"This Sunday the Super Bowl is once again upon us, and that means one thing: great advertising. (Apparently some sort of game will be going on too, but many of us tune in not for the touchdowns but for the commercials.) And it's not all beer and car ads; technology companies have a long and illustrious history as Super Bowl advertisers."

Btw: Intel is an advertiser this year with on sad pand... I mean, robot...

Microsoft today announced that it will issue an emergency security update for Internet Explorer (IE), but postponed setting a ship date for the fix until tomorrow.

"Given the significant level of attention this issue has generated, confusion about what customers can do to protect themselves and the escalating threat environment, Microsoft will release a security update out-of-band for this vulnerability," said George Stathakopoulos, general manager of the Trustworthy Computing Security group, in an entry on the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) blog.

"We take the decision to go o

A former employee of Seagate Technology claims that the company destroyed evidence that could have affected a long-standing patent infringement lawsuit filed against it by engineering company Convolve Inc. and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Nvidia brushed off the technology lead that rival Advanced Micro Devices built by releasing the first graphics chips to support DirectX 11, saying the release only gives AMD a short-term advantage that won't have a long-term effect on the graphics market.

Final Fantasy XIII, one of the most awaited video games of the year, went on sale Thursday morning in Japan. The game marks the first time the long-running series has appeared on the PlayStation 3 and launches as the console is enjoying better sales.

Several hundred people queued in the pre-dawn cold in Tokyo's Shibuya district to be among the first in the world to own the game. Sales began at the Tsutaya software store on Shibuya crossing at 7a.m. and simultaneously at other major electronics stores across the city. It costs ¥8,300 (US$93).

Microsoft's Windows ran to stay in place last month as Window 7's market share gains made up for the largest-ever declines in Windows XP and Vista, data released today by Web metrics firm Net Applications showed.

By Net Applications' numbers, Windows 7's gains were primarily at the expense of Windows XP. For each copy of Vista replaced by Windows 7 during November, more than six copies of XP were swapped for the new OS.

Meanwhile, Apple's Mac OS X lost share during November.

Microsoft today denied that it has built a backdoor into Windows 7, a concern that surfaced yesterday after a senior National Security Agency (NSA) official testified before Congress that the agency had worked on the operating system.

"Microsoft has not and will not put 'backdoors' into Windows," a company spokeswoman said, reacting to a Computerworld story Wednesday.

By the year 2020, you won't need a keyboard and mouse to control your computer, say Intel Corp. researchers. Instead, users will open documents and surf the Web using nothing more than their brain waves.

Scientists at Intel's research lab in Pittsburgh are working to find ways to read and harness human brain waves so they can be used to operate computers, television sets and cell phones. The brain waves would be harnessed with Intel-developed sensors implanted in people's brains.

Microsoft late has confirmed that an unpatched vulnerability exists in Windows 7, but is downplaying the problem, saying most users would be protected from attack by blocking two ports at the firewall.

In a security advisory, Microsoft acknowledged that a bug in SMB (Server Message Block), a Microsoft-made network file- and print-sharing protocol, could be used by attackers to cripple Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 machines.

If you really, really need to make sure those precious photos of yours last virtually forever - or at least longer than the average two- to five-year lifespan of consumer-grade DVDs, then start-up Cranberry LLC has the answer for you: a DVD that literally lasts a millennium.