The popularity achieved by Linux over the past couple of years has nothing to do with the appearance of its various user interfaces, which are still left horribly wanting.

The British government is trialling electronic voting methods during this week`s local elections. Though I am a fan of gutsy players, I can`t bring myself to be optimistic about seeing runaway success this time around.

Last week saw one of the worst virus attacks of the past few months and again raises the age-old question of why business continues to rely on a platform that is notoriously vulnerable to attack.

SA`s current hottest export, Mark Shuttleworth, is scheduled to blast off tomorrow on his $20 million jaunt in space. And, thanks to the media frenzy generated by the space mission, the Shuttleworth `brand` has gone universal.

Last week saw a flood of quarterly financial results, including some poor figures from Compaq, IBM, Nokia and Sun Microsystems.

Of about 35 000 GPRS-capable handsets sold in recent months, only about 200 have been configured to make use of the service. Is trendiness the only factor driving sales of new products?

When a heavy load of worries is getting you down, it`s time to explore innovative approaches to problem-solving.

A recent report on software management tools for Linux lists a number of well-known players in the market, as well as some less likely candidates.

Mark Shuttleworth seems to be on a media hot streak; not only is coverage of his upcoming space mission gathering momentum, he is now officially a member of the richest 1 000 in Britain.

Last week saw the Idion/DataMirror saga turn up a notch, while the rumblings around the HP/Compaq merger continued.

Keeping track of log files is one of the best ways to ensure network intruders are kept out. It is also the most time-consuming and mind-numbingly dull job in the world unless you have a logging tool.

The government wants to prevent a fool and his money being parted online. In doing so, through the Electronic Communications and Transactions Bill, it would do consumers more harm than good.

The Mustek/Rectron merger and the DataMirror/Idion takeover bid stole much of the local headline space in the past two weeks.