Yahoo!Tech writes that, according to experts at the World Wide Web conference currently taking place in Madrid, “[y]oung people largely drove the early stages of Internet growth but in recent years the sharpest rise in Web use in developed nations has been amongst people aged 70 and over. […] ‘Older adults are the fastest growing demographic on the Internet,’ said Professor Vicki Hanson of the School of Computing at Scotland's University of Dundee on the opening day of [the conference]. While just over one-fourth, or 26 percent, of 70-75 year olds went online in the United States in 2005, the proportion was 45 percent last year, according to data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, she said. The percentage of those aged 76 years and over who surf the Web rose during the same period from 17 percent to 27 percent.”
Yahoo!Tech also has an interesting article on the Department of Homeland Security’s search for cyber experts that can “think like the bad guys” and help to prepare the US against attacks on its computer networks.
The Register reports that hackers “have launched denial of service attacks against music industry association ifpi.org and lawyers involved in the prosecution of the four Pirate Bay defendants in the wake of a guilty verdict against the quartet last Friday. The assault has rendered ifpi.org – the main website of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry – intermittently unavailable or sluggish for a time on Monday morning.”
The Financial Times reveals that a new report by the Management Consultancies Association predicts that the recession in the UK will “lead to a fall of £4bn in research and development spending, damaging UK businesses’ long-term competitiveness unless the government provides increased tax support.”
CNetNews has an interesting article discussing whether “online piracy” has reached a “tipping point.” The article quotes co-chairman of Arts+Labs (and former White House press secretary under President Bill Clinton) Mike McCurry, who thinks that “perhaps something of a tipping point has been reached where people are finally saying that activity we thought was just okay or skirting around the edge has tipped over into something both dangerous, criminal, and unfair.”