As I first reported yesterday, the US House of Representatives has been hearing arguments on a new bill that could put an end to many of the frivolous patent lawsuits filled each year by so-called patent trolls. As expected, the bill has passed in the House with support from both sides of the isle.

Known as the Innovation Act 325-91, the bill will now make its way to the senate where it is expected to pass with a bipartisan majority as well. Once it is finished in congress, the bill will make its way to President Obama's desk and he also is expected to sign it into law. If this does happen, we could see an end to the era of east Texas shell corporations that exist only to file and buy low-quality, low-detail patents that are so vague that they can be claimed as part of many technologies.

This is the first step into patent reform, and hopefully the next step will be a complete overhaul of the United States Patent and Trade office. With companies now patenting seeds, human, animal and plant genes, and even specific code, we need to work hard to prevent these sort of things from happening. If not, then I am afraid that we may see an immense slowdown in technological and scientific innovation and breakthroughs for decades to come.

The saga over who will become Microsoft's next CEO has taken yet another step forward today after a board member at Ford told press that Alan Mulally will not be leaving the car maker for Redmond, Washington. Since this news began to spread earlier this week, Microsoft's stock has fallen about 3.5-percent, equating in a $12 billion fall in market cap for the company.

The news came from Ford board member, Edsel Ford II who stated that "Alan is staying through the end of 2014," a time frame far past Steve Ballmer's departing date. This is good news for Nokia's Stephen Elop, who is also in the running to take the CEO seat. Today's news does not surprise me at all though, as I have expected Elop to be the "Chosen One" since Microsoft announced its acquisition plans for Nokia. Other reports suggest that Microsoft's head of Cloud Services Satya Nadella could head up the company, but I see that as a far stretch at this point.

This morning MSI announced the launch of a new mobile lineup that includes the industry's first 3K gaming notebook and an Adobe certified 3K workstation. Just in time for Christmas, the all new GT60 20D-261US features a ultra-HD display resolution of 2880x1620 which provides bright, sharp and crisp graphics for an unmatched experience.

The GT60 gaming notebook features an Intel Core i7-4700MQ processor, 16GB of DDR3L RAM, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M GPU, and a Killer NIC. A 720p webcam is on hand while Dynaudio speakers and a subwoofer handle the audio. The 2880x1620 3K display is of the 15.6-inch class, but does not feature touch sensitivity. Three USB 3.0 ports and two USB 2.0 ports, and a 128GB SSD / 1TB HHD combo rounds things out.

The GT60 Workstation has been optimized to run Adobe Creative Suite 6, Autodesk software, and Solidworks, and the 3K display allows professionals to work in stunning ultra high-resolution for the highest quality work possible from a mobile workstation. The GT60 2OKWS-278US features the same CPU, RAM, and storage. The difference in the powerful NVIDIA Quado K3100M workstation GPU that MSI has fit inside.

I've had issues with Battlefield 4, don't get me wrong, but when it works, it's an amazing game. Well, there are issues plaguing most platforms - next-gen consoles included - and EA wants to get it all fixed before it continues working on its DLC for BF4.

EA has put its foot down, with future expansions not being worked on until the problems with Battlefield 4 are a thing of the past. It's good to see EA kicking ass this early into the game, but these problems wouldn't be here if they didn't rush the game to release. EA said in its statement:

First, we want to thank the fans out there that are playing and supporting us with Battlefield 4. We know we still have a ways to go with fixing the game - it is absolutely our #1 priority. The team at DICE is working non-stop to update the game. Since Battlefield 4 China Rising expansion pack was already in the final stages of development by the time issues began with Battlefield 4, we decided to fulfill our promise to deliver it this week, but we're not moving onto future projects or expansions until we sort out all the issues with Battlefield 4. We know many of our players are frustrated, and we feel your pain. We will not stop until this is right.

It's no secret that Valve has been very Linux friendly as of late, and today the company publicly declared its commitment to the open source operating system by officially joining the Linux Foundation. This adds Valve to a prestigious list of heavy hitters such as HP, Intel, IBM, Oracle, and Samsung who are also part of the foundation.

"Joining the Linux Foundation is one of many ways Valve is investing in the advancement of Linux gaming," Mike Sartain, a key member of the Linux team at Valve said. "Through these efforts we hope to contribute tools for developers building new experiences on Linux, compel hardware manufacturers to prioritize support for Linux, and ultimately deliver an elegant and open platform for Linux users."

With SteamOS just around the corner, and more game developers supporting Linux and Steam every day, 2014 is going to be a big year for Linux gaming. I have a friend who has been predicting this for several years now, and today I had to concede all of my arguments to him on why this would never happen. At the rate things are progressing, I am willing to bet that in 5 years Linux and SteamOS will be as big of, if not a larger gaming platform than Windows is now.

2014 is going to be a big year for SSD technology in general, and the second quarter is going to be no exception for Intel's SSD business. Today new official slides have leaked that detail a massive portion on Intel's 2014 SSD offerings, and include new devices in the Temple Star, Pleasantdale, and Fultondale lines.

All three of the SSD families will utilize 20nm MLC NAND Flash memory and will arrive in three form factors. The SSD Pro 2500 Series (Temple Star) will be featured in traditional 2.5-inch and M.2 sizing with performance falling in the 540MB/s read and 490MB/s write speed range. The slide shows capacities from 80GB up to 480GB.

The SSD DC P3500 series (Pleasantdale) will arrive in both PCIe and 2.5-inch form factors, and will be available in 250GB, 500GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities. Read performance is around the 2800MB/s range while writes are a little slower at 1700MB/s.

Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian, is being threatened by British police over "potential" terrorism charges for publishing the incriminating NSA and GCHQ documents that NSA whistleblower, Edward Snowden, leaked.

Rusbridger testified in front of a British parliamentary committee on Tuesday, where lawmakers pushed the suggestion that the Guardian helped terrorists, just because the British paper revealed UK and US spy agency 'secrets'. Rusbridger stood his ground, stating that the government spying going on all around the world should be of public knowledge.

The Guardian editor said: "We have published I think 26 documents out of the 58,000 we've seen, or 58,000 plus. So we have made very selective judgments about what to print. We have published no names and we have lost control of no names."

Something interesting just popped up onto my radar, and that's the news that ASUS is working on a new dual OS tablet. The new tablet is capable of running Android and Windows, something of which ASUS is no newbie at.

But, with Android 4.4 KitKat now out, and Windows 8.1, could we see a mashup of operating systems under a new ASUS-built device? Well, it looks liker we can expect three models: M82T, L82T, and the R82T - with no information on what makes them all different. We do know that on the tablet that slid through the FCC was powered by the Intel Atom "Bay Trail" chip.

Other than that, we know it has a 3910mAh battery, and either 32GB or 64GB of storage. We don't know about the screen size, but we could expect something in the 7-inch range or so - which would work, considering ASUS builds the Android 4.4-powered Nexus 7 slate. If we do see this thing released, we should expect it to be shown off at CES 2014 in Las Vegas, in January.

DisplayPort technology is continuously improving, with DisplayPort 1.3 now being teased with some huge improvements. DP 1.3 will feature a bitrate of 8.1 Gbps per channel, up from 5.4 Gbps found in DP 1.2.

We should see a wonderful world where multiple 4K displays are supported from a single cable - something I'm longing for as I type this on a 4K display - and DP 1.3 will allow this. DP 1.3 will see support for 8K thanks to its insane bandwidth of a theoretical 32.4 Gbps. We should also see 4K 3D support ushered in with DisplayPort 1.3, which will be another awesome addition going into 2014.

What I would like to see, is some confirmation that we will indeed be seeing 4K in 3D, and whether this means I'll get what I've been waiting for, for quite sometime now: 4K at 120Hz. Unfortunately, we won't see the fruits of high-resolution labor until sometime in 2014 - where we'll see it announced, but it won't be pushed into devices until 2015.

Today Thecus announced the launch of its latest entry-level home and small office NAS. The all new N2310 is a 2-bay Network Attached Storage device that is packed with features you would expect from Thecus. The new N3210 features support for RAID 0, 1, and JBOD and packs in hardware that will ensure speed and reliability.

"Not only does the N2310 pack in a lot of the capabilities of larger and more expensive units, but it does so with style," said Florence Shih, General Manager at Thecus. "This dashing little black box can store up to 8TB of data with an unprecedented level of energy efficiency. In fact, powering the N2310 for an entire year would only cost you $5.03 in the US."

The N2310 also features a built-in FTP server, BitTorrent Client, and even Plex Media Server support that allows users to stream content to TVs, Xbox 360, and any other device running Plex's streaming client. The device also features two USB ports that enable users to easily copy over photos and files from external drives, as well as a printer, turning the NAS into a central print server. The Thecus N2310 is available now and retails at an MSRP of $169.99.