As we approach the August bank holiday and a three-day weekend, it is worth reassessing the amount of time we devote to work. What if all weekends could last for three or even four days? What if the majority of the week could be given over to activities other than work? What if
Throughout history, intellectual property has been a contested terrain. Recent legal disputes involving big companies such as Apple and Samsung have brought the subject down to an everyday conversation. South Africa’s intellectual property law shares many
The semiconducting silicon chip launched the revolution of electronics and computerisation that has made life in the opening years of the 21st century scarcely recognisable from the start of the last. Silicon integrated circuits underpin practically everything we take for granted now in
Telkom has introduced a new, entry-level asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) product at a wholesale price of less than R50/month in an attempt to light a fire under demand for fixed-line broadband and to steal market share from the mobile operators
Bitcoin has been declared the “end of money as we know it” and as a currency for our times; decentralised, and created specifically for seamless exchange on the Internet. That is, it would be, if
The arrival of Microsoft Windows 95 on 24 August 1995 brought about a desktop PC boom. With an easier and more intuitive graphical user interface than previous versions, it appealed to more than just business, and Bill Gates’s stated aim of one PC per person per desk was set in
It has been a bad week for companies wanting to build businesses around making money from illegal movie downloaders. Last Friday saw an Australian judge refuse Voltage Pictures the right to send downloaders of Dallas Buyers Club a letter demanding an undisclosed payment. Justice Nye Perram decided that
Academic plagiarism is no longer just sloppy “cut and paste” jobs or students cribbing large chunks of an assignment from a friend’s earlier essay on the same topic. These days, students can simply visit any of a
The deal between Telkom and MTN would have been good for competition in South Africa’s mobile market. That’s the view of MTN South Africa, which on Tuesday reacted to the news that Telkom had decided to walk away
Flying cars in The Jetsons and Back to the Future, or Star Trek’s spaceships and teleportation, may have captured the imagination decades ago, but most current methods of transport have been around a long time. Railways were being rolled out rapidly from the
