Eurogamer has a look at some new information about the Revolution's wireless presence. From the article: "Iwata confirmed that consumers will not be required to pay any monthly fees to play first party titles - the only costs incurred will be the price of games and the user's own Internet connection. He said that Nintendo has worked hard to design a system which is secure and protected from the kind of abuse that can come from anonymity. A Nintendo-branded USB Wi-Fi access point will appear on the shelves along side the first Wi-Fi enabled game for use by gamers who don't have a wireless Internet connection already set up - which would suggest that third party wireless access points can also be used." Update: 09/20 20:47 GMT by Z : Edited for clarity.

Very few things surprise me about videogames anymore. I won't claim to be all-knowing by any means, but there are very few genuine surprises these days. Release dates are known well in advance, endless features and interviews are conducted with developers during the course of a game's creation, and what few elements that publishers try to keep under wraps get leaked to the media by individuals wanting their moment in the sun. Even the big gaming news stories of this past year (Hot Coffee, the PS3 PreRendered Movie Debate) were more frustrating than surprising. Happily, Nintendo managed to pull a rabbit out of their hat. Today's announcement of exactly what the revolution behind the Revolution will be is nothing short of a showstopper. Read on for my reaction to Nintendo's new bid for the brass ring.

Brett writes "Despite claims to the contrary, it now appears that Apple didn't do any serious investigation inside the company before they sued AppleInsider and the PowerPage. This is quite a bit of a problem because Californian law and First Amendment precedent requires Apple check up on itself before threatening journalists. From the article, "It appears that Apple has adopted a shoot-first, ask questions later approach to dealing with rumors sites. The company took no depositions, required no oaths from its employees, and failed to subpoena anyone related to the company or the development of the device in question.""

Lots of tidbits for you about WoW today, to get you through the weekly downtime. Gamespot is reporting that there are now over 1 Million players in North America, and over 4 Million players worldwide. If you're one of those 4 Million players, perhaps that special someone is out there in Azeroth. Tom's Hardware has a guide on meeting women in World of Warcraft, for the lonely druid or warrior. For a view of what the game is like now, Mogg wrote to mention a 9 months later review at GamerGod. Finally, not everyone is happy. As we mentioned earlier this month, China is planning on forcing MMOG vendors to build in time restrictions for their games. GameDaily.biz reports that players have already begun to protest the separation from their game. From the GamerGod article: "The main dilemma preventing battlegrounds from being a break away hit is the queue required to join one. It is best compared to standing in line at a grocery store. The bigger and busier the store... the more lines and more cashiers there is. The smaller the store the fewer. On low population servers there is literally no battlegrounds open outside of prime time leaving off hour gamers unable to enjoy battlegrounds. High population servers often have five or more of each instance activated during peak hours and rarely struggle for players to battle."

caesar79 writes "The New York Times has an article titled "Relax, Bill Gates; It's Google's Turn as the Villain" (also evil but at least free registration required) According to the article, the "go-getting" attitude of Google is coming across as arrogance to many people in the Valley. More importantly, it draws attention to the fact that Google has drained the market of talent, caused a 25% to 50% hike in salaries and made it difficult for startups to get funding."

Gamespot is running a piece detailing some of the most well known Easter Eggs in gaming history. The list starts with the first egg in a game, the Warren Robinett room in Adventure. From the article: "In the depths of the black castle in Games 2 and 3, which required special tools, direction, and a certain amount of know-how, players could maneuver to a room by the catacombs that had a single-pixel gray dot, the same color as the game's background. The dot would allow players access through a wall to a superfluous area with the text "Created by Warren Robinett" running down the middle. Robinett was partially motivated by the fact that, at the time, designers weren't given credit for their games."

An anonymous reader writes "Last weekend at Defcon, the best and brightest hackers got together to play Capture the Flag, a weekend long hacking event that is the premier event of its kind. According to the results, Shellphish won (UC Santa Barbara students led by professor Giovanni Vigna). An article at SecurityFocus states that the competition was far more technical than in previous years, focusing on reverse engineering skills and code auditing." From the article: "The game required skills that are also required by both security researchers and hackers, such as ability to analyze attack vectors, understanding and automating attacks, finding new, unpredictable ways to exploit things...It's about analyzing the security posture of a system that is given to you and about which you initially know nothing."

leprasmurf writes "Sci Tech Today is reporting that scientists have cracked open a 190-million-year-old egg to reveal the oldest known dinosaur embryo. Examination of the fetal skeleton suggests the hatchling would have required parental care to survive. This would be the earliest evidence of nurturant behavior, more than 100 million years earlier than previous examples." The University of Toronto has a release about this as well. From the article: "According to Reisz, what makes this discovery particularly significant is the ability to put the embryos into a growth series and work out for the first time how these animals grew from a tiny, 15 centimetre embryo into a five metre adult. 'This has never been done for a dinosaur. Only Massospondylus is represented by embryos as well as by numerous articulated skeletons of juveniles and adults. The results have major implications for our understanding of how these animals grew and evolved,' he says."

Doggie Fizzle writes "RAID has been common in business environments for ages, and is now becoming more viable and popular for personal computers. This article focuses on the the basics of RAID, and spells things out for beginners or tech veterans. From the article: 'The benefits of RAID over a single drive system far outweigh the extra consideration required during installation. Losing data once due to hard drive failure may be all that is required to convince anyone that RAID is right for them, but why wait until that happens.'"

Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "FCC chairman Kevin Martin says 'his top goal is to increase Americans access to high-speed Internet,' the Wall Street Journal reports. 'Late last week, he began circulating plans to loosen rules so neither phone nor cable companies will be required to share their Internet connections with competitors like America Online, a change that essentially would create a duopoly in many local markets. He also embraces the idea that local governments should be allowed to offer wireless Internet services, at least in rural areas where some phone and cable companies balk at providing high-speed service.' The Journal also has a transcript of its interview with Martin, in which he discusses indecency and whether broadcast rules should also apply to satellite and cable."

geeber writes "The New York Times (reg. required) has an article about a new response to spyware - throw out the computer and buy a new one. The notion is new computers can be had for $400 so it's a cost effective and 'rational response.'" From the article: "While no figures are available on the ranks of those jettisoning their PC's, the scourge of unwanted software is widely felt. This month the Pew group published a study in which 43 percent of the 2,001 adult Internet users polled said they had been confronted with spyware or adware, collectively known as malware. Forty-eight percent said they had stopped visiting Web sites that might deposit unwanted programs on their PC's. Moreover, 68 percent said they had had computer trouble in the last year consistent with the problems caused by spyware or adware, though 60 percent of those were unsure of the problems' origins. Twenty percent of those who tried to fix the problem said it had not been solved; among those who spent money seeking a remedy, the average outlay was $129."

cvd6262 writes "Disney World is now requiring all visitors to have their index and middle fingers scanned to gain entrance to the park. This started for season pass holders, but is now required for everyone." From the article: "'I think it's a step in the wrong direction,' Civil Liberties Union spokesman George Crossley said. 'I think it is a step toward collection of personal information on people regardless of what Disney says.'"

The IEEE Spectrum site has an article up discussing the engineering required to keep Norrath running. From the article: "The Death Star is a huge, warm, windowless room containing the rows and rows of servers that run Sony's online games. The whooshing of a massive air-conditioning system is so loud that conversation is almost impossible. A large steel cage surrounds more than 500 servers stacked 32 high in towering racks--and this is just one battalion, albeit the largest, in Sony's 1500-machine army of servers."

jpkunst writes "In a lengthy interview with Eric S. Raymond by Federico Biancuzzi at O'Reilly's onlamp.com, ESR defends his position that 'Open source would be succeeding faster if the GPL didn't make lots of people nervous about adopting it.'" From the article: "I don't think the GPL is the principal reason for Linux's success. Rather, I believe it's because in 1991 Linus was the first person to find the right social architecture for distributed software development. It wasn't possible much before then because it required cheap internet; and after Linux, most people who might otherwise have founded OS projects found that the minimum-energy route to what they wanted was to improve Linux. The GPL helped, but I think mainly as a sort of social signal rather than as a legal document with teeth."

joeflies writes "The San Francisco Chronicle published an article regarding research on how much fuel is required to make Ethanol. The results indicate that it make take 6 times more energy than the end product delivers."

suitepotato writes "In this article, Ingrid Marson reports to CNet News that in a small survey of companies such as Dell, HP, and Lenovo, there are no real plans to deploy Microsoft's Windows XP N which was the version required by the European Union. It would seem that despite the rants of anger towards Microsoft that they were unfairly bundling Windows Media Player with Windows XP, the public at large would not seem to agree and is not actually demanding any such stripped down version. Perhaps the EU's actions were unnecessary?"

IronicGrin writes "Even hard-core House of Mouse apologists have to admit that Disney's Feature Animation division has lost its way. After a half decade of pathetic failures (Atlantis) and epic disasters (Treasure Planet), the company shut its fabled Orlando 2D animation studios last year and announced that it was jumping on the computer animation bandwagon. A big motivation for the move to CGI was, of course, the Magic Kingdom's tenuous relationship with Pixar--the source of all of Disney's recent animated hits. But Disney is overlooking a better example of just what its toon team has been doing wrong...right under its nose. Howl's Moving Castle, which opened this weekend to rapturous critical acclaim, is the third masterpiece from Japan's Studio Ghibli that Disney has released theatrically. Today's New York Times has a feature by A.O. Scott [reg required, blah blah] calling Miyazaki the "world's greatest living animated-filmmaker"; meanwhile, last Thursday, I wrote a column for SFGate.com on why Disney animation, 3D rendered or not, is doomed to irrelevance if it fails to (re)learn some basic lessons from Miyazaki and his cohorts at Ghibli. What do you think? Is Disney destined to fade to black, or can a little Ghibli flavor (mmm....Ghibli) get it back on track?"

Aredridel writes "Zed A. Shaw has an insightful article on how analyses of software systems should be performed, and how they're often done wrong. It should be required reading for all IT journalists, and all readers of IT journals."

peter303 writes "The New York Times (reg. required) reports that computer backup procedures are woefully inadequate at 19 centers of the Department of Homeland Security. Should this agency strive to be good example for the rest of the country and protect against extreme hackers? " From the article: "Adequate backups were lacking for networks that screen airline passengers, that inspect goods moving across borders and that communicate with department employees and outside officials. Those same agencies, the auditors found, have in most cases failed to prepare sufficiently written disaster recovery plans that would guide operations if a main office or computer system was knocked out."

putko writes "The NYT has an article entitled 'Play It Again, Vladimir (via Computer)' that discusses efforts to transform old recordings into new, computer played performances (reg. required), by determining how the previous performer made the sounds and redoing it. Further efforts attempt to distill the 'style' of a performer and play other scores with the same style. As can be expected, musicologists argue over whether or not the new musical artifact is really 'a performance'. Philip K. Dick would be proud."