Foo Fighters New Album SUCKS!

I bought the new Foo Fighters – In Your Honor (2 Disc) Album the other day and decided to rip a few songs for the station. The first thing that pops up when I put the CD in my computer is a licensing agreement. Hell no I wont agree to this crap. I hit cancel and it ejects the cd. Crap.

Now I put it back in and do a cancel task instead. The agreement goes away and I proceed to use Audio Grabber to create the mp3s for the station. All done. I listen to them and they are all scrambled. What the hell? I do a google search and it seems a lot of people are having problems with CDs from EMI. I found a site that tells you how to get around this DRM crap. It offers up a suggestion to use the program called ISOBuster. I download it, install it and rip away. Once again, the songs are scrambled. CRAP!

I try a third program I already had called Exact Audio Copy (EAC). You guessed it. Songs were scrambled and useless. I have now wasted 3 hours trying to rip these songs so my listeners can enjoy the album.

You know what? Screw EMI and shame on your Dave Grohl for allowing this crap to be put on your album. Not only am I going to go find the songs on P2P, but I am not going to add any songs from the Foo Fighters to the station. I refuse to pay the Foo Fighters one red cent for their music for allowing something so stupid to be put on their album and cause legitimate users so much hassle. You know what? DRM does not work. Sure you stopped me from ripping it, but someone else already has gotten around it and posted the songs to the P2P programs. You cant stop them, but you sure as hell pissed off a legitimate customer and a legal Internet Radio Station who would have helped promote your music and pay you royalties.

Good Job, Jerks……! Thanks for wasting my evening. I could have been ranking up in Battlefield 2 instead…..!

Update from EA on the Unlocked Weapons Issue

Weapons Unlock Community Update – 7/25/05

Profiles with all Weapons Unlocked

Many users logged into Battlefield 2 today to discover that they had access to all of the games weapons unlocked in their profile. We have fixed the root issue that caused this to occur and by tomorrow morning all users will return to having access only to the weapons which they had earned. Once our solution is in place, if you find that you do not have access to weapons appropriate to your in-game rank, please direct inquiries to the Support sites linked below. In some cases users may be prompted to re-select the Unlock weapons that they are eligible for (if you are eligible for two weapons you will get to choose the two you wish to have unlocked).

Users in the U.S., please visit http://eatech.custhelp.com to report your technical issue and one of our Support representatives will help you out ASAP.

If you are in Europe, visit the following link for support information/contacts. click here for EU Support

Sorry Atomm, youre fun is over now. Give us back those weapons soldier! 😉

EA BF2 Stats Servers Hacked!

Discovered this thread started by forum member “Zero2Zero” on TotalBF2

Well, what a wonderful few days it has been. Since EA didnt take the time to respond (or maybe even read) our emails about various stats-server security holes, it clearly showed us how much they care. Therefore, we came to the conclusion that modifying 5 million accounts wouldnt be that big of a deal.

That being said, accounts with ids from 40,000,000 to 45,000,000 now have all of their weapons unlocked.

What will be next week? Perhaps well give everyone their Distinguished Service Medal, or maybe well elevate everyone to the rank of Sergeant Major.

The balls in your court, EA. Times up at the buzzer, how well will you play?

Continue reading EA BF2 Stats Servers Hacked!

BF2 1.03 Patch On The Way

This was posted to the EA UK Forums. It hasnt been 100% confirmed, but it looks official. Sounds interesting…..

Hi everyone, and thanks for supporting BF2. Thanks to all of you out there,
BF2 has seen great success around the world and we’d like to thank you all
for that.

Since its launch, we’ve tried to give BF2 all the support it deserves by
releasing patches with the fixes and improvements you’ve asked for.
Unfortunately, we haven’t lived up to the standards we’ve set for ourselves
and we know that. So all of us at EA and DICE are working extra hard to make
sure that the BF2 experience improves dramatically in the coming weeks.

Towards the end of August, we will be releasing a new patch, 1.03. This
patch is currently underway and will undergo thorough testing before it goes
out to avoid the problems that have occurred in the past. There are over 140
fixes and improvements in this patch. Here are just a few of them:

Continue reading BF2 1.03 Patch On The Way

EA BF2 Community Update Discusses Mod Tools

In their July 21st Community Update EA provides us with information on BF2 Combat, a “Tour of Duty” allowing players to join large scale weekly battles. Also, a Ranked Server Admin Program has been released for those that wish to use it.

Finally, and most importantly, they provide an update on the soon to be released Mod Tools. This set of tools appears to be in a short closed beta period being tested by a small group of BF2 mod teams, and

“Barring a major issue being discovered, the editor is now mere days from being released. Not weeks, days!”

Good news all around.

EA to Distribute Half Life

Just a couple of days late with this one…

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Redwood City, Calif. and Bellevue, WA – July 18, 2005 – Electronic Arts, the world’s leading interactive entertainment company and Valve®, the award-winning studio behind the blockbuster franchises Half-Life® and Counter-Strike™, today announced that the two companies have entered a multi-year agreement to deliver a collection of Valve games to players worldwide. The first two games to be released under this agreement are Half-Life 2: Game of the Year and Counter-Strike: Source™ for PC, both launching this fall. In addition, Half-Life 2 for the Xbox® video game system from Microsoft, currently in development at Valve and targeted for release in October, will be published and distributed worldwide by EA.

Continue reading EA to Distribute Half Life

New Music

So I open my mail just now and what do I see? The guys at Warner Bros Records sent me two new songs to add to the station.

Disturbed – “Guarded“, from their new album “Ten Thousand Fists” in stores September 20th.
Trapt “Stand Up” from their new album “Someone In Control” due out September 13th.

They will be in rotation on the station shortly….. WOOHOO!

Bands On TV

I saw this on Blabbermouth.net and thought it was kind of cool. Check out your favorite band as they perform on TV.

7/18-7/22 – The All-American Rejects, Head Automatica, Mae, MxPx, Rufio (videos) on Oven Fresh [FUSE]
7/18 – Fall Out Boy on Kimmel [ABC]
7/19 – the Hold Steady on Conan [NBC]
7/19 – Killswitch Engage on Last Call [NBC]
7/20 – Coheed & Cambria (guests) on Daily Download [FUSE]
7/20 – the Hold Steady on Last Call [NBC]
7/21 – Hawthorne Heights on TRL [MTV]
7/21 – Kaiser Chiefs on Regis and Kelly [syndicated]
7/21 – Elvis Costello and Emmylou Harris on Letterman [CBS]
7/22 – Sum 41 on Ellen [syndicated; R]
7/22 – Tony Hawk on TRL [MTV]
Check your local listings for times.

Top 13 Tracks As Of July 15, 2005

# Artist Song Title Album
1 Slipknot Vermilion Pt. 2 Vol 3 (Subliminal Verses)
2 Slipknot Vermilion Vol 3 (Subliminal Verses)
3 Slipknot Duality Vol 3 (Subliminal Verses)
4 System of a Down Spiders System of a Down
5 Disturbed The Game The Sickness
6 David Draiman of Disturbed Forsaken Queen Of The Damned
7 Tool Parabola Lateralus
8 Mudvayne Forget To Remember Lost And Found
9 Korn Freak On A Leash Follow The Leader
10 White Zombie More Human than Human ASTRO-CREEP:2000 Songs of Love
11 Rammstein Sonne Mutter
12 Mudvayne Not Falling The End of All Things to Come
13 Disturbed Voices The Sickness

This list is generated weekly from a ranking based on your votes in the Live365 playlist window.

BF2 HotFix Is Out!

Its Here! Battlefield 2 v1.02 Patch (aka The Hotfix)!

Client

http://largedownloads.ea.com/pub/patches/bf2patch_v_102.exe

Linux Server
http://bf1942.lightcubed.com/dist/bf2-linuxded-1.1.2484.0-installer.zip – Very Fast!
ftp://largedownloads.ea.com/pub/misc/bf2-linuxded-1.1.2484.0-installer.zip

Ill give you a little hint…. You cant get it from this link through a browser. However, I am downloading it now to our Game Server for GRBs to grab. I am sure you will figure it out…..

See you on the battlefield….. Be sure and jump on our server. We are up and running v1.02! Server Details up above.

BF2 Patch Update

Now that EA has got the important things out of the way like the Expansion Pack announcement and a call for good community websites to spotlight, they can get back to the more mundane jobs like resolving issues with the game. This is straight from EA:

GameSpy Login Issues
It has been brought to our attention that some users may be experiencing login problems when trying to log into GameSpy through the BF2 in-game browser. GameSpy is in the process of hunting down the problem to get it fixed they have determined that the issue is related to web sites tracking BF2 stats, the stats tracking feed may be turned off temporarily in order to speed up this process. However, it will be turned back on after this issue has been resolved.

HOTFIX Candidate Now Being Tested!
Listen up soldiers, this update is to inform you that EA and DICE have a HOTFIX candidate for Battlefield 2 v1.01 in testing now. What does this mean? It means the fix for the memory leak found in v1.01 is being tested and will soon be available. While were unable to specify an exact release date, rest assured, its not far off and we will keep you updated through this web space.