"The OnLive service works much better than we expected, and the things you can do with a $100 microconsole or netbook are impressive... but the small game selection and inability to "own" of the games you buy are major downers." | more

"The Xbox Live Arcade Pac-Man Championship Edition DX is ridiculous. That may not mean a whole lot considering just how ridiculous the original Championship Edition was, but a handful of changes make the DX version even more insane. And that's a good thing. The setup is exactly the same. The game plays out like a remixed version of Pac-Man where the maze is constantly changing and the game tries to mesmerize you with psychedelic visuals.

"Those who think of chaos as completely unpredictable are likely to be wondering how unpredictable behavior can be used to perform logic operations. But chaos theory isn't concerned with unpredictability; instead, it focuses on what are called nonlinear functions, ones where the ultimate output is very sensitive to the initial conditions. When you can control the initial conditions, you can still predict the output.

"This is not an e-mail killer. This is a messaging system that has e-mail as part of it." That's how Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg described the company's revamped messaging system, introduced at a special press event in San Francisco today. The more-than-just-e-mail system is meant to consolidate all of a user's interactions with other people—whether it's via SMS, Facebook messages, or e-mail—into one spot.

"Mozilla has announced the availability of Firefox 4 beta 7, a prerelease build for users who want to help test the next major version of the popular open source Web browser. It includes JaegerMonkey, Mozilla's enhanced JavaScript engine... Users who want to try out the beta themselves can download it from Mozilla's website. For additional details, you can refer to the official release notes.

"Rembrandt IP Management is "focused on attaining fair value for infringed patents," and it thinks it has two winning patents on its hands that could affect the entire US hard drive industry. Rembrandt today filed suit against both Seagate and Western Digital in federal court, alleging that most of their hard drives violate a pair of patents Rembrandt purchased from inventor Uri Cohen." | more

"You never know which mobile phone application the Department of Defense is going to glom onto next. Last time we checked, it was an automatic voice translation gadget to help our troops communicate with Pashtun and Dari speakers in Afghanistan. Now the Pentagon has its eye on an Android app that can help injured soldiers check their emotional state on a regular basis.

"Browsium has developed an add-on called UniBrows aimed at companies that want to upgrade to IE8 but need to keep IE6 around." | more

"In a blog post that went up earlier today, Intel's Bill Kircos flagged an announcement by Achronix that the latter company would be making its field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) on Intel's upcoming 22nm process. Kircos was very careful to emphasize the small size of this deal: "With Achronix," Kircos writes, "we are selectively offering access to our 22nm fabs.

"Online Pugsleys everywhere be forewarned: a major government program designed to help schools upgrade their Internet connectivity will soon require them to teach kids how to stop "cyberbullying" and "act responsibly on social networking sites like Facebook." | more