There was a time when LOL — "laughing out loud" — was so simple.

If I thought something in a casual online conversation was funny, I typed it. If I wanted to let someone know I was kidding in an e-mail or an instant message, same.

The French finance ministry has shut down 10,000 computers after a "spectacular" cyber attack from hackers using Internet addresses in China, officials and reports said Monday.

The hackers were hunting for documents relating to the Group of 20 (G20) developed and developing nations, which this year is led by France, said Budget Minister Francois Baron, adding that a probe was under way into the attacks.

In the wake of the Stuxnet virus, the topic of international "cyber war" split IT experts at the world's top tech fair, some seeing the idea as fanciful, others warning it was already here.

"'Cyber war' has already left the pages of the science-fiction books and has become a reality," August-Wilhelm Scheer, president of BITKOM, Germany's high-tech lobby group, told Agence Freance Presse on the sidelines of the CeBIT exposition.

Apple chief executive Steve Jobs emerged from medical leave on Wednesday to unveil a new version of the iPad designed to tighten the company's grip on the booming tablet computer market.

The iPad 2 is thinner and lighter than the original version released last year and features cameras for photography, movie-making or video chat.

A gleaming white robot that sings, dances, recites Shakespeare, mimics other famous robots and even tries to kiss passers-by drew huge crowds on Tuesday at the world's biggest high-tech fair.

Visitors to the CeBIT fair flocked to see the "RoboThespian" and its tricks, applauding loudly as the sleek machine gave a perfect performance of the famous "Hamlet" soliloquy, complete with over-the-top thespian actions and voices.

Ever wish your eyes were lasers? A laptop prototype brings that wish closer to reality.

It tracks your gaze and figures out where you're looking on the screen. That means, among other things, that you can play a game where you burn up incoming asteroids with a laser that hits where you look.

Every woman's dream is to have her own personal make-up artist. That dream could soon be a reality with a computer that scans your face and suggests the perfect personalized make-up combination.

The technology, showcased at CeBIT, the world's biggest high-tech fair, takes a 3D image of your face and measures your complexion, shadows and lines.

Google has tweaked the formulas steering its Internet search engine to take the rubbish out of its results. The overhaul is designed to lower the rankings of what Google deems "low-quality" sites.

That could be a veiled reference to such sites as Demand Media's eHow.com, which critics call online "content farms" — that is, sites producing cheap, abundant, mostly useless content that ranks high in search results.

A New York City homeless man has been reunited with his daughter after 11 years, thanks to Twitter.

Daniel Morales was given a prepaid cell phone to create a Twitter account as part of a project on homeless people called Underheard in New York.

Google has changed its secret search formula in the United States to be more discerning when it comes to which websites are worth recommending and which should sink in the rankings.

The move announced late Thursday was part of an ongoing duel between the search titan and low-quality websites that feature only content copied from elsewhere on the Internet or use techniques to trick their way high in results.