Today's computing equipment doesn't fail, so any errors that are made are probably yours.

Vodafone Group plc likes to joke that BlackBerrys are so addictive users call them crackberrys. But the fallout that follows - always being switched on - was revealed in last week's edition of Computerworld Australia.

The article outlined the findings of research undertaken by Seminole Electric Cooperative Inc. Chief Information Officer William Cross who completed a doctoral thesis on the relationship between stress and the quality of software code.

He found that as programmers feel more stress they write lower-quality code. What made the article so colorful was the profile Cross provided of a typical IT professional suffering from serious stress levels.

Those that fit the profile are job-addictive, work long hours, divorced, sensitive to praise and face serious health problems if the issue isn't addressed.