Doctors have reported the first ever case of someone using the internet while asleep.

She walked to the next room, turned on the computer, connected to the internet, and logged on by typing her username and password to her email account. She then composed and sent three emails.

She was shocked when she saw these emails, as she did not recall writing them.

This week, Dell announced it will offer systems with the aging Windows XP for a surcharge of US$150 over the newer Windows Vista--this only five months after it stopped offering XP on its Inspiron consumer desktop and laptop PCs.

The deadline for Windows XP downgrades has been pushed back twice now, remaining in effect until July 31, 2009-a strong indication that enough users want to stay with the aging XP rather than give Vista a chance.

The survey, conveniently carried out online and probably taking longer to complete than the average bunk-up, found that 46 per cent of women would rather go without sex for two weeks than give up the joys of the Internet for that long.

Surprisingly, a full 30 per cent of men also admitted they'd rather lose two weeks of sex than losing their, er, connection, with 39 per cent of men aged 18-34 willing to take up temporary celibacy compared to only 23 per cent of men aged 35-44.

The full Moon will loom larger in the sky on Friday than it has since 1993, as it will be nearly as close as it ever comes to Earth in its orbit.

On 12 December, the Moon will enter its full phase, when its disc appears completely illuminated by the Sun, just four hours after reaching its closest point to Earth. This will make it 14% bigger and 30% brighter than other full Moons in 2008, though the difference will be hard to distinguish by eye.

Globally, Earth's atmosphere warmed an average of about 0.4 C (or about 0.72 degrees Fahrenheit) in 30 years, according to data collected by sensors aboard NOAA and NASA satellites. More than 80 percent of the globe warmed by some amount.

Virtually all of the warming found in the satellite temperature record has taken place since the onset of the 1997-1998 El Nino. Earth's average temperature showed no detectable warming from December 1978 until the 1997 El Nino.

It seems a teacher came upon a student demonstrating Linux to other kids and handing out LiveCDs. The teacher confiscated the CDs and wrote an angry email to HeliOS's founder, Ken Starks:

"At this point, I am not sure what you are doing is legal. No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful. ... This is a world where Windows runs on virtually every computer and putting on a carnival show for an operating system is not helping these children at all. I am sure if you contacted Microsoft, they would be more than happy to supply you with copies of an older version of Windows and that way, your computers would actually be of service to those receiving them..."

A four-year-old software glitch wiped out almost 200 votes from a small California county's November elections tally, causing officials to certify results that are now known to be incorrect.

The error only came to light after a volunteer outfit using open-source software and an off-the-shelf paper scanner audited the results.

The 29 students of a computing class at a school in Lincolnshire have all failed to gain their diploma because their teacher told them to save their coursework in Microsoft Word format, which is not accepted by the exam board.

As many commenters have pointed out, it does appear harsh to fail a whole class for their teachers' mistake when rectifying it would very likely have been the work of minutes.

After some research by Wikipedians, it appears that the image of the 1970s LP cover art of the Scorpions' 'Virgin Killer' album has been blocked because it was judged to be 'child pornography,' and all other attempts to access Wikimedia foundation sites from these ISPs are being proxied to only a few IP addresses.

The filter is fairly easy to circumvent simply by viewing the article in some other languages, or by logging in on the secure version of Wikipedia.

It never really made sense for EA to be so insistent on having draconian DRM on games. Before the company even launched Spore people made it quite clear the plan would backfire, but EA went forward with it anyway, creating a PR nightmare.

Spore has now been declared the most downloaded video game of the year.

The company got a huge PR blackeye which probably only encouraged more people to download the game via file sharing.