Gambling Problems for Seniors Increase
Connecticut officials are concerned that elderly residents in the state may easily fall into gambling problems thanks to the influx of various gambling opportunities, such as casinos and lottery games. Many of these senior citizens live alone and, thanks to large disposable incomes, are able to readily seek out entertainment and companionship through gambling activities.
"Senior citizens are very strongly at the center of attention of the gambling industry," Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal told ZWire. "They are targeted by the industry because they are regarded as being more susceptible to scams."
"They have the time, they are a captive audience, many live alone and are looking for the social experience that gambling provides," he added.
Blumenthal was one of the featured speakers during the recent Problem Gambling & Connecticut Seniors Symposium 2001 sponsored by the Connecticut Council on Problem Gambling. The event was intended to promote the need for attention among health and social service professionals to senior gambling
problems.
"Most seniors see gambling as entertainment and a social activity and they do just fine," commented Dawn Hemstock from the Council. "But we're concerned about the three percent of the population who may develop a compulsive addiction to gambling."
Changes Ahead
The online gaming (video games, not gambling) industry is changing, according to IDC researchers, who suggest that improved Internet capabilities, next-generation video game consoles and non-traditional gaming platforms will lure 40 million households into online gaming by 2004. This figure is a huge increase over the 25 million homes that participated in online gaming during 2000. To keep pace with the expected growth, says IDC, companies will need to evolve their business models. Further, they add, building a diversified revenue base, a common business model, is one of the biggest challenges facing these companies.
"To succeed in this competitive space, companies must formulate a profitable revenue model, extend the reach of online games beyond the PC, and ensure that gamers remain loyal," an IDC analyst commented.
The analyst added, "Because advertising revenue, which most business models are currently built upon, could dry up in the future, many sites are looking to create more attractive advertisement opportunities beyond banner ads through sponsorship and targeted ads and are trying to migrate free subscribers to paid subscribers."
IDC provides an in-depth look at this subject in their latest report, "From Fantasy Worlds to Backgammon: U.S. Online Gaming Forecast and Analysis, 1999-2004." The report examines the online gaming market, including business model evolution and the online gaming audience, and analyzes the present and future platforms for online gaming, such as the PC, video game console, cell phone, personal digital assistant (PDA) and iTV.
Threat of Viruses Increases
Despite the increasing threat from computer viruses that are spread via e-mail, officials at Message Labs say that anti-virus protection isn't growing along with the problem. "The figures are disturbing. Although the use of email continues to flourish, and awareness of viruses increases, we aren't seeing a proportional rise in effective virus protection. Companies and organizations should be doing more to stop viruses before they can cause any damage to IT systems," said Message Labs Chief Technology Officer Mark Tanner. "It is unrealistic to expect employees to be wholly responsible for stopping viruses by updating anti-virus (AV) software. The figures show that there are now just too many viruses and virus variants out there for traditional AV software to cope with."
The U.K.-based company sees the greatest virus danger for the government sector, which will probably experience a 222 percent increase in virus attacks, while e-mail usage is likely to grow by 62 percent. The
manufacturing industry will likely see a virus growth of 234 percent, while e-mail usage for the industry will rise by 137 percent. The media sector is also set to see an increase in viruses of 219 percent in 2001, in contrast to a 137 percent growth in the use of email.
Making Wireless Grow Bigger
"European Fixed Wireless Markets," a new report from The Strategis Group, says that the fixed wireless access (FWA) market in Europe is set to take a large piece of the broadband pie, mainly due to a scarcity of viable broadband alternatives. This will set the fixed wireless market there on the path to reach $8.6 billion in annual revenues by 2006.
"Today's FWA operators plan to operate very differently," said Jake Saunders, The Strategis Group's European director. "FWA operators are 'cherry-picking' the key telecoms customers to minimize infrastructure spend and maximize telecoms revenues, making full use of the technology's key advantages: high scalability and quick deployment."
The European FWA market will continue to prime itself until late 2003/early 2004, the research company says, by which time the supply-side bottleneck, such as expensive customer equipment, will be resolved. FWA can then exploit the demand for always-on, reliable and high-bandwidth services.
In addition, The Strategis Group maintains that business markets will continue to remain the wireless "sweet spot," with the main 15 European markets likely to generate more than US$6.2 billion in business service revenue, as opposed to $2.4 billion in residential service revenue, in 2006.
Few Turn down Cookies
Although Internet privacy and security concerns are hotly debated in news reports and government offices around the world, oddly enough, less than 1 percent of cookies on the Internet are actually rejected. In a sampling of more than 1billion page views in its network of HitBox Enterprise sites, cookies were determined to be rejected only 0.68 percent of the time. The study was conducted throughout the month of February, sampling pages viewed on browsers that could execute Java Script, which includes nearly all
browsers available today.
"With the public debate over online privacy heating up, we thought it was important to bring this information to light," said Randy Broberg, general counsel and chief privacy officer for WebSideStory. "Although some Web surfers may not know how to disable cookies in their browsers, such a minute
percentage indicates that cookies are simply not a big concern among most Internet users."