...I would attribute some (but certainly not all) of the above strange behavior to engine management. For one, I heard the ECU intervenes when trying to launch the car from higher rpm. I have also heard that it will intervene if you get close to the 6,000rpm redline, and will cut spark and fuel abruptly. So, there is some "babysitting" going on, to make sure you don't cross any boundaries. On a modern car, it is easy for the ECU to manipulate spark and fuel curves depending on engine operating parameters. Knock will retard spark significantly. In other cases, it will lean the car out or richen it up for emissions or performance reasons. Sometimes, modern ECUs will manipulate what the engine is doing for NVH or refinement reasons. Making it transparent to you is the tricky part.

With drive by wire throttle, the same can be said of throttle opening (regardless of how much your foot is to the floor, it could end up doing something else. See how far you can rev the engine with an abrupt stab to the accelerator, and watch what happens. If it hits a ceiling of sorts, it may have drive-by-wire. You can also remove the shroud and look at the TB, see if there is a steel cable or electrical wiring coming off the thing). In the two weeks that I have owned the car, I have not removed the shroud from the engine yet to have a look, but I would assume that the throttle is drive by wire, and thus manipulated at some point by the ECU.

For those of you that have a car that stalled, check for a MIL and retrieve the code. OBDII codes are standardized, so if you post it here or do a google search, you ought to be able to find out what the source of the problem is easily. There are so many sensors that could affect engine behavior (TPS, cam and crank, mass air, etc) that without that shred of information, understanding why the engine is behaving that way could really be a wild goose chase.