I’m over here watching the Strikeforce show on CBS and there’s ads for EA Sports MMA all over the place. So I’m like, “hmm, maybe EA Sports has posted the trailer on its Web site yet?”

Consider this a friendly reminder. Tonight at 9pm ET on CBS (in the U.S.; I’m sure there will be plenty of streams, though, which you can find on your own) two of the big stars from EA’s upcoming EA Sports MMA video game will hit each other very hard. Fedor Emelianenko, the big Russian guy who could well be the best MMA fighter of all time (or is that Sakuraba?), will fight Brett Rogers, of whom I know nothing.

Own a Zune HD like Devin and I, the two hippest cats here at CrunchGear? Best to connect it to your PC right now so you can upgrade its firmware to version 4.3. Go, now!

It was one of the most sought after applications on the Internet until it was leaked earlier today. And now that it’s out there—and it is all over the place, easily findable by anyone able to use a search engine—we can all move on with our lives. Yes, Microsoft COFEE, the law enforcement tool that mystified so many of us (including Gizmodo~! and Ars Technica~!), is now available to download. If only there were a “bay” of some sort where, I don’t know, pirates hang out…

Strikeforce (UFC’s closest competitor here in the U.S.) promotes one of the bigger fights of the year tomorrow in Fedor vs. Brett Rogers. It takes place in Chicago, which explains why EA Sports just held a press conference there to reveal more details of its upcoming MMA game, entitled EA Sports MMA. EA Sports says that Strikeforce will be the “premier” mixed martial arts league in the game, and that well-known referee “Big” John McCarthy will be in the game.

Writing about tech is so peculiar. On one hand we’re expected to be enthusiastic about the things we cover; no one wants to see us being negative and dismissive about every little thing. That’s no fun. On the other hand, you don’t want a bunch of ninnies bleating on about how great this year’s piece of plastic is compared to last year’s. How is that useful to anyone? A bit of skepticism is necessary so we don’t come across as cheerleaders for this or that company, or for this or that device. You can’t be objective if you worship the ground that the two Steves—Jobs and Ballmer—walk on.

Here’s comes another DJ Hero story. Activision called the game’s launch “successful” at a conference call yesterday, saying that the game represents a “first step toward diversifying beyond rock” and into other genres, like hip hop and electronic music. In other words, the game’s soft sales aren’t necessarily a cause for alarm (if you were ever concerned in the first place).

A Pew Internet & American Life study has refuted the idea that use of the Internet necessarily leads to decreased social isolation. Quite the opposite!, yelled a character in a Charles Dickens novel. It turns out that as people continually use things like Twitter, Facebook, and the like, they’re both expanding their social circle and increasing contact with said circle.

More developments in the absolutely gripping California Energy Commission vs The World drama. The CEC has delayed a meeting wherein it was to discuss the possible implementation of a ban of sorts on the sale of energy-hogging televisions. The Consumer Electronics Agency (it organizes CES every year) has been fighting against the measure, arguing that any such regulation would necessarily raise TV prices, stifle innovation, etc.

There’s a silly study, conducted by Retrevo, making the rounds that purports to analyze how iPhone users fare in the dating world. I know, right? One stat to whet your beak: one in three iPhone owners have admitted to breaking up with their significant other via text message. Amazing.

Well that didn’t exactly pan out, now did it? Sony’s MLB 09 The Show predicted last week that the Philadelphia Phillies would win the World Series in seven games. As y’all know by now, the New York Yankees (booooo!) beat the Phillies in Game Six last night to win their 27th championship. Congratulations, Yankees, you’re the Real Madrid of baseball with a terrible stadium.

Famous rock band No Doubt has sued Activision over the use of its avatars in the game Guitar Hero 5. No Doubt says that the deal it signed with Activision only permitted the avatars to be used when playing No Doubt songs. The problem is that Activision has it set up that you can play any song in the game with the No Doubt avatars. That I’m even writing about this is rather depressing.

Really big World of Warcraft news today, friends. (Why do I write so much about WoW? Oh, you know, it’s just the biggest, most successful MMO in history. Not writing about it would be like covering tech with mentioning Microsoft or Apple.) Blizzard is now selling in-game pets that you can buy with real money, $10. We’re talking cash money. Dollar dollar bill, y’all.

Looks like Ubisoft hasn’t had a great couple of months, either. The France-based publisher reported today a 52 percent decline in sales for the six months that ended on September 30 compared to the same period last year. (Fiscal years tend to begin in March.) A 52 percent drop translates to €166 million, or around $246 million.

Logging into PayPal for the first time in months this morning, I sent Tale of Tales $7 of my completely unearned money. It was $7 well spent. I bought Fatale: Exploring Salome, and I guess you can call it a game, but it’s not some mindless Halo or Madden nonsense. (Look at me, going after the big targets.) It’s just weird. Weird but great.

Let’s move onto something a little more serious for a moment. There’s a device that the New York Times highlighted yesterday called the ADE 651. It’s a small, hand-held explosives detector, or so claims the company behind it, the UK-based ATSC. It’s being heavily used in Iraq, and officials there swear by it. Meanwhile, American officials call the device about as effective and realistic as a Ouija board. It’s rubbish.

Let me preface this by saying that I could be the worst GTA player on Planet Earth. I don’t know if my thumbs just can’t twiddle like they used to when I was a spry 16-year-old. I don’t know if the sandbox “oh my god everything is happening all at once~!” style of gameplay is exacting its revenge on me for some previous offense I committed in a past life. I simply don’t know what’s up. The bottom line is: I completely stink on ice when it comes to all things GTA.

Yes, that’s a USB drive in the shape of an apple. It’s a limited edition doohickey that contains the entire remastered Beatles catalogue, the same one that was released on September 9. The 16GB drive comes out on December 8 here.

A great African American civil rights activist one said, “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.” That’s how I feel about copyright these days. You’ve got these entrenched business interests who seemingly have their favorite congressmen on speed-dial, and then you have people who, God forbid, would like to see these businesses embrace new, practical business models that don’t automatically assume their customers are potential criminals. But this! This latest development has me thinking, “You know what? Just shoot me. Go ahead, I’ll even buy the ammo from Wal-Mart if you want. I don’t have to pay my student loans any more (take that, Citibank!), and I won’t have to worry about being treated like a criminal by the likes of whatever stupid entertainment company is in Congress’ good graces this week. Win-win.”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t the Amazon Kindle the first device to launch with built-in wireless (that is, cellular data) access? You know, you pay for the device, and then you don’t have to pay monthly wireless access because it’s already included in the cost of the device? It’s pretty neat, I think I can say without too much grief, and is a model that’s been copied by other e-book readers. Now it looks like Nintendo is considering such a model for future versions of the Nintendo DS (and not necessarily the XL, mind you). Exciting!

Here’s a story I first heard on Figure 4 Daily last night while farming for mageweave (no, I’m not lying): not only have DVRs not ruined the TV businesses, as we had been led to believe for so many years, but it turns out that the delayed viewings, and more accurate ratings, have given the networks exactly what they’ve always wanted. That, of course, is the opportunity to squeeze more money out of their advertisers.

While there’s no hard numbers, an analyst over at Capital Markets has called the sales of DJ Hero “modest.” Usually you want phrases like “brisk pace” and “exceeding expectations” when you release big ticket games like DJ Hero, but it doesn’t seem to be happening here.

Bias much, CBS? The network ran a report on 60 Minutes the other day (which shows how far off our radar the show is, seeing as though we just found out about it) that, according to TechDirt’s fantastic report, is basically a piece of MPAA propaganda. It makes all sorts of ridiculous claims that can easily be disproven by, you know, spending two minutes looking this stuff up.

Not that this should surprise anyone, but Apple has sold only 5,000 iPhones since last week when it officially launched. The phrase “officially launched” is key, since people there have been able to buy the iPhone on the gray market for some time now. And it’s a superior phone on the grey market, since the official phone doesn’t have Wi-Fi. That’s right: a smartphone nearly in 2010 that doesn’t have Wi-Fi.

The Family Guy-Microsoft story has been tearing this country apart for too long. No more! Seth McFarlane & Co. have found a new sponsor for their Almost Live special, and it’s none other than the movie Sherlock Holmes, which stars Robert Downey, Jr.