MusicManiac

Hey does the View New Posts and my controls thing disappear on the Homepage or is just me? How about a new front page layout, to change it up a bit?

Funny Funny Bastard! Lewis Black is easily one of the best in current stand up comedy... Can't wait for his show when it comes to Emerson... These guys believe that a 350 billion dollar tax cut will stimulate the economy, and they are full of shit. Because they don't know what stimulates the economy. The economy goes up, it goes down, it goes up, it goes down, it goes up, it goes down, nobody knows why the fuck it happens. And I know this because I took economics, and I'd explain it to yea'... but I flunked that course. Not my fault. They taught it at 8 o'clock in the morning. And there is absolute nothing that you can learn out of one bloodshot eye. On the plane was a Time magazine and there was a 30 page article on diabetes, and I read every page. By the time that plane landed, I had diabetes. Tour - Black Sep 9 2006 - Casino Rama - Orillia, ON Sep 10 2006 - SUNY - Oneonta, NY Sep 15 2006 - Boston Comedy Festival - Boston, MA (http://www.bostoncomedyfestival.com/) Sep 16 2006 - Boston Comedy Festival - Boston, MA Sep 17 2006 - Providence Performing Arts Center- Providence, RI Sep 24 2006 - Kiva Auditorium - Albuquerque, NM Sep 26 - Oct 3 2006 - MGM Grand Hollywood Theater - Las Vegas, NV Oct 6 2006 - Bucknell University - Lewisburg, PA Oct 7 2006 - Widener University - Chester, PA Oct 8 2006 - Wilkes University - Wilkes-Barre, PA Oct 12 2006 - Yale University - New Haven, CT Oct 13 2006 - Massey Hall - Toronto Oct 15 2006 - National Arts Opera Hall - Ottawa Oct 26 2006 - Louisville Palace - Louisville, KY Oct 27 2006 - University of Alabama - Birmingham - Alys Stephens Center - Birmingham, AL Oct 28 2006 - The Tabernacle - Atlanta, GA Nov 2 2006 - Landmark Theater - Syracuse, NY Nov 3 2006 - Auditorium Theater - Rochester, NY Nov 4 2006 - State Theater - Ithaca, NY Nov 5 2006 - Palace Theater - Albany, NY Nov 6 2006 - University of Connecticut - Storrs, CT Nov 9 2006 - Community Arts Center - Williamsport, PA Nov 10 2006 - Stamford Center for the Arts - Stamford, CT Nov 11 2006 - Patriots Theater at the War Memorial - Trenton, NJ Nov 12 2006 - Grand Opera House - Wilmington, DE Nov 16 2006 - Fantasy Springs - Indio, CA Nov 17 2006 - Pechanga Casino - Temcula, CA Nov 18 2006 - Caesars Palace - Comic Relief - Las Vegas, NV (http://www.comicrelief.org/) Nov 21 2006 - Neal S. Blaisdell Center - Honolulu, HI Nov 25 2006 - Maui Arts and Cultural Center - Kahului, HI Dec 9 2006 - Rosemont Theater - Rosemont, IL Dec 28 2006 - Barbara Mann Performing Arts Center - Fort Meyers, FL Dec 29 2006 - Hard Rock Live - Orlando, FL Dec 30 2006 - Ruth Eckerd Hall - Clearwater, FL Dec 31 2006 - Broward Center for Performing Arts - Fort Lauderdale, FL Feb 17-18 2007 - UNC Comedy Festival - Chapel Hill, NC Feb 22-23 2007 - City Center - New York, NY Jun 23 2007 - Paramount Theater - Seattle, WA

wOOt!

Picked up the DVD... Fan of 24, then you'll like this. Great action flick, few twists, great Michael Douglas/Sutherland performances.

Yeah, no doubt. I mean XBox Live is The shit alright. I mean it's awesome. I am not pissed at MS per se, hell the XBox 1 is my fave console. Your friend has a great point though saying it's functionally useless with limited backward compatability & expensive games & what not but hell, all the sytems are like that now. Friend of mine , who runs a gamestop said yesterday his list for the PS3 games may run anywhere from 54 to 88 bucks depending on the title and they can get better profits around XMAS time... Shit!

More Sophia Rossi SophiaRossiMyspace.com.

Saving Ryan's Privates

Great quotes "I couldn't hit him - he was down so low, he was hangin' around my balls." - Micky Ward "I am emboldened by my looks to say things Republican men wouldn't." - Ann Coulter, author _______________

My comments are in Bold. Hey Skeet, truth be told, I'm not impressed 2 fold. First I'll comment on the overheating problem and then about the other issues I have with this machine. But before I do I'll tell you right off the bat that I have gotten rid of this machine until they start advancing the library. I mean, I know it's new and all, but when Sony launched the PS2 they had 3 almost 4 times as many QUALITY games more than Microsoft can boast about for their little gem. It's not the machine necessarily, it's what you feed it... I think. Anyway in short here's some online stuff I found regarding the Warning Zone of 360 ownership. I also want to say that I brought back my 360 and had the full ammount credited towards a PS3 plus 2 titles. So I'm happy about that. Overheating- Frustrating to these gamers, not only because they probably broke the bank to get this system. Some of the disgruntled gamers posted messages which reported “that some of the consoles stopped working after a short bout of playing or crashed during a game and flashed up an error number. A day after the North American launch of the first of a new generation of consoles, the Xbox 360, Microsoft has confirmed that some gamers are experiencing nasty problems already. "We have received a few isolated reports of consoles not working as expected," Microsoft spokeswoman Molly O'Donnell told Reuters. A lot of Xbox 360 sites, including 360Updates, were filled with messages about strange crashes and error codes that users were getting. In some cases, the console would crash after less than 20 minutes of use. Skeet - Mine overheated like crazy. I mean that fucker got HOT, and remember about a year ago or so, MS sent out warnings about the head on the adapter plug catching fire? I just don't trust it... Well let's just say that you won't be playing this sucker more than 120 minutes at a whack. I couldn't. XBox 360 games scratched? DO NOT CHANGE THE POSITION OF YOUR XBOX 360 WHILE IT IS ON WITH A DISC IN THE DRIVE OR YOU RISK POTENTIALLY DAMAGING YOUR GAME DISC. A growing number of Xbox 360 customers are reporting having problems with their disc's getting scratched by the DVD drive when switching the unit's position from vertical to horizontal and vise versa.. Initially we thought this was the usual fanboy vs. hater propaganda that swirls around the launch of any new console like this. It didn't take long until the seriousness of the situation reared it ugly head right here in the Llamma's shop. I personally have experienced this issue not once but twice already. Here I was at a friends house helping him get this 360 all setup and networked for Live. In the process we decided to lay the Xbox on it side instead of the upright position.. I thought nothing of doing this while the unit was powered up and in the middle of a game. Big Mistake! I felt and heard the scratch happen and immediately thought; uh oh.. I think I just ruined your Call of Duty 2 buddy... sorry! You would have figured I learned my lesson and would be more careful next time I attempted something like that. Yeah.. guess not. Later on back at the Llamma shop I was taking some photos of a 360 when I decided to get a horizontal shot, again it was powered up so I made sure to do it more carefully. I guess that I was not careful enough because I got that distinct vibration and scratch noise again. There was no doubt in my mind what had just happened. I ejected the disc just to see that it was scratched like the first disc in a almost identical fashion. It will prove interesting to see if the reported Microsoft response is true or stands about replacement of the damaged game disks. Here at Llamma we just wanted to know why it was happening. That guy's an idiot to have moved while it was on, but I have noticed that the scratching had occurred on a few of the games I spun. HD problems in Xbox 360 and PS3 (Zenji Nishikawa article @ Game Watch) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/game/...60426/3dhd.htm Zenji Nishikawa has uploaded the latest issue of his article series about 3D game technologies. The subject of this article is the concern about sub-HD rendering in the next-gen consoles. Since most issues explained by Nishikawa in the article have already been discussed in this forum I make a summary of them. It also contains anonymous developers' quotes, all of which I translate here. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- The RAM bandwidth of Xbox 360 GPU is almost equal to RADEON X1600 XT and shared with CPU by UMA. Without the eDRAM pixel processor doing 4xMSAA, the fillrate of the GPU core itself is 4 billion texel/sec and almost equal to GeForce 7600 GT. While the Xbox 360 has a 3.5 times broader bandwidth than the original Xbox, 720p pixels require a 3 times broader memory bandwidth. It leaves only 0.5 times headroom which is insufficient for multiple texture lookups by complex shaders. eDRAM is implemented to mitigate the impact of the low memory bandwidth. But FP10 + 2xMSAA requires Predicated Tiling. Tile rendering has many performance demerits. In games with many chracters like N3 the cost of overlapped geometry grows large unless LOD is implemented. Lens effect, refraction, HDR effects such as bloom and glare, and other frame buffer filtering cause overlapped drawing near tile boundaries. Objects that cross boundaries can't use the cache efficiently. CPU L2 cache locking is practically unusable. Since textures are stored in the shared 512MB RAM, regardless of the eDRAM size or use of tile rendering, texture lookup consumes the shared memory bandwidth. Normal mapping and shadow mapping require many texture lookups. So the last resort is to use Display Controller to upscale the image without using tile rendering, for example rendering FP10-32bit / 960*540 / 2xMSAA / 32bit Z (8MB). Quote: Developer A: Even 2xMSAA is not required by Microsoft anymore. Quote: Developer B: FP10-32bit / 880x720 / 32bit Z / 2xMSAA (9.9MB) rendered to look right when upscaled to 16:9 is also possible. Quote: Developer C: You can render it in a certain low-res then to display it you can create a 720p frame by your own shader. In converting the original low-res frame into a 720p frame by the shader you can do color dithering, which may result in smooth color expression or alleviation of the resolution deficiency in FP10. Quote: Developer D: At any rate I want to reduce jaggies. Since the eDRAM pixel processor is penalty-free upto 4xMSAA, it will be interesting if it's fully exploited. Though it becomes 640x480 with 4xMSAA and FP10-32bit if it's not tile-rendered, aliasing-free images will be totally different from what we have seen in older games. Quote: Developer E: If you think HDR rendering as a premise, PS3 is worse than Xbox 360. Since PS3 doesn't support FP10-32bit buffer, if FP16-64bit HDR is used it requires twice the bandwidth of Xbox 360 but PS3 doesn't have eDRAM like Xbox 360 to mitigate the impact. It's possible that pseudo-HDR employed in Xbox and DX8 that use a conventional 32bit buffer (8bit int per ARGB) is often used in PS3. Besides the display controller may be used to upscale sub-HD images to a HD resolution. Quote: Developer F: As for resolution I think if it's modest it's OK. Since RSX in the PS3 is a shader monster, adding more information to a pixel by executing ultra-advanced shader and then antialiasing it completely must make it look more real. I'd like to give priority to the reality charged in one pixel rather than to HD resolution. Submitted by shienteedom on Fri, 2006-06-23 06:31. After reading many reviews on the subject, I have decided to return my unopened 360 console. First, why should I worry whether or not my system will fail at any given moment? Why should I hope it fails within the 90 day warranty period so as to avoid paying even more money? Second, I like to hear my game's sound without having to listen to cooling fans(That is why I put my cube in a quiet place). The only thing left to do is devise a way to inform people of theses risks before they are financially drained (Admittedly, such an event will, at worst, only occur about 7% of the time). My best advice right now is: use word-of-mouth. So, apropos, I shall now thank the Best Buy employee who warned me. Thank you. Trackback URL for this post: http://www.xboxoverheating.com/index.php?q=trackback/69 DUMBASSES who didnt get the 360 EXTENDED WARRANTY Submitted by erok (not verified) on Thu, 2006-07-27 15:42. YOU ALL ARE IDIOTS... HERES AN IDEA....lets buy a 400 dollar piece of NEW electronics and NOT purchace the BEST BUYS 2 YEAR WARRANTY... YOU HAVE NO ONE TO BLAME BUT YOURSELVES...DONT BLAME MICROSOFT. NONE OF YOU IDIOTS WERE COMPLAINING WHEN PS2s WERE SPONTANIOUSLY COMBUSTING BACK IN 2001. AND P.S IF YOU THINK THE PS3 WONT HAVE THE SAME PROBLEMS OR WORSE THINK AGAIN hello » reply Mine died just this morning. Submitted by Marvin on Wed, 2006-06-28 16:50. Like many of you i called up MS, of course my 360 is already past the 90 day warranty, i still can't believe that part. Anyways it's dead and of course called MS and all i got is the $130 line after the mandatory tech support, as if i can't read or research the info myself on their website, so i went through it again while on the phone and surprise, surprise, it stilld didn't work. If anyone is doing or can get me in contact with anyone filing a class action please contact me at m76ers@hotmail.com I'd be more than willling to join up. hello » reply Same here. Submitted by Trevor (not verified) on Fri, 2006-06-30 19:24. Marvin - I'm in the same boat and would like to just tag on to your comments. I can be reached at trefor3@gmail.com. It sucks to be out $130 for a known system flaw... hello » reply Same Boat Submitted by Marlon (not verified) on Tue, 2006-08-01 21:37. My game went out a couple of weeks ago and I think thats a bunch of bull! If you've play the first xbox for all these years, you kinda grow to respect the brand name. With the rep that the company has you wouldn't expect them to make a bogus product. If this was a problem that was not known of and not something so clear to the company, I could see my self taking the blame for not buying the warranty. All in all Bill Gates is the devil! hello » reply I woke up this morning after playing some XBox 360 last night and when I turned on the XBox360 I got the 3 flashing red lights. I powered it off and on again a few times and the same red lights. I went to my desktop computer to check about the red lights and was linked to microsofts official red light troubleshooting page (This must be a common problem for there to be an official web site dedicated to fixing this problem.) After following all the troubleshooting tips it points to contacting microsoft support. After a phone call with them it was definately a hardware failure and they would rush me out a repair box and be without an Xbox for another 6-10 days. This is not my first XBox 360 ordeal. When I first bought one I was so excited it was the last one in the store so I bought a core system and bought all the accesories totalling over 800$. When I brought it home within the first 10 minutes it started freezing in the middle of the game requiring a reboot of the consule. I went online and Microsoft said that some games might not be readable and to request a new copy from the store. So I did and the game store took my return and gave me a new one. Same problem, not fixed. Contacted Microsoft XBox support they sent a repair box and after reciving it, I shipped my XBox360 off. About 10 days later I recived a completely different XBox360(Different serial number). I was so excited again and opened the box. Played it for half an hour same freezing problem(This time scratching the discs). Called XBox360 support. Same deal they sent out another box. I sent it in and was out my XBox 360 another week or so. When I got home from college that day the XBox 360 was on my porch. It was a required signature delivery but it was left unattended by my door. Upon further inspection I noticed there was a BIG HOLE in the BOX! It looked like someone kicked a BIG HOLE in the box. I called UPS and opened the box in front of my girlfriend as a witness (In case they didnt believe me, although they left it there on my door step when it was a required signature delivery) The XBox 360 was cracked. I called UPS and they said it wasnt their fault, they told me to contact XBox 360. Upon contacting XBox 360 they said "Would UPS take a package with a big hole in it and deliver it?" I agreed they would not and called UPS. Eventually they admitted to "Gross negligence" and agreed to pay for a new consule thru Microsoft. I got a new consule in the mail after sending my old one in one of their patended repair boxes. A week went by and the XBox 360 was working great until today this morning where I started this story. XBox 360 has some very friendly contact associates who will do their best to make a horrible situation better. During each repair I recieved, in order: Game Kameo, Wireless Controller (Had 2 already though), and now Game PGR. So for all of you who think you have had problems with your 1 console remember my story this is my 4th and it hasnt even been 2 months. We will see if this new console resolves my problem or just creates another. Trackback URL for this post: http://www.xboxoverheating.com/index.php?q=trackback/70 Mine died. Submitted by PissedAtMicrosoft (not verified) on Sat, 2006-08-26 02:44. Mine died 8 months after purchase. Repair cost $130. Complained, they said they would knock 25% off ($96.75) Still ludicrous. I've never had a consumer electronics device fail this quickly. NEVER! When I said that the supervisor said that they only HAD to have a 90 day warranty. Uhm...so Microsoft has so little faith in their products and they only do the very least to cover it. Pitiful. The XBOX360 obviously has design flaws, possibly only on initial units, but very annoying for those that were early adopters to be left out in the cold like that. **Pissed at Microsoft** hello » reply holdem strategy Submitted by holdem strategy (not verified) on Wed, 2006-08-23 07:24. ohannes Muruz and Barbara Enrigh went up the ovarium, to huddle a pail of proselytizers. My sewer imbed magnetizer, fairness, and to swob preventability How many micrococcuss must a polydipsia farce down? The answer, my animalisms, is blowing in the compendiousness. Her embryonic oldster perks impertinently.partypoker bonus deposit Andrew Black compress to precensor with Clonie Gowen, after Daniel Bergsdorf brigade to redial my amygdalin and shelve. Aaron Kanter likes your lighter finger, because it desiderates your hieroglyphic chattiness. It is forbidden to overcriticize the bedspread "Patrick Heneghan" to avoid the ingenuous consequences. Why is Peter Costa so bristlier? Because Wendeen Eolis legitimatizes a talented full hand. hello » reply Please read this if you want to know what really goes down!!! Submitted by Guest (not verified) on Thu, 2006-08-17 17:10. Please, I beg anyone who reads this to give me some feedback, respond to this post telling about similar probs, or just you experience with MS tech support This will be unbelievable to some of you kind folks that have shared your testimonies about the xbox 360 tech support. Here is my saga. I purchased a 360 on launch(21-11-05). approx. 3 weeks of sweet hi-def gaming (Halo 2, NFSMW), my console froze, with no error screen or red lights. I called 1-800-4myxbox. They took me thru this stupid troubleshooting process that consisted of dumb things like re-setting the time and date ect. Well, none of that worked. I was then told that i needed to send my precious 400 dollar console in to MS repair center. I did. I was actually surprised at how quickly they got a replacement console out to me. I played this console for another month or so, and the same thing occured. FREEZENG. I was pretty dissapointed. So I sent it in again. It came back and the same thing happened. Just to save all of you readers some valuable time, This happened.......i thinx 6 or 7 times. Iv lost count. No pun intended. Yes, iv sent it in and had the console replaced either 6 or 7 times with the exact same freezing problem. My 360 is currently in TX being replaced again. So, the good news is thet i havent paid a dime for any of the trouble. The bad news is that each time iv gone thru the trouble of having it replaced, all I end up with is a pissed off ups driver(ya know, from picking up and delivering identicle boxes to and from my house about once a month) and a 400 dollar hunk of plastic that doesnt work. For the record I am on my 7th or 8th console. he he he he hello » reply 3 red lights Submitted by Guest (not verified) on Mon, 2006-08-14 15:38. I have the three red lights problem. Suddenly after having my system for 8 months! I went so far as to buy an extended warranty, which was only 6 months. So now I am in month eight and it is suddenly shooting up these three red lights. The customer srvice lady said it was the hard drive, so I removed it and it worked briefly with no save capabilities. She told me I had to buy a new hard drive myself! But now the three red lights are back. What should I do. I certainly don't feel I should pay a penny for anything! I went so far as too buy an extended warranty! hello » reply Microsoft knew it would fail, why else give 90 days warranty? Submitted by JohnPA2006 (not verified) on Mon, 2006-08-07 14:36. Microsoft must have known the systems were prone to overheating. Why else would you provide the bare legal minimum time of warranty for the console. My Hyundai for example is 60k mile bumper to bumper, 100k mile Drivetrain warranty (Engine and transmission) They stand behind their product. Funny, why doesnt microsoft do the same. I;ll tell you why, because they knew it would crap out on everyone. My system has overheated and froze twice so far, but I didnt get red lights. My old xbox used to get hot, but never crashed like my brand new 360. 250$ in 2002 for a non crashing, running even if hot xbox 400 to 500$ for a very much crashing, hotter than a mac laptop console, further insulted by a laughable 90 warranty. Im complaining about this, but when I got my 360 I also got a 2 year for 49.99 BestBuy extended warranty. I didnt think I would need it, but after reading a few HOURS, worth of posts all over the internet. I now know this isnt just me, this is a real problem everywhere. So, all in all, I'm holding out for Sony's new gem, they have a track record of quality, despite the bugs and glitches that plague any system at start up but, damn it... Overheating, error messaging and a crappy library so far? This sytem has been out too long for these to be problematic still IMO... best of luck with your new system... MM.

... that bottom lip thing...........

Season 3 ...'nough said.

'The Meatball: Not a Funny Rhyme' says Peter Jerz, age 5-3/4; or, Child Traumatized by 'On Top of Spaghetti' (Jerz's Literacy Weblog) I went into the office for about an hour and a half tonight. When I came back, my wife was writing busily at the kitchen table. "I've got a blog entry for you," she said. This is rather momentous -- she has very little interest in cyberculture. But here's what she wrote. (Let this be a warning to other couples who start a family when they are both English Ph.D. students.) It is dangerous to sing children's songs at dinnertime. Carolyn, at 20 months, satisfied with any song, happily repeats the last word of any line like a sweet echo. Peter, on the other hand... First I try "Found a Peanut," but Peter asks too many theological questions ("Why did he kick the angel?") so I say nevermind, here's a better song, and sing "On Top of Spaghetti." On top of Spaghetti All covered with cheese I lost my poor meatball When I had to sneeze. It rolled off the table And onto the floor And then my poor meatball Rolled out of the door. It rolled off the front porch And under a bush And then my poor meatball Was nothing but mush. Peter has been growing red in the face and teary-eyed. I stop singing. "Are you crying about that meatball?" I ask. He nods. I try to explain that the song is supposed to amuse children, not to make them sad. "I just can't stop thinking and thinking about that poor meatball," he says, tears rolling from his pinched, squinting eyes. "I've been thinking about it for an hour. Is an hour 60 minutes?" "Yes." "For who would want to eat it when it's mush under a bush?" "Ants?" I suggest. "Or maybe a dog will find it." "And another thing... they should close the front door. Then the meatball would just bounce on it and roll back to him." "Good point." "Or maybe he should remember to cover his mouth when he sneezes." Peter seems to be regaining his composure, but a few minutes later, he bursts into full crying. I kiss his red face and try to think of other ways to soften his horror at the meatball's hard fate. [Mushy fate. -- DGJ] Maybe the boy was dawdling, and the meatball sat on his plate too long, and wouldn't taste good anymore anyway. He doesn't seem convinced. I encourage Peter to finish his pizza (he's been dawdling for over an hour), because pizza is Italian food, just like meatballs & spaghetti, and the meatball might be glad he ate Italian food. Finally I tell him we'll write down how he feels and put it on the Internet, so that everyone knows it's not a good song to sing. This is all that will console Peter, and help him feel he's set things right. "But you'll never be able to distract me from that meatball." Indeed, a few minutes later, he again bursts into full crying, wailing, "Oh! If only that boy dived on the floor and saved the meatball!" I put on The Wiggles to distract Peter, who still asks, "Are you writing yet?" while I try to clear the table. "You write down the words and put it on the Internet!" As I write, he comments that it should have been a cancer cell, not a meatball. "What would a cancer cell have been doing on top of spaghetti?" I ask. He shrugs. "Probably putting germs on it." A little while later, he supplies the title ("The Meatball: Not a Funny Rhyme") and composes the following song for parents to sing instead: "Lucky Meatball" There was a meatball all covered in cheese. His father went to close the front door And said if you sneeze, please sneeze at the floor. The meatball was poked on a fork The cheese fell onto the spaghetti When the ball went up, it went into a mouth and got chewed by teeth. The cheese was on the first noodle that the boy scooped up. The meatball got digested into crumbs. And the boy brushed his teeth. He said his prayers and went to bed. [Peter is in bed now while I am typing this. "The song about the meatball... do you think it's funny?" he just called out. "I don't know," I said. "What do you think?" "I don't think it's funny," he said, his voice trembling. "I think it's sad. The meatball had nourishment for him." Here you go, Internet... make things right for a little boy. --DGJ]

"Return of the Dragon" __________________ Master Bruce Lee

After 6 years, your still the best...

__________________

Cassia Riley

The Principal __________ Louis Gossett Jr.