Emasher

Sounds amazing. Its been a while since I've actually been looking forward to a game.

I thought I'd bump the thread to put a bit of a spotlight on this awesome mod: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1090288-124-extrabiomesxl-v112-updated-d/ Basically it adds 28 new biomes to the game and there's an add on out for it that adds another 16 on top of that. Now, some of them might just be slight tweaks of existing biomes (for instance one of them is a combination of a jungle and mountain biome) but its still amazing. Also, 1.3 is apparently going to include the modding API (called plugins) : http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Upcoming_features

Everything's written from the ground up in PHP mostly. Assuming we're talking about the same thing.

That's kind of what I was thinking. However, part of the problem may have something to do with the fact that there's really no data to display. Anyway I'm probably going to have to push the project back a bit though due to a bunch of other stuff that I have going on now, so I'll probably create a new thread at that point (at which time I'll have updated the design a bit). Thanks for the input though.

As a libertarian I see freedom of speech as one of the most important rights we, well actually we don't really have it, but at any rate, I think its important. The only restrictions I find appropriate are real threats, convincing others to commit acts of violence, spreading seriously harmful information you know to be false, and stuff that violates more important rights of others. People get offended way to easily these days, and laws to keep people from getting offended are generally arbitrary, and almost always only passed to create a political advantage for whoever is in power at the time. Most of the time they also have ridiculous double standards associated with them. I know from past threads that most of you disagree with my viewpoint, so I'll leave it at that.

Yea, definitely not in the friend zone this time.

There are tons of mountains that look like that in Canada and the US. There's nothing particularly special about that one view.

Its entirely possible the photographs were originally taken for that purpose, or at least, never made it online in any other form.

For the last few months, I've been working on a fairly large web based project. Its been a while since I've put together a website, and I was just wondering if someone here might be able to critique the overall design. Unfortunately I've just been working on it on a local testing server, and its not quite ready to upload to a proper server yet, so I can only post a screenshot for now. Keep in mind a few of the elements are placeholders such as the "logo" image.

Perhaps it was a little bit more positive considering the context of the conversation was her basically begging me to ask her out... She seems a bit crazy though, so I'm thinking its much more likely that I'll be the one doing the "friend-zoning" in this case.

Today I was described as "Educated, cute, [of having] perfect grammar, [and] the kind of guy every girl wants." I suppose that can only be a good thing.

I would wait until one of the big sales to buy a whole bunch of stuff (there's one every few months), but I would say the must have titles are: -Anything by Valve -Crysis -Anything by Bethesda -Various GTA games -Aquaria -Just Cause 2 -The Civilization series -The Total War series Just skimming quickly though my collection. Of course, besides maybe Valve and Bethesda games, I wouldn't really bother if you've already played the console versions of said games.

Its been legal in my country for a number of years now. I honestly don't see what the big deal is. Its basically just a contract between two individuals and the government. It seems insane to try to stop individuals from entering into a contract just because of their gender.

The real alternative is the ThinkPad x220, its not as thin as the MacBook air, but (provided you get the good battery) it has a better battery life, and can be customized to be much more powerful (than a loaded MBA) for significantly cheaper. ThinkPads also have pretty good Linux support, if you ever need a Unix like OS, as well as TrackPoint, which is much better than any trackpad, including Apple's.

I usually just type everything out using Notepad++ and then just format it in Word at the end.

1) I'd choose option A, as my friend might as well benefit. I don't really care about the £1 though. 2) Provided I don't know what the other person will do, and our actions are independent from each other, giving the evidence seems like the most beneficial strategy as the risk is the same in both cases, but one has a better reward.

Interesting thread. I see it as there being a type of 'objective' (based more on cultural perceptions) judgement of a person's attractiveness, as well as a more subjective personal feeling of attraction you have to a person. For instance, I'm straight, but I can tell when another male is considered attractive without actually being attracted to him, whereas if I met an attractive female, I might personally find her attractive.

Programming really is something you learn by doing though. Going through the material beforehand might help slightly, but you're not going to learn it that way. I would suggest rather than reading over syntax references, use that time to build small programs, I would suggest a few exercises, but I don't know how far you are.

My opinion as usual, governments need to stop interfering with the internet (and most other things). I don't support piracy, but its not a criminal matter, its a civil one. A government's only responsibility is to hear civil lawsuits regarding piracy, not to make laws criminalizing everything every major lobby doesn't like.

Like I said, I didn't learn Java from a book, so I can't recommend any one book. A place to start might be looking at some of the more prestigious universities that teach their introductory CS courses in Java and see what books they use. I've learned most of what I know from courses (I'm a computer science student) as well as working on my own projects, which is nice, but if you don't have access to something like that, books seem to be the next best thing. Video tutorials can be good as well, so perhaps give YouTube a visit.

Don't start with UI stuff. Especially if you're going to be using Java (both Swing and AWT(as far as GUI stuff goes), Java's GUI libraries, are terrible). Start with simple command line applications and then look at GUI libraries once you're a lot more comfortable with Java. As far as development environments go, BlueJ is okay for beginners, but its only better in that the other full IDEs because it has very few features. Another IDE designed for beginners is Dr. Java. I've never used it though. Personally though, I would recommend Notepad++ (Windows) or Smultron (OS X) for coding, and just using the command line to compile and run stuff. To do this, once you've installed both the JRE and the JDK, you just navigate to the directory where your program is and type: javac *.java and then: java *name of the class with your main method* to run your program. Its simple, and gets rid of all the bullshit you have to deal with when using IDEs, which are more for serious development. As far as web languages go, HTML and CSS will not help at all. If you know some of the programming aspects of PHP and actionscript, like variables and control structures, you may have a slight advantage over someone who's never seen code before. And just for reference, here's a list of topics to learn about: Absolutely need to learn: -The main method -Console input and output -primitive type variables (boolean, byte, int, char, long, float, double) -static, final, private, public, protected, etc. -commenting -control structures (if statements, loops, etc.) -arrays (don't bother with dynamic arrays for now though) -methods -classes, constructors, instance variables, objects, pointers, etc. -Strings (and string manipulation) Will probably be useful latter on: -Basic data structures (primarily linked lists) -Time complexity (just the basics) -Basic ADTs (stacks, queues, etc.) -programming standards -Understanding what the garbage collector does Useful for java development: Java libraries (lang, math, awt, swing, io, etc.) Generic typing Any good book should go through at least everything on the first list.

Alright, its great that you're wanting to learn how to program, but it sounds like you're not planning to go about it the best way. First of all, forget android apps for now. Its good to keep a goal in mind, but if you try and learn to program that way, you'll likely develop bad habits, and have trouble applying what you learn to other scenarios. Essentially, you'll end up learning only how to do the things that you needed to do to develop apps. You won't know how to do anything else, you won't know how anything actually works, and you'll develop terrible habits. Java is a good language to use to learn how to program, you don't have to worry about things like memory management, and pointers are used automatically. You could call it a fool proof language really. However, your goal shouldn't be to learn Java, it should be to learn how to program in general. That way you'll very easily be able to pick up other languages latter on and essentially do whatever you want. You'll be less likely to pick up bad habits as well if you go about it that way. Think of Java more as the tool you use to learn concepts that can be applied with anything. Even though you don't have to learn about things like memory management and pointers if you're just learning Java, keep in mind that its a very good idea to learn how they factor into Java, as it will give you a much better understanding of how things work, and will allow you to write better code. That all said, I can't really recommend a specific book, as I didn't learn from one. A lot of people recommend SICP (http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/) though, although I think it uses Lisp, not Java. I could certainly recommend a few books latter on for learning things like data structures and stuff like that, but that sort of stuff is more advanced.

If you have to use iTunes its fine. Its nowhere near as good as the Mac version, but it works. For what it is, it has a massive file size (~256MB I think) though. As far as browsers go, DO NOT, under any circumstances use Safari on Windows, even in OS X its one of the weaker browsers, but in windows it has the added problem of terrible performance and an interface that resembles a badly made Aqua skin. The only thing it has going for it at all is the fact that it uses WebKit, which both IE (9) and Chrome use. Chrome/Chromium are good if speed is what you want, but they don't have the add on support that Firefox does. Firefox is pretty versatile, and more recent versions are quite a bit faster than it has been when compared to Chrome. Firefox doesn't have the same memory issues that Chrome does. Opera while not absolutely terrible isn't great at conforming to standards (meaning pages don't always display correctly), although it tends to be the most innovative as far as new features are concerned (although the same features are usually implemented better in other browsers latter on). IE, although better since version 9 is still the browser of people who don't know how to install another browser.

ISPs don't have the infrastructure to effectively monitor and record the information that passes through them, and the information that the government has about individuals (that we actually know about) is largely irrelevant. Certainly what you say about the reason Chrome exists is true, but its naive to think, with absolute certainty that's the only reason for the browser's existence. Especially seeing as Google's entire business model is based around targeted advertising and selling information. When you can use the open source alternative, Chromium, you can be sure that any information you don't specifically submit to google is kept private (as people have spent time going through the source code to make sure that's not the case). As far as Chromium's stability goes, I never had any problems with it when I used to use it (switched to Firefox when 4.0 came out). Development branches of software usually aren't nearly as buggy as people make them out to be. Having said this, I do like google as a company. They've continuously been one of the more innovative of the large tech companies, and I use their products every day. I still don't trust them, however, nor do I trust any company.

Netflix isn't about brand new content. You get the occasional television show that gets updated regularly, but the majority of content doesn't get up there until a little while after the DVD release. As far as their update schedule goes, on the Canadian version there tends to be new content released every few weeks. Some of it isn't heavily promoted (especially things like documentaries and niche stuff) so you do have to look for it.