A survey published by online charity YouthNet, has found that 75 percent of 16-to-24 year-olds feel that they "couldn't live" without the Internet. The report also found that 82 percent would look online for advice and that 45 percent "felt happiest" when spending time online.

Thirty-two percent of respondents also said that they didn't need to ask a real person about their problems as they could find everything they needed online. Less than half would give advice online, with just 37 percent saying they would give advice on sensitive issues to those seeking it online.

The report, which was presented to the House of Commons, looked at how young people have evolved to living with the Internet and the challenges it can cause for organisations looking to offer support to young people.

Despite many high-profile security threats in recent times, over three quarters of young people believe the Internet to be a safe place, if you know what you are doing. It also showed that most believes themselves to be Internet-literate and aware of technology, with the skills to sense potential threats online.

The report also said that the Internet had made 16-to-24 year-olds fundamentally different to previous generations, with young people now living "hybrid lives." Described as the "ever on" group, young people of today demand immediate access to information and friends, according to the report.

The author of the report, Professor Michael Hulme of Lancaster University concluded, "For young people, the internet is part of the fabric of their world and does not exist in isolation from the physical world, rather it operates as a fully integrated element.

In the future as access becomes ever more mobile, multi-platform, faster and with richer media – in other words ever on and everywhere – the need and demand for advice through the internet will become even more critical."

Calculator hobbyists who blogged about the modification of the software included on Texas Instruments (TI) programmable calculators have been sent letters from TI demanding they remove the material. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), who campaign for digital rights, privacy, and freedom of speech responded to TI in a letter yesterday.

According to a press release by the EFF, the hobbyists and researchers reverse-engineered the signature check that prevents unapproved operating systems from being loaded on to TI programmable graph calculators, allowing modifications to be made which could add functionality to the calculator in question: the TI 83 Plus calculator.

TI, who make their calculator software freely available online, as well as other applications for the calculator, such as the "Guess My Coefficient" and "Decimal Defender" applications, demanded that the links to the keys, and the discussion with it, were removed, making references to the anti-circumvention parts of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

However, Jennifer Granick, Civil Liberties Director from the EFF, said "This is not about copyright infringement. This is about running your own software on your own device -- a calculator you legally bought."

"Yet TI still issued empty legal threats in an attempt to shut down discussion of this legitimate tinkering. Hobbyists are taking their own tools and making them better, in the best tradition of American innovation."

Those interested can find the letter the EFF sent to TI here.

Many people consider having broadband access a privilege but if you live in Finland, it has become a legal right. Starting in July 2010 it will be a legal right for every person to have a broadband connection of at least 1Mb and by 2015 everyone will have access to a 100Mb connection.

While not the first country to make broadband a legal right -- that title goes to the Swiss-- it does show a growing trend of how integrated broadband technologies are into our lives.

Not much else is known about the new law that will make broadband a legal right. Such that, is it a crime to prohibit someone from accessing broadband or can you ban certain persons from broadband?

Regardless of what the legal right actually entails, it is notable that the government is actively trying to give every one of its citizens an equal opportunity to have broadband access in their homes. For reference the population of Finland is 5.24 million people while New York, New York was 8.3 million as of July 2007.

Search giant Google is now the largest source of global Internet traffic, taking up six percent of it, according to an article by Information Week. Over 256 exabytes of Internet traffic data were studied over two years in order to produce the report, which was created by Arbor Networks.

The report points out that whilst five years ago, Internet traffic was spread out between thousands of sites, today 60 percent of all Internet traffic is made up of just 100 networks. The report produced by Arbor Networks, but with contributions from the University of Michigan and Merit Networks, shows that peer-to-peer traffic has dropped by 22 percent to a smaller 18 percent, partly due to the rise in popularity of video streaming sites such as Youtube.

HTTP traffic, on the other hand, has seen an almost ten percent boost since 2007, at 52 percent, twenty percent of which is estimated to be video traffic, according to an article by Appfrica.

The report predicts that the cost of data transit will continue to decrease, going from $120/Mbps in 2003 to a predicted $1.20/Mbps in 2014.

Craig Labovitz from Arbor Networks said, "Ten to fifteen years ago it was all about contacting websites, and one of the biggest findings in this report was that there has been a consolidation of websites. Over the past two years larger organisations have been buying up the smaller websites and by July 2009, 30 per cent of the internet was owned by a few large sites."

"This is down to two reasons, the bigger domains on the internet and smaller domains moving into the cloud. This has implications for the user as we are seeing more and more content online while it is getting faster and with better quality."

According to a survey by Junior Achievement, Steve Jobs is the most admired entrepreneur amongst 35 percent of teenagers, with nearly two-thirds of respondents who chose him saying they did so because he has "made a difference in/improved people's lives or made the world a better place."

Eighty-Five percent of those who selected Oprah Winfrey, who came second to Jobs with 25 percent, said they chose her for the same reason.

The survey, carried out by Junior Achievement, an organization that educates students on future employment and entrepreneurship, asked 1000 12-to-17 year-olds to choose who their favourite entrepreneurs were and why. The list of celebrities to choose from focused on those who had started businesses themselves, as opposed to licensing their name.

Perhaps surprisingly, Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerburg came low, with only 10 percent of teens choosing him despite the huge popularity of the social networking website.

In a statement, Jack Kosakowski, president of Junior Achievement USA said, "We live in a celebrity-obsessed culture, so it's no surprise that teens admire famous entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs and Oprah Winfrey, who have built brands around their personas as well as around their products."

While 33 percent of teens said they chose the Apple co-founder and CEO because of his "success in multiple fields," only 4 percent said they chose him for his wealth and fame.