Advances in mobile technology, broadband communications and the internet over the past decade has made home-based teleworking an economically practical proposition as never before. However, the majority of Australian employers still refuse to buy into it because they don't trust their employees to work without someone looking over their shoulders and cracking the whip.

For most of us, forging an IT career path means obtaining suitable qualifications, getting a job and gaining the necessary experience to climb the corporate ladder as an IT professional. Some such as Mark Hosking, however, have never had an interest in being an IT employee. Instead, like many of his brethren in Silicon Valley, Hosking would rather be an IT entrepreneur and create jobs.

Advances in mobile technology, broadband communications and the internet over the past decade has made home-based teleworking an economically practical proposition as never before. However, the majority of Australian employers still refuse to buy into it because they don't trust their employees to work without someone looking over their shoulders and cracking the whip.

IBM has introduced a new line of mainframe computer that is not only twice as powerful as its predecessor but also intended to make it easier for corporations to encrypt vast amounts of customer information and to bundle the workloads of many smaller computers onto an IBM mainframe.

Sun Microsystems has reported earnings that outpaced Wall Street expectations for the quarter. But the company's revenue continued to fall, indicating that the computer maker has yet to achieve a turnaround, reports The New York Times (27 July).

The dream of diskless computers with limited onboard intelligence being served with applications over high bandwidth networks is nothing new. In fact, the thin client vision is very retro given that dumb terminals and centralised processing was where IT was at 25 years ago.