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As I posted earlier today, I got into the NXE Preview Program and was excited to download it come 8pm CET. Imagine my surprise when I got home around 4pm, turned on my console and got the message an update was waiting for me.

Yes indeed, it was the dashboard update.
The initial download took maybe a minute, a restart and then some more download or installation activity, and within 5 minutes I’d watched the intro movie (useless) and started putting together my avatar.

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A while ago Major Nelson posted about the New Xbox Experience (NXE for short, basically a new dashboard for your Xbox 360) and that there would be a way to get it earlier than everyone else. Not long after that announcement, he posted about the NXE Preview Program.

To keep this short: to get into the NXE Preview Program, you would have to sign in/up on Microsoft Connect, click the correct link and fill in a short questionaire. Microsoft would then pick ’several thousand’ people who’d get to download the dashboard update early.

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Earlier today I was watching some ‘tutorials’ for the various Adobe Creative Suite 4 applications, and got thinking about the activation process involved with getting your Adobe software running after installation.

While the activation process itself only takes a few minutes, assuming your internet connection works, it doesn’t do anything to stop piracy. In fact, while searching for Pink’s latest album (see this post) I saw that one of the top searches on that particular Torrent site was “Adobe Photoshop CS4 with crack”, and the software hasn’t even been out for a month!

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It’s happened in the past, due to a busted (read: RROD-ed) console or stupid mistake on my part, but this time, like last time, I lost my streak on 360Voice.com due to the Xbox servers fucking up.

“I dream of electric sheep… ok just kidding that was Blade Runner. That has nothing to do with gaming. PS, the streak is gone… Did you know that we played 55 days in a row up until now?” is what my 360’s blog says today.

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Pink, also known as P!nk — though that spelling seems to have worn off — currently with peroxide-white hair rather than the pink do that went so well with her name, has released a new album called Funhouse. Instead of the very friendly $9.99 price at Amazon.com, the disc costs around €17 (US$22) here in Dutch-land, so rather than taking the plunge I went the illegal way and downloaded the album first. Here are my impressions and conclusion.

Let me start by saying I don’t want to advocate or inspire illegal downloading of anything, be it movies, music or any kind of software, but let’s be honest for a second here: those 30-second preview clips for music are worthless.

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