yet another object, and call it obj_enemy. In the enemy's create event, put this code: direction=0speed=2This is pretty straightforward code. We are doing the enemy's code a little differently than we did for the player, for the sake of simplicity. Since the enemy isn't going to do any jumping, we aren't going to use gravity; so long as our enemy starts on the ground, it'll look just fine. Now what the direction=0 does is set our direction to the right. Since we're on a 360 degree system, 180 would be left, simple enough, right? Speed sets the enemies pixels moved per step, and you can make it faster for harder enemies should you choose to do so. Now let's create a step event for our enemy. Put in this code: if place_free(x,y+1){if direction=0{direction=180}else{direction=0}}Hope that doesn't confuse you too much, putting an if statement inside of another if statement. I'll break it down, in case you're confused. If the place is free at x,y+1, it tells us that we're moving off the edge. Our enemy shouldn't walk off the edge, so when it gets that close, it should really reverse direction. So, if we're moving off the edge, change directions, and that's where the next bit of code comes in. If we're moving right, change the direction to left, but if we were already moving left, go right. Simple enough, right? Remember you ALWAYS have to close the brackets that you create, you'll have errors if you don't. Well our enemy should be functional now, we can go back to our obj_player window and make it hurt when you touch it. Make another collision event for obj_player, this time with obj_enemy. In a codebox here, put this: show_message("You are dead!")room_restart()I've already explained this code, so you can proceed to add enemies to your room, and test it. It works? Great! But you really should have some way to kill these things, am I right? So here's what we do, you know that code for colliding with obj_enemy that I showed you? Let's shake it up a bit. What if we jump on their heads? Yeah, that would take care of them, so let's do our code there this way: if y<other.y-4{with(other){instance_destroy()}}else{show_message("You are dead!")room_restart()}That may seem complex, but most of what it uses are things we've seen before, x and y coordinates, if statements, and our game over message. The new parts are the use of "other," instance_destroy(), and the with() statement. Other refers to the object you are colliding with. We could use obj_enemy here if there was only one obj_enemy on screen, but since we might have more, we need to know that it's specifically the obj enemy we're colliding with right now. instance_destroy() destroys any object that executes it from the game. We check to see if we are higher than the enemy by at least five pixels when we collide. If we are, than we do this thing with the with statement. The with statement executes the code within the brackets for the object in question. We don't want to destroy the player, we want to destroy "other", so we use with when using the instance_destroy() function. Now try jumping on those enemies, better huh? So, we have enemies, we have platforms, we have our player, we only need one more thing; a goal. You need something for the player to try and reach. So create one more object, obj_goal. You don't need any code here, just select the sprite you want to use as the goal. Now go back to your obj_player window, and make a collision event for obj_goal. This is the code you want to put into it: if room=room_last{show_message("Congratulations, you've won!")game_end()}else{room_goto_next()}This code checks to see if we're in the last room, if we are, we've won when we touch the goal, so tell the player that and end the game, otherwise, proceed to the next room. That means you can keep adding rooms after the one you already have, and make your game as long as you like. Congratulations, you just finished your first Game Maker game, that wasn't so bad, was it? A few images you may use when making your game: Blob: Bald Dude: Mushroom: Bricks: Goal: And if you're stuck, here's the .GMK project file of this whole tutorial: https://app.box.com/shared/pxqjfg86gn Hope someone finds this useful. EDIT: Oh, and if you guys like this, I'd be happy to write another Game Maker tutorial like it in another genre, I'll take requests.

I probably should, but I don't. I don't have anything really important in my inbox, so I don't really think about it. When I get a REALLY important message, however, like one with a PIN number to activate a product, I'll usually save it as a TXT file somewhere on my hard drive. My mail is stored on the internet in GMail, so I don't have to worry about getting a virus and losing it or anything, but in case of hackers it would be good to have a backup. But like I said, I'm really lazy, so I don't.

I've been called out for lagging on Grand Chase several times, and I AM on DSL. It really stinks. When that happens I generally ask them, "so you want me to quit and never play again?" And they say "no, just stop lagging." To which my response is "oh gee, good idea, I'll just turn off the lag switch on my router and everything will be okay." As if anyone lags on purpose. It's irritating beyond words, as there's really nothing more I can do about my lag than what I'm already doing. (Turning off all outside programs, making sure I'm not downloading anything, even pointing a fan at my computer to keep it cool.) So yeah, it annoys me too.

It is possible, and it does happen. People don't like to convert when they're under the impression they didn't really have a choice about it, or that they only did it because someone told them to. People converted that way are likely to revert to their old ways very shortly. People want to know that when they are taking on a new religion that it was of their own volition. The only way to convert someone that way is to lead by example and be a good friend It doesn't always work, but it works better than shouting in their face what will happen if they don't convert.Erdemir, there aren't several different bibles, there's only one bible, which is a collection of books by different people who directly experienced God. They acknowledge each other, and don't contradict each other. I really don't get why someone would drop their faith over the fact that there are multiple books in the bible.

Looks great, the interface looks similar to that of GMail. (And I love GMail.)Too bad I don't have a smart phone, or I wouldn't hesitate to apply for an invite.

I've been a member there for a while now. It seemed too good to be true when I first heard about it, and so far, it has been. Yeah, they've got an awesome lineup of free stuff, and earning points is terribly easy. The main problem here is: They're always "fresh out" of everything. I've never seen a single item in stock, not even the cheapest things. I imagine when and if they finally do get anything in stock, earning points will be harder, the prices will rise, and there'll be ways to accumulate points faster by either paying or visiting their sponsors and doing offers and such. I like the site, it has a great layout and it looks cool, bur so far I've been unimpressed with the lack of anything to spend you points on.

Yes, PCs can do more, but that doesn't make them better. That's like saying a cellular phone is better than a calculator simply because the phone can calculate, AND call people. In terms of games, what's nice about a console is that you don't need to upgrade it. While a computer may become obsolete, there may be conflicting software, or you might just not have the resources needed to run a game on your PC, a game console is always compatible with the software being made for it. PCs are also susceptible to crashing and contracting viruses, while a game system's greatest threat is being stepped on my your siblings. Offline multiplayer is another plus; very few PC games have it. It's such a blast to sit on the couch in the living room in front of you nice big TV with a group of friends, something that most PCs can't do. Gaming consoles are made for one thing, and one thing alone, and that is games. If you just want to talk in terms of games, consoles do have certain advantages over PCs, I don't think it's all black and white. You can't simply state that one is better than the other; they just don't match up. That's my take on it.

But they already have that license. And the initial profit may be the same, but what about after the fact? That buyer certainly won't be purchasing any of those windows games or software already lined up on the shelf. Growing, yes, but it's still no where near as expansive as the huge selection of software for Microsoft; it is, like it or not, the most used OS and has been for a long time. And no, there's nothing wrong with free software, but Best Buy can't sell any of that. If they were to promote Linux they would have less commercial software to sell for it. I'm not talking about what's a better choice for the user, I mean which Best Buy could potentially make more money off of. Best Buy won't make a penny off of distributing free software, only off of the hardware that runs it. Of course not, I'm talking about the free distros, like Ubuntu, Debian and Gentoo. Linux's free distros can be just as good if not better than many of the paid ones. As I said, I was thinking from a business perspective. I have nothing against Linux or people who use it. Heck, I was planning on downloading it a few years back, but seeing as my parents put down the money on that computer, and didn't trust me to dual boot it properly, I had to settle on just Windows. There's nothing wrong with Linux, I just don't think there's quite as much money to be made off of it on Best Buy's part. Besides, it would be a colossal trouble for Best Buy to buy the rights to several distros and then produce a bunch of computers pre-packaged with each, so what they would probably do is pick out one distro to sell, which kills part of what makes Linux so great in the first place: The huge selection of distros available to you, most of which are free.

It's actually some font called "Batik Regular," it came with the computer. It has similarities to "Courier New," most of the letters are printed the same way, but there are differences, and the one I used comes with that aged effect. And I know Xisto hosts all kinds of web languages. To be honest, I don't know why I put "PHP Hosting," it seemed right at the time I guess. Anyhow, yeah, I'll take a shot at that... Later, when I have some time. I'll edit this post or make a new one depending if this gets another reply between now and then.