BusyCowboy

Players pass out, get sick during extreme battle.

If it’s good enough for Cartman, it’s good enough for Square-Enix.

The developers of the online role-playing game Final Fantasy XI seemingly borrowed a page from the Emmy-winning South Park episode “Make Love, Not Warcraft” by updating the game with one of the longest - and most physically grueling - video game fights ever. Introduced in the game’s latest downloadable update, the boss monster “Pandemonium Warden” remained perfectly fit after a group of high-level adventurers wailed away at it nonstop for over 18 hours straight.

Though the seemingly unbeatable boss will not prevent people from ‘completing’ the game — persistent online games typically do not “end” like most single-player games — it has sparked debate over what exactly the game’s developers, Square-Enix, expect out of their devoted fan base.

Message boards have lit up with disgruntled players calling out the company for failing to respect its very own in-game warning telling players they have “no desire to see your real life suffer as a consequence [of playing]. Don’t forget your friends, your family, your school or your work.”

Easy for them to say. While the beast continually healed, the gamers weren’t so lucky.

“People were passing out and getting physically ill,” leaders of the player guild said in a forum post. “We decided to end it before we risked turning into a horrible news story about how video games ruin people’s lives.”

Too late.

Well that was fast. Leryn Franco has officially turned into the hottest gal on the net. No one can abstain from talking about the Paraguayan belle for more than ten minutes and she didn’t even medal in the Olympics.

And now, rumors are swirling that she’s bagged herself a Serbian tennis player by the name of Novak Djokovic. He defeated Roger Federer in the Australian Open earlier this year. Nice choice, Lerynita.

“Djokovic looks to his new partner as if she were a trophy,” said one of the Argentine athletes. “Is it official? Yes, of course. They go hand in hand everywhere,” he says. The romance he’s referring to is that among the world’s number three tennis player and the beautiful athlete Paraguayan Leryn Franco.

Aside, Serbian dudes get a lot of Latinas. We’re sure this is exactly what Leryn Franco wanted: a mega-star on some professional circuit to lead her to greatness. You know what, we’re going to applaud the hell out it because she’s purdy. And because that means we’ll get to see a lot more of her. Every. Single. Day.

haha this is cutee.. poor ol’ Chewbacca.

Tiger Woods has been out of commission since winning the U.S. Open on one leg June.  He underwent knee surgery not long after, and has been diligently rehabbing it ever since.  And by “rehabbing it” I mean “having unprotected sex with his wife.”  Tiger announced that Elin Woods is pregnant again, and the couple expects their second child in late winter.

“Elin is feeling great and we are both thrilled,” Woods said. “While my injury has been disappointing and frustrating, it has allowed me to spend a lot of time watching Sam grow. I can’t begin to tell you how rewarding it is being a dad and spending time with her and Elin.”

Even a Cro-Magnon like myself who barely understands English can read between the lines there.  Let me put in some truth-making ellipses:

“While my injury has been … frustrating … I can’t begin to tell you how rewarding it is … spending time with … Elin.”

I think that’s a little closer to the point, but I’d still rather he just came out and said, “Banging my wife kicks ass.”

Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian in history, will use the $1 million bonus he earned from Speedo for tying Mark Spitz’s record of seven gold medals to start his own foundation.

Appearing on TODAY, Phelps announced that the Michael Phelps Foundation will distribute his prize money to various charitable programs to promote water safety and encourage youth swimming.

“Now, my goals reach beyond the pool, to helping others realize their dreams, and continuing to grow the sport I love so much,” Phelps said in a statement.

“I feel it’s only appropriate that I continue the momentum that Speedo helped to create by committing my bonus to the establishment of the Michael Phelps Foundation, which I hope will help me inspire others to achieve their dreams, and give back to the sport that has given me so much.”

Phelps has been sponsored by Speedo since he was 16. Prior to the Athens Olympics in 2004, Speedo built a million-dollar bonus into his contract if he won seven gold medals in a single Olympic Games.

At the Beijing Olympics, Phelps won eight gold medals, breaking Spitz’s mark of seven. The 23-year-old Maryland native now has 14 career Olympic golds overall and is 26-time world record holder in individual swimming events.

Phelps, who will host the 34^th season premiere of “Saturday Night Live” on Sept. 13, says his foundation’s first initiative will be an eight-city tour across the United States, in collaboration with Speedo, to launch an educational program called “Dream, Plan, Reach.”

The program, based on a set of principles Phelps learned as a kid, will provide children with an easy-to-understand game plan for life beyond the pool, empowering them to live healthy and active lives while focusing on goal-setting, personal responsibility and discipline in day-to-day living.

“I’ve learned that through education, planning, goal-setting and informed decision-making, anything is possible,” Phelps said

true champion, true inspiration, true hero

Google plans to launch Tuesday its own Internet browser, opening up a new challenge in cyberspace to Microsoft and its dominant Internet Explorer.

The California-based Web search leader said the new browser, called Google Chrome, would “add value for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the web.”

“We realized … we needed to completely rethink the browser,” Google’s Sundar Pichai said in a blog post.

The application can be downloaded for free in more than 100 countries and its code will be open source so no rights will have to be paid by anyone using or adapting the software.

Chrome is Google’s latest weapon in its bid to become the leader in all Internet areas. The latest major browser war was won by Microsoft when it won the battle for dominance in the 1990s against Netscape Navigator.

The move comes amid growth in browser market share by Firefox, a project of the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation, which ironically get a large portion of its funding from Google.

According to estimates by the research firm Net Applications, Internet Explorer is used by 74 percent of computer users worldwide compared with 18 percent for Firefox.

News of the browser leaked out Monday when Google release a comic book describing the advantages of Chrome.

“We hit ’send’ a bit early on a comic book introducing our new open source browser, Google Chrome. As we believe in access to information for everyone, we’ve now made the comic publicly available,” said Pichai.

“This is a straight shot over the bow of Microsoft, which has tightly integrated its Live Search offering into its dominant Internet Explorer browser (and which, surprise, is in turn tightly integrated into Windows),” said Mark Hendrickson in a posting on the technology website TechCrunch.

“It also makes for an awkward relationship with Mozilla, whose Firefox browser Google basically funds.”

Henry Blodget of Silicon Valley Insider said: “Microsoft has seen this movie before. This time, it won’t like the ending.”

Blodget said Google is attempting to drive more people to Google search and other applications, and away from Microsoft.

“If you’re thinking about Chrome as just another Web browser, you’re missing the larger point,” he said.

“In a couple of years, you won’t be downloading Google’s ‘browser.’ You’ll be downloading Google’s software - or, rather, you’ll be clicking on a series of Google icons that come pre-installed. Specifically, you’ll be working within a Google software environment that works sort of like Windows.”