It’s not a real spring if it has a faucet…

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2006210059,00.html

A WATER leak that gushed through a hamlet for 16 YEARS was finally stemmed — when a farmer turned it off at a stopcock.

Water board officials had always insisted the stream pouring down a lane was a natural SPRING.

The leak created a constant river — and even a muddy pool at its “source”.

But farmer John Berry eventually spotted a rusted stopcock in a grass verge nearby, turned it — and the “leak” stopped.

John, 54, said: “It beggars belief that water officials could insist it was a natural stream when there was a tap so close. It just needed a turn. “I turned the tap off with my hand and half an hour later the water had disappeared, leaving just a mud hole.”

“As soon as I turned it back on, the pond filled up. If that is a natural spring then it must be the only one with a tap on it.”

A long-kept secret in Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks has been revealed…

http://www.mortalkombatonline.com/content/News/read.cds?article=743

A new mode was discovered in MK: Shaolin Monks called Survival Mode. This mode lets you fight in the arenas against multiple bosses at once (including a simultaneous fight against the Orochi Hellbeast and Inferno Scorpion!). Level one lets you start out against Baraka, some Nomads, and eventually some Masked Guards.

This was actually a bit of a surprise. Survival Mode was hinted at during the Fight Night chat last October that we held; at the very end, Barclay Smith and Adam Puhl had the following exchange:

(Barclay-Smith) Adam you should reveal Survival Mode
(Adam-Puhl) it’s too much to type :)
(John-Edwards) survival mode??
(Adam-Puhl) but keep looking
(Barclay-Smith) I KNOW ITS IN THERE
(Adam-Puhl) ME TOO!

A few months after the game’s release, I started a stickied topic on MK Online’s MKSM Discussion forum, to help spur interest in locating the elusive Survival Mode. Well, this morning, two of the forum/chat members, sektor_rulz and Goroliath, managed to locate it. :-) Full instructions for locating it are in the news post above. I’ve yet to try it, but it’ll give me something to do on Sunday. In any event, my hearty congratulations to those two for finding it!

I now have even more incentive to buy an Intel Mac…

http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/

More and more people are buying and loving Macs. To make this choice simply irresistible, Apple will include technology in the next major release of Mac OS X, Leopard, that lets you install and run the Windows XP operating system on your Mac. Called Boot Camp (for now), you can download a public beta today.

As elegant as it gets
Boot Camp lets you install Windows XP without moving your Mac data, though you will need to bring your own copy to the table, as Apple Computer does not sell or support Microsoft Windows.(1) Boot Camp will burn a CD of all the required drivers for Windows so you don’t have to scrounge around the Internet looking for them.

Damn. One of the things that I really wanted before migrating to an Intel Mac was something like this, so that I could run Windows XP when necessary. Now that it’s available… heh. I’ll still be waiting, though, as I don’t need to upgrade my laptop for a while and my main PC is powerful enough for the time being. Oh, well… at least I know the option is there. :-)

StarCraft: Ghost postponed indefinitely…

http://xbox.gamespy.com/xbox/starcraft-ghost/698419p1.html

Blizzard Entertainment Inc. today announced plans to focus the company’s console-development efforts on the next generation of console platforms. The biggest news to come with this announcement is the indefinite postponement of production on StarCraft: Ghost, the console title first revealed to the gaming media back in 2003.

“Like many in the industry, we’ve been impressed with the potential of the new consoles, and we’re looking forward to exploring that potential further,” stated Mike Morhaime, president and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “In addition to allowing us to determine the best course for StarCraft: Ghost, this review period will help us lay the groundwork for our future console games.”

While this doesn’t surprise me, it does disappoint me. I had been looking forward to this game, as I really enjoyed the original StarCraft and this would have made an interesting followup. Oh, well… maybe we’ll see a book instead, like what happened to WarCraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans.

Nintendo Revolution’s backwards compatibility just got a whole lot nicer…

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6146528.html

SAN JOSE, Calif.–Everything old is new again. You only have to look at the success of Xbox Live Arcade to know that while gamers are demanding the hottest graphics and the latest innovations from their next-gen hardware, they also relish the opportunity to travel down memory lane–and they’re willing to pay for that chance.

Nintendo knows this. The company announced at E3 last year that its forthcoming Revolution would help scratch the nostalgic itch with a “virtual console” that will let users download and play potentially hundreds of games from the company’s back catalog, spanning all of its older systems–the Nintendo 64, SNES, and the hallowed NES.

At its GDC keynote this morning, Nintendo unveiled plans to flesh out the Revolution’s classic-game library even beyond its own storied library. Today during his keynote speech at the 2006 Game Developers Conference, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata announced that two former hardware rivals–Sega and Hudson–will make sizable chunks of their own back catalog available for download on the Revolution.

According to Nintendo, over 1,000 games for Sega’s Genesis console, released in 1989, will be added to the Revolution’s library. Joining them will be an undisclosed number of titles from the Hudson’s TurboGrafx console, also released in 1989 and codeveloped by electronics giant NEC. Though no specific titles were mentioned, Nintendo said it is taking a “best of” approach in selecting which games will come to the Revolution.

This makes the Revolution that much more compelling to me. There were several Genesis titles I wouldn’t mind having, and Galaga 90 (a TG16 port of Galaga 88) was always of interest to me. I know Louie would find this development extremely interesting as well, as he had a Genesis and was big on some of its games as well.

Looks like my first next-gen console has been decided…

Interesting… someone got a Mactel to dualboot OS X and WinXP.

http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/16/1329206

niemassacre writes “According to winxponmac.com, the contest has been won – nearly $14k to narf2006 for submitting a working solution to dual-booting Windows XP and Mac OS X on an Intel-Powered mac. A thread on osx86project.org has confirmations from several testers that the procedure works on the 17″ iMac, the Mac mini, and the MacBook Pro. Many sets of pictures and videos (such as this installation video) are floating around (and mentioned in the thread). The solution itself should be posted soon.” Poit! Congratulations to narf.

The thread at osx86project.org appears to be Slashdotted, but even so this is a very interesting development. I know at least one person who would get a MacBook Pro if he could dual-boot Mac OS X and Windows XP Professional on it. It’s certainly something I would end up doing sooner or later once I get an Intel-based Mac laptop. Congratulations to narf2006 for figuring it out!

A real life War of the Roses?

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/world/3721051.html

MEXICO CITY – A Mexican couple were recovering separately after a marital spat got out of control and saw them firing guns, throwing knives and hurling homemade bombs, Mexican daily Milenio said Monday.

In scenes taken straight out of hit romantic action comedy Mr. and Mrs. Smith, starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Juan Espinosa and Irma Contreras fought until their house blew up in a homemade gasoline bomb explosion, Milenio said.

Police called to the home in the indigenous Maya Indian town of Oxkutzcab in the southeastern state of Yucatan arrested Espinosa. Contreras was taken to hospital with third-degree burns.

A local police official confirmed the report but declined to provide further information.

The physical fitness routines of Cirque du Soleil…

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/features/3710530.html

Anyone who has witnessed a Cirque du Soleil performance has the visceral reaction of wanting to chuck it all and run away with the circus.

Problem is, less than one one-hundredth of the population is fit enough to do those death-defying aerial acts, precision acrobatics or contortionist moves that make up Cirque’s fabulous repertoire. You could run away, but you’d be selling drinks at the concession stand.

These people are world-class performers who have a billion times more flexibility, strength and grace than the rest of us mortals, and are capable of elegantly swinging from a trapeze, as in the show Saltimbanco or diving 60 feet above the ground into a little pool as they do in O.

So I was envisioning a nonstop buzz of performers hoisting weights, honing their splits and cardio-ing it up like nobody’s business as I headed for a meeting with some of the cast of the Cirque show Quidam.

It would take nothing less, I assumed, to maintain such phenomenal physiques and unique skills to nail those nightly gigs.

And then I met Jerome Le Baut.

The French former gymnast and acrobatic expert is one-half of the duo that performs Vis Versa, an astounding slo-mo piece in which one is often balancing the other in seemingly precarious positions — for example, he’s standing, she’s completely upside down, her shoulders resting on his.

I asked the dark-haired Le Baut, who’s 36 and extraordinarily lean, to tell me a little about his workout regime. He shrugged, admitted to some biking and also chasing his two young kids around, plus stretching and a little warm-up before performing.

No marathon Pilates sessions, no amazing feats of strength?

Nope. That and the show, he said, “are enough to keep me in shape.”

No one, in fact, is training for hours on end — not the guy who spins and twirls and does somersaults on the gigantic German wheel, not the woman who balances on her hands and twists her body into positions that would make you believe she doesn’t have a spine.

Hanging out here, it quickly became apparent that part of the performers’ challenge is saving enough energy for the show, which requires an enormous amount of physical activity and concentration.

Le Baut’s partner, 21-year-old Asa Kubiak has boot-camped it in Montreal, spending three months training for the Vis Versa number, increasing her upper body strength and honing her balance, agility and flexibility.

“Sometimes I felt like I was Rocky or something preparing for a competition,” she says, laughing. “I’d have a towel wrapped around my head to train my neck, and the coach would pull really hard.”

The result was “a total body makeover” that produced a more muscular physique. “I had no muscle mass before,” she said. (She is tall but thin, not what you’d expect someone to look like who’s able to support the weight of a grown man.) Now that her body’s in shape her workouts are not nearly as intense. Like others in the cast, the time she spends exercising ranges from zero to an hour or more, depending on what her body needs on a particular day.

Kubiak’s regimen consists of an assortment of disciplines. She picks and chooses from Pilates, stretching, ab work, yoga and cardio, which she’ll do on a stationary bike, treadmill or elliptical trainer. Strength training is done mostly with resistance and her own body weight.

“Every day I play on the Bosu ball,” she adds. “I’ll do handstands on it before the act. It’s a nice way to feel alignment.”

Some in-house exercise classes are taught by 33-year-old Philippa Hayball, who portrays a character and performs in a number called Aerial Hoops, twirling above the stage.

Hayball’s own workout incorporates Pilates, stretching, strength and balance, and core training, but little cardio: “During the show I run and run and run,” she says. “Especially if we do a 10-show week, that’s enough running for me.”

The other important element is rest. “I’m learning more about rest, actually,” Hayball said. “If you take a day off training and rejuvenate you come back stronger the next day.”

And these parents represent everything wrong with parenting and the legal system today.

http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/News/Florida/floSTAT04030806.htm

BARTOW — The parents of a 13-year-old boy who was seriously injured when he fell from a roller coaster at Cypress Gardens last month sued the theme park for negligence.

Martin Llamas of Orlando fell 10 to 12 feet onto the grass from the Triple Hurricane roller coaster on Feb. 25. The Polk County Sheriff’s Office said he had maneuvered out of the lap bar and was facing the cars behind him when he was thrown out of the coaster on a sharp turn.

But his parents, Publio Junco and Maria Cota, dispute witness accounts that their son was standing up in the car. They filed suit Friday, claiming Cypress Gardens failed to ensure the ride was safe, and failed to maintain and inspect it to prevent injury.

Cypress Gardens spokeswoman Lynn Wright said the park didn’t do anything wrong.

“We stand by the results of the completed investigations of state and local officials, which cleared the park of any negligence or error in this unfortunate accident,” Wright said.

An inspector with the Florida State Bureau of Fair Ride Inspection concluded there was no malfunction with the ride and the boy was properly restrained by the coaster’s lap restraint. The ride was reopened the day after the accident.

Llamas remains hospitalized in Tampa.

Yet another reason not to use Norton products…

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2006/03/keylogger_utterance_spooks_nor.html

Symantec said Wednesday it plans to tweak the behavior of its Norton Internet Security and Norton Personal Firewall products so that they are no longer vulnerable to an annoying but otherwise harmless prank that “script kiddie” hackers have been using for the past week or so to knock users off online chat channels.

Last week, a hacker known as HM2K posted a note on his blog about a Norton security feature that could be abused on Internet relay chat (IRC) networks, simple, text-based communities that predate modern instant messaging systems. (Most IRC networks are used for the same purpose as regular instant-message networks like AOL Instant Messenger or MSN Messenger — to facilitate real-time online communication between two or more people at once. But virus and worm writers also use IRC to update and control their networks of infected computers.)

Turns out that if someone types “startkeylogger” or “stopkeylogger” in an IRC channel, anyone on the channel using the affected Norton products will be immediately kicked off without warning. These are commands typically issued by the Spybot worm, which spreads over IRC and peer-to-peer file-swapping networks, installing a program that records and transmits everything the victim types (known as a keylogger).

Though the author said he didn’t post the information so that people would abuse it, abuse it they did. It wasn’t long after his posting that you could see users dropping like flies from IRC channels in some of the larger communities like Efnet and Dalnet as pranksters began typing the command all over the place, in some cases repeatedly on the same channel. According to several posters on his blog, a number of IRC channels are now filtering out those phrases.

The funny thing is, it DOES work… I just nailed two people on #mortalkombat with that. And yes, I did warn people I was going to do so first… :-)