"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

"Intel, Dell, IBM, EMC, and a host of other component makers and OEMs have announced a partnership aimed at developing a standard interface for PCIe-hosted solid-state disks. If the group has its way, we'll eventually be ditching the SATA bus entirely for SSDs that are hosted directly on PCIe. Why does this matter? Because PCIe-based SSDs are brain-meltingly fast.

"In the US at least, if you don't already have fiber to your home, it looks like you're very unlikely to get it any time soon, since the telcos are shying away from the cost of installing that infrastructure. Unfortunately, that leaves these same companies at risk of falling behind cable ISPs, which are starting to push speeds that only fiber can currently match.

"For the upcoming Diablo III, the big news is the announcement of the fifth class: the demon hunter, who will now be joining the ranks of the barbarian, witch doctor, wizard and monk. The new class will take on the role of a ranged warrior, but one that can also use a bit of dark magic as well. In fact, the demon hunter can actually acquire dark spells from defeated enemies.

"Hot on the heels of Intel's record-breaking quarter, the chipmaker has announced the specifics of its 22nm transition plans. Intel will spend between $6 billion and $8 billion upgrading its fabs for 22nm, with part of the money going to a brand new fab in Oregon.

"Google and the Israeli Antiquities Authority have teamed up to digitize the Dead Sea Scrolls and make the scans accessible to anyone with an Internet connection. Google, of course, has been scanning books and documents for years as part of its partnership with libraries around the world. Several million dollars will now fund a special implementation of the technology, as the Dead Sea fragments will all be scanned using a NASA-developed imaging system.

"Our readers enjoy our browser market share stories, but sometimes complain in the comments that we don't do enough to compare the actual browsers. We've therefore decided to do some performance tests for the top five browsers (stable and beta versions) on Windows. This is not meant to be an exhaustive performance rundown, as we have not tried every test in existence nor did we run them on every browser for Windows.

"Dear website owner, congratulations on your excellent site, which includes features covered by our registered patent, #5,251,294. As the description indicates, many of the components on your pages, particularly your menus, rollover images, and shortcuts, are detailed in our claim. We would be delighted to lease these to you at a reasonable royalty rate of $80,000. Please call our offices at your convenience to arrange a payment schedule." | more

"Blizzard released a patch of epic proportions for World of Warcraft on Tuesday, its first step toward the game's third expansion, Cataclysm, which has an official release date of December 7. While the changes in the patch are just a small fraction of the changes to come in the expansion proper, many aspects of the game have already been reworked.

"Credit cards may be helping to drive the obesity epidemic: Study after study has shown that people view buying healthy foods as an ethical decision. Simply making other choices that are viewed as "good" seems to liberate people in a way that makes them more likely to pick junk food. But it seems the mere method of purchase can help influence food choices. According to the researchers involved, paying with cash is painful, and that prompts people to avoid making choices they think of as bad, like junk food.