Xbox Live Arcade today

Xbox Live Arcade today: Sonic 4, Dead Space Ignition and Alan Wake: The Writer
The sequel fans have waited 16 years for is finally here:




Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode I! Featuring enhanced gameplay elements including the classic Sonic Spin Dash and the versatile Homing Attack, Sonic 4 picks up right where Sonic and Knuckles left off. Dr. Eggman’s back, and in an effort to finally rid himself of Sonic, he revisits and improves the very best of his creations. Get ready for the next chapter in an all new epic 2-D saga built for old and new fans alike.
Also available today is EA’s Dead Space Ignition on Xbox Live Arcade for Xbox 360. Dead Space Ignition will be available worldwide for 400 Microsoft Points (that’s US$5 / €4.80 / £3.40 / CAN$6.20 / AU$6.60).

Guide Buying a New Car

Buying a used car is one of those things where you can either make out like a bandit, or get royally worked over. As the owner of a previous owned vehicle myself, and a person who comes from a long bloodline of used car owners, the advice I have is based on both my own experiences and that of my family, and this information is practically encoded in my DNA.

Price Matters It seems like there is a vortex for used car value, a Bermuda triangle of car-price-to-quality ratio, if you will. You should buy a used car that is either less than $2,000 or more than $6,000. If you are buying a car in this zone, buyer beware. A car worth less than $2,000 is ok because if you ever run into major repair costs, you just walk away from the car and start over with the next $2,000 car. A car worth over $6,000 is ok too, because it is usually going to be worth the cost of most repairs. Cars that fall between $2,000 and $6,000 range that run into major repairs, all of a sudden can have $2-3 thousand tied up in repair work, and at that point you might as well have spent the extra dough to get the $6,000 car.

Looks Should Not Matter It may sound crazy, but some of the best functioning used cars I have seen people buy have also been the most decrepit looking. If you really want value in a used car, the best way to get it is to sacrifice on the appearance of the car. Think about it, if a car looks great, why is such a steal? Well, the seller may know about some pending doom about to befall the car, and is getting out from under it while there is still time. On the other hand, the beat-up old junker’s owner is usually going to be a straight shooter, since a person who is willing to drive such a shabby automobile obviously has little or no pretense. If you can swallow your pride and give a little love to a clunker, you might be rewarded.

Pros and Cons of Buying From Family I bought a 1973 Buick Centurion from my grandfather for $500 to drive for a summer while I was home from college. It was a great deal cause it only had 63,000 miles on it, and I got it for what my grandfather had paid for it. After returning to college back East, my parents burned up their 1980’s Ford Econoline Van, and they ended up buying my Buick from me. I got the same $500 bucks for it. That is the upside of dealing with family. A lot of the time you can get a really fair shake. The downside, now, is that you are in proximity to your former wheels even though you have no control over the car, and despite the fact that you might have some emotional attachment. I had to watch as my beautiful green boat of a car was subjected to abuse. It was not regularly washed or vacuumed. Then my little brother drove it into a cement post and totally crunched in the side of the car that until that point had been impressively straight given the mint of the car.

Eventually, The Depreciation of Cars Reaches an Asymptote Once a car reaches a certain price it can’t really go any lower. If you buy a really cheap car, let’s say you get one for $100 bucks (which my brother did just last year), if you decide to sell it your odds of getting $100 bucks back out of it are pretty good.

Be Careful when buying a used car. And just remember that buying a used car is like taking a toss of the dice, which does not mean you should buy a used car in Las Vegas. It means that it is a bit risky!

---

by Cameron Hatch

The Modern CornMan

The Modern Conman Collection is an entertaining collection of "how to's" for those interested in petty tricks and subtle human manipulation. Volume one features a couple of no-lose (for the perpetrator) and no-win (for the mark) card games, bar games, challenges and plays on words involving definitional splitting of hairs.

Even for the curious among us who would never actually use any of these tricks this engaging DVD will amuse you for the full run of the video (roughly one half hour). With the no risk trial (you just pay shipping for the first DVD, which is free, and cancel before the second volume comes) you can't lose.

Todd Robbins prefaces the video with the advice that you try these scams on family and friends before trying it on strangers. He also advises you to be careful in how you present these scams (if you are too arrogant or showy you can really make people made).

The scams are relatively simple. After watching the video only once I was able to duplicate two of the scams with no problem. I tried both of these scams on my wife. I was a little too smug with my presentation (going against Todd's advice), which she found very annoying. One trick was a card game, and the other was a game using match sticks. Both were set up so that I could not lose. The trick is getting the other person fooled into thinking the game is legit and that there is a chance for them to win.

Afterward, I tried the match stick game on my wife's eight year-old cousin. She had no problem believing that there was at least some chance that she could win the game, though I don't think that had much to do with my skill at trickery (or lack thereof).

The mechanics of behind the card games and the match trick especially are so simple and yet intriguing. Logic and math oriented types will surely enjoy that aspect of the video.

All that being said about the substance, let's talk a little about the marketing. This video is really heavily marketed toward single men in their twenties. It could play equally well among frat house audiences and recent college grads entering their first jobs. The cover of the DVD (and the website built to market the DVD series) features images of beautiful women, cards, and booze. These same things make appearances in the video once you play the DVD, but as with any good trick, these are merely misdirection to get you to buy into the gimmick, not at all integral to the core substance of the DVD. (For those hoping only to find images of drunken girls stammering around drunk and losing all their money at the card table, let me give you a big head's up. You will be disappointed big time with the Modern Conman Collection Volume 1. Conversely, women worried about portrayals of young ladies being exploited for commercial gain, you can put your mind at ease, because this DVD is free from any of that stuff.) The fact of the matter is that taken out of the bar-room setting and into the back-yard of family home, many of these tricks could play equally well to the crowd at a little kid's birthday party.

Final analysis: The fact of the matter is that people love tricks, from the biggest magic displays on down. And the Modern Conman Collection: Volume 1 Starring Todd Robbins has just the right mix of magic.

Final Grade: Final Grade an A-/A, awarded with a smile

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Michael Jackson Dead at 50

LOS ANGELES - Michael Jackson, the "King of Pop" who once moonwalked above the music world, died Thursday as he prepared for a comeback bid to vanquish nightmare years of sexual scandal and financial calamity. He was 50.

Jackson died at UCLA Medical Center after being stricken at his rented home in Holmby Hills. Paramedics tried to resuscitate him at his home for nearly three-quarters of an hour, then rushed him to the hospital, where doctors continued to work on him.

"It is believed he suffered cardiac arrest in his home. However, the cause of his death is unknown until results of the autopsy are known," his brother Jermaine said. Police said they were investigating, standard procedure in high-profile cases.

Jackson's death brought a tragic end to a long, bizarre, sometimes farcical decline from his peak in the 1980s, when he was popular music's premier all-around performer, a uniter of black and white music who shattered the race barrier on MTV, dominated the charts and dazzled even more on stage.

His 1982 album "Thriller" — which included the blockbuster hits "Beat It," "Billie Jean" and "Thriller" — is the best-selling album of all time, with an estimated 50 million copies sold worldwide.

At the time of his death, Jackson was rehearsing hard for what was to be his greatest comeback: He was scheduled for an unprecedented 50 shows at a London arena, with the first set for July 13.

As word of his death spread, MTV switched its programming to play videos from Jackson's heyday. Radio stations began playing marathons of his hits. Hundreds of people gathered outside the hospital. In New York's Times Square, a low groan went up in the crowd when a screen flashed that Jackson had died, and people began relaying the news to friends by cell phone.

"No joke. King of Pop is no more. Wow," Michael Harris, 36, of New York City, read from a text message a friend had sent him. "It's like when Kennedy was assassinated. I will always remember being in Times Square when Michael Jackson died."

The public first knew him as a boy in the late 1960s, when he was the precocious, spinning lead singer of the Jackson 5, the singing group he formed with his four older brothers out of Gary, Ind. Among their No. 1 hits were "I Want You Back," "ABC" and "I'll Be There."

He was perhaps the most exciting performer of his generation, known for his backward-gliding moonwalk, his feverish, crotch-grabbing dance moves and his high-pitched singing, punctuated with squeals and titters. His single sequined glove, tight, military-style jacket and aviator sunglasses were trademarks, as was his ever-changing, surgically altered appearance.

"For Michael to be taken away from us so suddenly at such a young age, I just don't have the words," said Quincy Jones, who produced "Thriller." "He was the consummate entertainer and his contributions and legacy will be felt upon the world forever. I've lost my little brother today, and part of my soul has gone with him."

Jackson ranked alongside Elvis Presley and the Beatles as the biggest pop sensations of all time. He united two of music's biggest names when he was briefly married to Presley's daughter, Lisa Marie, and Jackson's death immediately evoked comparisons to that of Presley himself, who died at age 42 in 1977.

As years went by, Jackson became an increasingly freakish figure — a middle-aged man-child weirdly out of touch with grown-up life. His skin became lighter, his nose narrower, and he spoke in a breathy, girlish voice. He often wore a germ mask while traveling, kept a pet chimpanzee named Bubbles as one of his closest companions, and surrounded himself with children at his Neverland ranch, a storybook playland filled with toys, rides and animals. The tabloids dubbed him "Wacko Jacko."

"It seemed to me that his internal essence was at war with the norms of the world. It's as if he was trying to defy gravity," said Michael Levine, a Hollywood publicist who represented Jackson in the early 1990s. He called Jackson a "disciple of P.T. Barnum" and said the star appeared fragile at the time but was "much more cunning and shrewd about the industry than anyone knew."

Jackson caused a furor in 2002 when he playfully dangled his infant son, Prince Michael II, over a hotel balcony in Berlin while a throng of fans watched from below.

In 2005, he was cleared of charges he molested a 13-year-old cancer survivor at Neverland in 2003. He had been accused of plying the boy with alcohol and groping him, and of engaging in strange and inappropriate behavior with other children.

The case followed years of rumors about Jackson and young boys. In a TV documentary, he acknowledged sharing his bed with children, a practice he described as sweet and not at all sexual.

Despite the acquittal, the lurid allegations that came out in court took a fearsome toll on his career and image, and he fell into serious financial trouble.

Michael Joseph Jackson was born Aug. 29, 1958, in Gary. He was 4 years old when he began singing with his brothers — Marlon, Jermaine, Jackie and Tito — in the Jackson 5. After his early success with bubblegum soul, he struck out on his own, generating innovative, explosive, unstoppable music.

The album "Thriller" alone mixed the dark, serpentine bass and drums and synthesizer approach of "Billie Jean," the grinding Eddie Van Halen solo on "Beat It," and the hiccups and falsettos on "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'."

The peak may have come in 1983, when Motown celebrated its 25th anniversary with an all-star televised concert and Jackson moonwalked off with the show, joining his brothers for a medley of old hits and then leaving them behind with a pointing, crouching, high-kicking, splay-footed, crotch-grabbing run through "Billie Jean."

The audience stood and roared. Jackson raised his fist.

By then he had cemented his place in pop culture. He got the plum Scarecrow role in the 1978 movie musical "The Wiz," a pop-R&B version of "The Wizard of Oz," that starred Diana Ross as Dorothy.

During production of a 1984 Pepsi commercial, Jackson's scalp sustains burns when an explosion sets his hair on fire.

He had strong follow-up albums with 1987's "Bad" and 1991's "Dangerous," but his career began to collapse in 1993 after he was accused of molesting a boy who often stayed at his home. The singer denied any wrongdoing, reached a settlement with the boy's family, reported to be $20 million, and criminal charges were never filed.

Jackson's expressed anger over the allegations on the 1995 album "HIStory," which sold more than 2.4 million copies, but by then, the popularity of Jackson's music was clearly waning, even as public fascination with his increasingly erratic behavior was growing.

Jackson married Lisa Marie Presley in 1994, and they divorced in 1996. Later that year, Jackson married Deborah Rowe, a former nurse for his dermatologist. They had two children together: Michael Joseph Jackson Jr., known as Prince Michael, and Paris Michael Katherine Jackson. Rowe filed for divorce in 1999.

Cardiac arrest is an abnormal heart rhythm that stops the heart from pumping blood to the body. It can occur after a heart attack or be caused by other heart problems.

Billboard magazine editorial director Bill Werde said Jackson's star power was unmatched. "The world just lost the biggest pop star in history, no matter how you cut it," Werde said. "He's literally the king of pop."

Jackson's 13 No. 1 one hits on the Billboard charts put him behind only Presley, the Beatles and Mariah Carey, Werde said.

"He was on the eve of potentially redeeming his career a little bit," he said. "People might have started to think of him again in a different light."