The article doesn't state whether the respondents were asked WHEN they use the internet. I imagine that a great deal of this increase is due to work use and I bet that half the time people reckon they are online they just have a browser open in the background and aren't actually surfing.

After trying to find out from them whether there are any companies that will reconnect a BT line and then offer line rental (lots offer line rental but you have to have a BT connected line).

When I asked them if they were at all concerned that the consumer does not have any choice in getting lines reconnected, they said 'No. Its a commercial decision taken by other companies not to offer reconnection'. I was rather shocked considering that they are concerned with telecoms being a free, fair and competitive market.

I phoned around Toucan, Tiscali, Talk Talk, etc and they all said that they weren't physically / legally able to offer reconnection services and if they could they'd love to.

Not sure who has their information wrong here but my opinion about Ofcom stands. They made it perfectly clear that they didn't care and they couldn't point me in the direction of anyone at Ofcom who may have even been *researching* the matter.

Our hours on the internet was usually attributed via a snide remark to porn surfing... does that mean an equally ignorant sterotype is appropriate here for the increased use by older people and women?

First they clog up the housing market by refusing to die and now they are clogging up our tubes with online bridge. Man I hate old biddies.

There's life in the old dogs, yet !! One up for the silver surfers !!

And for all their marketing BS, British ISPs can NEVER match the Japanese or Korean ones who provide 100 Mb/s service. Ever Hong Kong has faster broadband that London !!

Leave a lot to be desired. The recent consultation on the future of radio was interesting, not because of the content but more to do with the way they presented their findings. (IMHO).

Sound quality:

Plenty of anecdotal quotes from people saying how impressed they were. Didn't state who these people were, what they listened to the radio on previously. Had a lot of quotes from DAB user groups (Well, London and Manchester user groups with execellent coverage) who of course would be more pro DAB since they are in a user group. Hardly a neutrally presented case. Most regular readers of this esteemed webmag will realise that a 112kbps mp2 stream in stereo is hardly going to be considered stunning

Devices:

Claimed percentage of people that were listening to DAB, and listeing to the radio via the net and strangely enough throwing in the growing use of people who use mobile phones to listen to the radio - basically implying (read the review - quite clever really) that digital take up was wide spread. Mobile phones use analogue systems, so technically a standard radio so can hardly be thrown in as part of the "digital takeup".

Also they didnt make too much of the point that most of the rest of Europe, whilst may be a little behind us in take up , are actually using DAB+, (AAC) so have a greater quality of sound. If we move over then of course most of the DAB radios are redundant. Plus how would you program in such a move? One big switch over? Run side by side? How can you with the amount of bandwidth already being stuffed, hence the allowing of 112kps minimum for stereo streams.

All in all it seemed that they knew what they wanted to present, then wrote the report to represent it.

I also wonder what the resilency would be of Digital radio in the event of a modern day catastrophe...call me a doom monger but say we lost our electricity supply for whatever reason , it is far easier to jury rig transmitters and receivers for analogue than digital.

Im not a luddite, i like the idea of digital radio and DRM (digital radio mondial - not the bad kind :) ) seems a very good and longevistic way to go. But i don't trust OFCOM to represent the best way forward for the British population and I really don't know why that is. Is it incompetence or some other agenda? Please someone tell me if i am completely wrong about this because I would rather that than what I suspect.

Most of it is chicks sending emails to each other at work and confusing the intranet with the internet.

A: What d'you think of him?

B: Who?

A: Bloke at the water cooler.

B: Yuck! He works in the IT department!

The Guardian was making a big deal about how the report shows girls now outnumber guys on "the Internet".

Well, the Internet used to be about technology and porn - "boy stuff" but increasingly it's about gossiping and shopping - "girl stuff" so no surprise there.*

* I suspect shortly the Internet (or this little bit of it) will be increasingly about flaming me for that narrow and stereotypical statement but a wander round the demographics analysis on quantcast.com seem to bear out a male bias toward tech and porn sites and female bias toward gossip and (non tech/porn) shopping. Check the demographics for technology.com and gossip.com for a *really* quick, non-scientific (but probably about as accurate as a 3-year scientific study would be) idea of the level of bias.

"The Guardian was making a big deal about how the report shows girls now outnumber guys on "the Internet"."

I tell you, when I was on the internet in the 1990s, girls outnumbered guys on most of the pages I visited. With the exception of David Duchovny there were hardly any guys on the internet at all.

Oh, I see what you mean. I'll get my coat.

I would like to personally congratulate all those women and old people who have valiantly started using the Internet. It is something that you should feel very proud about, seeing as it is a very tricky thing to do in this day and age.

As long as you don't interrupt the men when they are talking.

As a girl I would like to confess that yes, I do prefer shopping to porn. I prefer shopping to most things (not everything, most things). And yes, I am more likely to go to "gossip" sites (bbc.co.uk) than techie sites. In fact, as it's a Friday and the office isn't too busy, I'm perusing through Amazon while my (male) colleague here is trying to view his screen through a brown paper bag