If you RTFM you'll know that the summary is misleading. A quote from TFA best explains the claims:
"The patents Kodak holds are incredibly broad, effectively covering images that are stored centrally and can be ordered online,"

I agree. The alternatives there provide sync across computers but only for the same browser. I use both Chrome and Firefox extensively and I will greatly miss the ability for (fo)Xmarks to sync my bookmarks, passwords and tabs across all my browsers, regardless of whether its Chrome/Firefox.

For now, I'm using Firefox sync as my primary syncing mechanism and importing into Chrome whenever I update something in Firefox. Its somewhat annoying, but I guess I'll deal. Maybe I'll switch back to using primarily Firefox.

I go to CMU and I did my capstone in Embedded Devices last year. One of the other groups was doing something that was almost exactly what the OP asked for. The project was called Jeules and you can probably still contact the team members to get some more information about it.
Their wiki unfortunately is locked down now, but it used to have the exact parts list and some of the circuit diagrams to build the system.
http://jeules.org/

The answer was posted yesterday at 2pm Eastern in the comments:
http://uscybercom-watch.blogspot.com/2010/06/uscybercom-logo.html

I agree completely, as evidenced in my first risk point, but anecdotal data does not speak for everyone. People will associate this problem with the PS3, not Sony. Why do you think they even removed "Sony" from almost all of the PS3? You see "Sony" in the "Sony Computer Entertainment of America" but thats about it. You see SCEA and PS3 and "Playstation" everywhere, but its not commonly called the "Sony Playstation 3", just "Playstation 3".

Finally, the very vocal community of Linux geeks are a VERY minor part of the PS3 community, and even smaller part of the gaming community as a whole. The PS3 is first and foremost a gaming machine. If you ask anyone on the street what a PS3 does, the first answer is always play games. Thus, I really believe that this issue will be practically negligible in the PS3's street cred. In fact, you can't even buy new PS3s that can install Linux anymore.

I understand that they are in fact removing functionality - but you bought a gaming machine that happens to be able to use Linux, not a Linux machine that happens to be able to game. People (in general) understand that, and I don't think that if they (the general public) are looking to buy a gaming system, the loss of the ability to install Linux on machines you can't even buy anymore will change their opinion in the least.

Sorry, I meant to say "lost" since these only apply to fat PS3s and they've stopped making them. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3#Model_comparison

I beg to differ on their losing profits, this is a purely profitable change for Sony:
Sony loses money on every PS3, and gains money back from licensing games, and their own game sales. They also gain money from PSN. What are you removing from the PS3s? The ability to install another OS. Does that contribute to profits at all? No. In fact, it caters to PS3 supercomputing, which involves buying a sizable number of PS3s (a net loss for Sony) and not buying any games (no profits here), and not even connecting it to the PSN due to bandwidth overhead and since it'll be running a separate OS anyways.

Lets see about risks:

1. Unhappy geeks who are running Linux. These people, btw, probably don't buy as many games since they're not running the PS3 to game all the time. Small loss, but who's going to stop buying games for their ($400+ at the time) fat PS3? Sure they might sell the PS3, but the next person who buys it will definitely buy games for it since no more Linux on it.
2. People who buy PS3s simply to run them as supercomputers. Shedding these people is pure profit.
3. Some hackers now providing firmware cracks. Sony doesn't care - if you brick your PS3 its now no longer under warranty because you've voided it. No risk here.

Basically, no surprise here.

This may have been true 20, even 10 years ago, but its 2010 now. Even though the government still suffers from corruption (what government doesn't to some extent, to be honest), believe it or not, the actual economic drivers in the industry are quite safely and well seated in China's global agenda.

Plus Xi'an subsidized 1/4 of the research lab, that means 3/4 of the cost was out of Applied Materials' pockets, which is still a sizable investment by any means. Unless there is some corruption or loss that costs more than that investment, there is no reason for them to pull out of there any time soon. And a 75-year land lease to add on to that? Sounds long-term to me.