ALZHEIMER'S is the second most feared disease after cancer but it should be regarded not as a tragedy, but as a normal part of the ageing process in people aged 85 and over, a mental health specialist says.
Just as other parts of the body degenerate - eyes, bones, heart and skin - so too our brain is likely to degenerate as we enter advanced age.
David Spektor, a specialist in aged persons' mental health, will address the international conference on dementia in Sydney today. He will tell the Risky Business conference that labelling people in their 80s and 90s with Alzheimer's disease is unfair and may serve no productive purpose.

''We bring fear to millions by telling them they have a disease; everyone's brain ages and in different ways,'' he said in an interview. ''We risk turning a normal process into a disease.''
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/health/have-no-fear-alzheimers-just-a-normal-part-of-ageing-20120627-212yc.html#ixzz1z2892bjE

Three decades after it launched, the Minitel - a French forerunner to the internet that at its height was installed in 9 million homes - will shut down for good on Saturday.

Once at the cutting edge of technology, the Minitel allowed users in France to check the news, search phone directories, buy train and plane tickets, make restaurant reservations and even take part in online sex chats long before similar services existed elsewhere.

But the advent of the internet made the Minitel's dial-up connection and black-and-white screen obsolete and - despite the protests of some fierce hold-outs - operator France Telecom-Orange has decided to pull the plug.

Developed by France Telecom in the 1970s and freely distributed, the Minitel reached its height in the early 1990s, with 26,000 services available and annual revenues of about a billion euros (about $1.2 billion).

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-29/french-internet-precursor-shuts-down/4099492?WT.svl=news4