WELL-known media personality, Dennis Beckett is in favour of the relaxation of drug legislation, in particular, the legalisation of dagga. "I can't see where the moral is," said Beckett, on  late night with Kgomotso on SABC2 (Saturday), "If I can get drunk on alcohol, why can't cannabis users get...

TWO years in the blogsphere is a long time. We want readers to remember how we got here, 24 months ago, an employee of the Mail & Guardian's Amagama, seized material deemed offensive or "potentially defamatory" and proceeded to delete without consent or notice, a review of A Secret Burden by Davi...

THE level of hypocrisy shown by South African authorities has reached a new high with permission granted by the National Nuclear Regulator for the entry of USS Roosevelt – a nuclear powered and nuclear-armed aircraft carrier — to enter Table Bay. Is it any wonder that the public no longer take of...

The open-source movement spawned by open-access has come full circle. Now well-known Gnu-Linux distributions such as Redhat-Fedora are being given away at software kiosks, and the Freedom Toaster project sponsored by the Shuttleworth foundation is just one of many initiatives to get free and open...

WIKIPEDIA, the online encyclopaedia has become a haven of neo-conservative tinkering and revision of history under apartheid. A recent internet debate (archived here), shows the mindset of a generation which has grown up without direct knowledge of the apartheid system yet hankering after a perio...

WILL South Africa's entry into digital television – the migration from analog waves to a digital signal – bring internet services to the poor? There is no reason why not since the technology to provide IP bandwidth over television has existed for years. It only takes guts and determination from t...