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I have never really used them, but the process would be something like this:

Open one of the files.
On the actions panel (which you may have to turn on) press the New action button at the bottom.
Name it "Scale Down" or something, and press Record.
Now go the Image > Image Size menu and scale it down by the amount that you want them all to be scaled down.
Press Stop Recording on the actions panel.
Now you can close that file and don't save.
To automate the process for a whole directory of images now, go to File > Automate > Batch.
Select the action that you recorded, the source folder that your images are in, and a destination folder to put the scaled down ones in.
Now if you press ok it should go through them all, saving them.  You'll probably be saving them as JPGs, so the quality slider will show up on each save operation, just press ok for each one.  You can probably stop that somehow, but I haven't used actions much.

I'd learn C++ first, once you know that you pretty much know all you'll need for a smooth transition into Java and C# (the opposite is not so true, imo), took me a few days to get used to Java after coding C++ for a year because it's basically C++ minus the complicated parts, with a very nice and easy to understand standard library (And Java to C# is even easier).  Out of C# and Java I'd say Java is best for cross platform development, there's a JRE for basically any platform you'd want to develop for, and you don't even need to recompile your code to run it on another platform.  I'm currently trying to get a C# app working on a linux server, and I can't even work out how mono (open source .net implementation) works on windows, can't compile a thing so far, at least once I've worked that out it does seem to be quite mature from the documentation, it does require at least a recompile of your programs though.
You won't want to know just one language, which ones you end up using will depend what you are doing, different languages are useful for different purposes, an IRC bot is something that Java would be perfect for, C# is a well designed language, good for tidy development of windows GUI apps, C++ is great for game engine development, C is perfect for writing a cross platform codec library in, assembly is nice for putting inline into your C++ code for fast hand optimised loops, I'm not particularly attached to any one of them, they're all useful languages.  Once you know one it takes very little time to learn another.

Flukeblake, you are technically too young to be on this forum, the age limit was put in to avoid some of the more pointless threads and posts that our younger members tend to make, so I think you should avoid starting threads unless you have to, at least until you've been around a bit longer.  It's not that we have had the same thread before, it's just that it's not useful or interesting to read a list of people's phones, so I'm going to lock this.

Ogg* is an open source audio codec taht is free to use.  It's basically the same as .mp3 as far as you are concerned, all you need is a program that will make ogg files.  Audacity is one program that can do that, and can convert mp3 files to ogg files.  You use them just the same as you would mp3 files in AGS.

*ogg is actually a container format, the audio codec is really called vorbis, and ogg files can also contain video, but AGS only supports ogg audio so it's not very important.

I mean you can't use mp3 audio.  Not without paying a lot of money for a commercial mp3 player license.  It's fine though, you can use ogg audio instead, that has no restrictions.

Yes you can, there are a few limitations, such as not being able to use mp3 audio, but aside from those there's no problem.  The information is in the help file.

Personally, I think compiling ogg theora into AGS, on all platforms, would be a nice move.Ã,  Aside from the cross platform advantage it gives everyone the ability to use movies in their games without worrying about what codecs are installed on the players system.Ã,  Theora is under a BSD type license like ogg vorbis, and it seems comparable to mpeg4/divx/xvid in video compression.
Another great thing that could come of AGS decoding movies internally is being able to play movies as part of the scene, on the background, for example.Ã,  I need this for the game I'm working on, and am in the process of writing a plugin to do it but I think it's so useful that it could be part of AGS.Ã,  It'd probably add 100kb or so to the exe size, I am not sure how much removing the current video system would save, but I expect it's not too much of an increase.

Edit: and more importantly, Gilbert could play movies in the dos engine!

Viruses don't usually do things like that, they'll either do nothing, or break things, but they don't make cursors disappear after a while of using Opera.  It's probably some problem with your version of Opera or your mouse drivers, or something of that sort.  Try updating/downgrading Opera or seeing if it happens if you use a different browser for a while.

Photoshop is most popular, but isn't free so you might not be able to get it.  Paint Shop Pro is also quite popular, and there is a shareware download, it's pretty much identical to Photoshop, for AGS art purposes.  If you need something free The GIMP is the biggest Free graphics program, personally I find the interface fiddly, but it has most of the features you'd want.  If you want something more PS/PSP like, take a look at Paint.net, it seems like a cut down version of those programs, with most of the features you'd need for 2d game art.

It depends where you are, I suppose, copyright laws vary.Ã,  Although I expect you'd want it to be public domain in the US.Ã,  Under US law a recording from before 1923 is public domain, so this is too late for that, stuff made from 1923-64 was copyrighted for 20 years, and that could be renewed for another 67, so it could still be copyrighted, I have no idea how you'd go about finding out.Ã,  Personally I'd use it, unless I was going for a big commercial release.

Edit: Copying them from the VHS/DVD should be fine.

I agree with Gilbert that this doesn't need an activity all of its own, although I don't think the fact that most people can't enter is a big problem, most people can't make music either. Ã, I think it'd be good for the next animation competition to have a theme and not a sprite to animate, and to encourage people to enter flash animations, hand drawn animations, etc (yes I know the sprite thing was my idea ).

Heh, I like them.  The koala one is my desktop.

It says in the first post... at a camp site near Staines.

Hehe, took me way too long to realise who it was.

I guess at Stansted you'd be meeting up with Hajo, another German who also flies in to there, then AGA and I will find you at London Victoria bus station (Stansted to Victoria bus was £15, return, £8 single, which isn't very cheap for a bus but nothing in central London is), we can lead you to the train station from there... I'm not sure how much the train from Victoria to Staines will be yet, probably less than the bus, then from Staines we need to take a local bus out to Laleham where the camp site is, which won't cost a lot.  So... not a particularly straightforward journey, but between us we've done it all before.

As for bringing people along... well with the people you plan to take we're over 25 altogether, approaching twice the size of a normal AGS meeting... it was a concern before but with three extra people, who none of us know, it's getting a bit much.  This is definately going to be a different kind of AGS meeting, I hope it works out.

There's no point increasing the quality, it can't get any better than the original.  DivX is a good codec, you should be able to get a similar filesize or even lower than the original movie without much loss in quality.  Just need to play with encoding options.

Yeah, I think if you do it very softly it could work acceptably, and it does have some uses, I just don't think in general it's a good idea for scene lighting.  It's also good for stuff kinoko would use it for, special effects.
Something like 3d game lightmapping would work best, allowing you to lighten or darken the screen in whatever colour you like with one overlay... I might look in to that... could be a nice plugin, but doesn't need to be part of the engine.

I don't think it sounds like a good idea, lighting just doesn't work like that, it's meant to be in 3d space and it'd just look wrong with a character moving about underneath this light overlay (your idea about using an object would work, give it a try to see what I mean).  What I think could work though, is using a greyscale bitmap to decide the light level of objects/characters that are standing on those locations, kind of like a smoother version of the regions lighting (could be stored at a lower resolution than the room to save memory becase it doesn't need per pixel accuracy).  I'd use that.

Cordon tape would work.

Uhm, maybe it's obvious but I can't think what the actual tape is called. Ã, You'd call that kind of police barricade a cordon, if that name extends to the tape I am not sure. Ã, "Cordon tape" appears to be used quite a bit on google so probably.