A Quarter of the EU Has Never Used the Web 392
smitty777 writes "Reuters reports that a quarter of the EU has yet to use the internet. Further, half of those in some of the southern and western states do not even have internet access at home. From the article: 'As well as highlighting geographic disparities across one of the world's most-developed regions, the figures underline the lack of opportunity people in poorer communities have to take part in advances such as the Internet that have delivered lower cost goods and service to millions of people.' The full report created by Eurostat can be found here."
North, east and west (Score:4, Informative)
The summory sais 'West' but that's supposed to be 'East' - the former communist countries. Poverty and bad infrastructure are known problems there.. Lack of internet probably the least of their problems.
As for southern europe goes - yes, they have more internet cafe's. I assume the climate helps on that culture, same as for coffee etc.
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It has been 20 years since. The infrastructure in the eastern Europe is good enough nowadays and the internet usage is widespread there.
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Has it? I have family in Ukraine. No broadband in the flats, expensive dial up and a mile walk to the nearest internet cafe. And this is in Kiev.
States? (Score:2)
States?
Re:States? (Score:5, Informative)
Members of the EU are often referred to as Member States. Or Constituent Countries.
Re:States? (Score:5, Informative)
On paper the the U.S. and E.U. have very similar structures.
After the civil war in the U.S. the "in practice" changed to make us one nation instead of an alliance, but on paper we are still different countries. (Yes, that would mean two unrelated countries name Georgia). Pre-Civil war the term "These United States" was used instead of "The United States" for exactly that reason. Had Rick Perry actually moved on his idle threat to succeed it would have gotten some more people looking at the real structure of things and debating the "legality" of the situation, especially since Texas did join a little differently than the rest of the states, and yes it's relevant once the debates start.
Re:States? (Score:4, Informative)
I think you mean secede, not "succeed"
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Once again nit-picking spelling
I'm constantly amused at how many self-proclaimed "programmers" on this website seem to be unable to spell or type the names of textual identifiers consistently. And then complain about "nit-picking" when someone gives them a ?SYNTAX ERROR.
How do you manage to get your programs to compile? Just keep randomly retyping keywords until the build script accidentally succeeds?
Ah, youth of today. I remember typing in BASIC listings from magazines where a one-character mistype in 100 lines of random hex DATA statem
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I'm very open to criticism, however the overwhelming number of people on the Internet who jump at every possible opportunity to tear into ever spelling and grammar error they can to imply low intelligence on the person who made the error has overwhelmed my tolerance of the act. I personally feel that most people who do this are overcompensating for issues they have away from the computer and may even have OCD type issues in relation to those things they need to keep in check. Some of the most brilliant pe
I'm not so sure. (Score:3)
"but on paper we are still different countries"
Hmm , not really. A true country has control of its own foreign policy and defense. The US States don't. A federal system is not the same ad a coalition which is what the EU is.
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In that case Ireland wasn't a true country for 800 of the last 900 years and yet we have one of the most unique and vibrant cultures in the world and we are not losing that anytime soon. Your rationale of a "true country" is wrong. Yyou are confusing economics and power with culture and patriotism. Most EU citizens still have huge national pride but they can understand the power of a single economic bloc.
The US economic federation is not logically separated from patriotic ideology in the same way. Citizens
Re:I'm not so sure. (Score:4, Insightful)
"Most EU citizens still have huge national pride but they can understand the power of a single economic bloc."
Perhaps while all EU was about was easing trade across national borders. But now that one member is basically dictating to others how they should run their nations, pride may well override reason (if there is much of that left in the EU system, it seems to run on monetarist/neo-classical orthodoxy more then reason right now).
What is interesting is how clearly the Euro troubles are exposing where the bodies are buried. Notice how the British prime minister basically employed the British veto right to protect the city of London from a financial transaction tax. And the whole issue can in part be traced to German use of frozen wages tariffs to keep their exports going, making one wonder if it is indeed a single market.
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"State" is another word for nation or country. These were called states before the EU existed.
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Re:States? (Score:4, Informative)
Federation has been the path of Europe since May 9, 1950, and it is not just a few politicians, also a sizable proportion of the citizens want this as well. It was around 20% in Sweden last time they made a large scale poll on the topic (larger among young people, so mortality will take care of the numbers in the long run), and Sweden is a rather Eurosceptic place.
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Oh there are certainly a ton of insane politicians who want it. Hell, many of our right-wing politicians *still* want Sweden to enter the Euro zone, even after all that's happened and even though a record 80% of the people is against it, including massive majorities in their own parties. Most likely they will get their way, it's not like the people of the constituent countries has any say, and if they do get the privilege to vote on their own future, they're bombarded with propaganda and forced to vote agai
Re:States? (Score:4, Interesting)
In Sweden, people would vote no about joining the Euro if there was an election TODAY. This is what the polls asked; I would probably not want Sweden to join TODAY (and I am a very convinced federalist), but whenever the bugs in the system have been fixed, then yes; Sweden should join.
Polling is a very interesting thing, since you can produce different answers on the same topic by just formulating the question a bit different.
Last time I saw any numbers about popular support for a USE-like future, this was around 20% of the Swedish population (and this is not just a few "insane politicians", but rather close to 2 million citizens). I doubt that this have changed that much, though even among these very few would say they supported a conversion to the Euro in the current climate of uncertainty.
Regarding having multiple plebiscites over and over again, Sweden have done just that about the Euro. When the plebiscite about joining the EU was carried out, joining the Euro was included in the deal; despite this the government announced a second referendum, despite that the populous had already approved joining the Euro (legally, Sweden has agreed to join but stays out using a loophole). So, yes, repeating plebiscites happens, but in this case, it was in the opposite way of what you are complaining about.
Secondly, about repeating plebiscites, this is not that strange. For example, if you run something through normal parliamentary procedures; different groups / parties may want to make amendments, and they often do this. This is obviously unpractical during a plebiscite, so if the population rejects a proposal of a complicated legal text, would it not be prudent to make amendments in this case? This is exactly the reason that parliamentary democracy is so much more superior to direct democracy in every kind of way.
The internet is an important right (Score:4, Insightful)
Everyone should have access to the internet. Those at the poorest end of society need it the most because all the best utility deals are online, as is a lot of government information.
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The internet is a tool in the same way as a TV is a tool...
It's not essential. Most people can get by without the TV. Most people don't NEED internet access at home either...
Re:The internet is an important right (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry, fail. In a modern society it can be challenging to get by without internet access. Take Finland for example, where internet access is a right for all citizens. Practically all services are handled electronically here. Banking has been done online for a couple decades (perhaps more, I wasn't living here before that). We do not use paper checks (how archaic), and the banks have had electronic kiosks for paying bills and performing basic banking tasks as far back as I can remember. I pay all store purchases with a bank card (debit), credit card or very occasionally, cash from an ATM. Today, the vast majority in Finland do their banking online. The last time I was in a bank physically, was when taking out a mortgage many years ago. I do 100% of my financial transactions at home, or any place I can have access via internet. All my bills are paid electronically online.
To the naysayers that will inevitably say they don't trust online transactions, I call bullshit. I cannot begin to count the number of transactions in let's say the last 10 years (must be in the many thousands), and not ONCE have I had an issue. It can be done if your financial institutions take security seriously.
Perhaps in some less well developed countries it may be possible to live offline, but I would say that if you tried to live offline here you will have a much more difficult time as practically all services are online. You may be able to live without TV, but living without internet access would be very challenging here.
A lot of EU countries are less developed (Score:5, Insightful)
The EU has a wide spread of countries, and development levels. Rural Romania has a different level of wealth and technology infrastructure than urban Finland, for example.
You make a good point about trust as an issue why some people might not take up internet use. My 77 year old father here in the UK does not go shopping online. I think part of this is lack of trust with the novel (to him) environment. Also, he doesn't need to go online. All his local services are within a few kilometres and he likes doing business in person. He is retired, so he can go to the bank and shops during quiet times of the day. Some people don't need the internet, or if they have access to it, choose not to use it.
For some people in Europe it is technical infrastructure. Check out a map of Europe and you will find that there are large areas where there is low speed or little access to the internet - modem speed access or maybe no access to fixed line telephones or mobile coverage. In Scotland, there is better coverage for 3G phones in the seas around the country than on the surface area of the land (internet is usually ok up to 2Mbs via land line in this country).
For quite a number of people in Europe, they cannot afford the cost of an internet connection. Check out prices in some of the lower developed European countries compared to state pension levels for example. For the young, employed, urban Europeans in highly developed countries internet costs are low compared to income, but for many others this is not the case.
Re:A lot of EU countries are less developed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A lot of EU countries are less developed (Score:4, Funny)
have other, bigger problems to deal with in the everyday life ... remote Transylvanian villages
Vampires?
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But if your country is largely offline, things like shopping and banking will be done by traditional means instead, and not being online won't really matter except in marginal convenience.
If, for instance, you made voting online only, then clearly you would have to guarantee internet access for everybody,
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How clients do banking is irrelevant, in so I agree that the completely electronic way is more practical.
But, fractional reserve, international loans between banks, money being issued by central banks and bailouts are turning money into numbers on a bank's server, under control of the bank. That means that in the long run private wealth will succumb, because you cannot compete with guys that can throw more money at everything and whose mission is to have people ask them loans.
Capitalism is dead, free market
Look at the statistics, they are interesting (Score:3)
So, interestingly, your argument (which I completely agree with) seems to have been taken on board by t
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Nah, not true. UK is behind in some ways and ahead of the game in others (releasing government data in rdf format suitable for SPARQL queries for instance). Its a bit slow in online document filing but a leader in many areas of releasing public data.
Re:The internet is an important right (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe, and I'm just guessing here, they just didn't WANT to access the net. And they almost certainly didn't want to be REQUIRED to access the net to get some services, for example. Personally speaking, we're only the FIRST generation to grow up with the Internet. There's one generation below us now that are the second. Everyone else has either had to learn very quickly or accept that they are past the stage where learning computers is easy for them (30 years ago, it was the exclusive domain of the nerd - and not everyone's a nerd).
Maybe, just maybe, they don't give a shit about the Internet especially when it's being shoved down their throats in preference to a) talking to human beings at good companies, b) doing your own homework instead of relying on an "independent" price comparison site and c) spending hundreds of pounds on something they'll never learn to use.
The best utility deals should not be only online, for a start. The cost of online vs paper statement is literally pence, no matter what the industry. And I won't use any internet-only business myself because it means I *can't* ring them up or send them a letter and get my problem sorted (my personal success rate of problem resolution by phone is about 90%, in person about 99%, by email about 10%). And if an older person phones up a utility company, they should still be given a fecking good deal whether or not they signed up online or not. In my country, the law is clamping down on things like that for precisely those reasons - the people most likely to not be able to take advantage of Internet deals are *EXACTLY* the kind of people who should be getting those rates.
Those at the poorest end of society are the ones worrying over 50p in the electricity meter, not which £1000 laptop they'll buy or whether their £20/month internet connection can save them £1.99 on statement delivery from their bank. But it's not about those people, it's about people who don't WANT to use the Internet for everything.
Personally, I *do* have Internet access to absolutely everything I need, and even did all but one present of my Christmas shopping online this year, but there are some things where I *refuse* to have a good service that serves a purpose replaced with a faceless corporate website.
My bank still want me to change to completely paperless (no thanks, I like to keep paper evidence and it'll cost me the same to print out my statements as it will them to print and post them to me - even though I check them online all the time), and don't want me to talk to humans in a branch (because they give me what I want/need most of the time). My car insurers need to have a phone line anyway so I can report accidents. My girlfriend will be getting a present bought *IN PERSON* because you can't buy jewellery over the Internet and know what you're getting (I would argue the same for clothing). In work, we still fax official orders because it has more legal weight. I used to fill my tax return in on the official forms and only ever submitted online once (for the final return I had to send when I stopped being self-employed, and even that I did on paper first to check their calculations).
Not everything works over the Internet, most importantly when things go wrong. When things go wrong, the website of the company in question is absolutely 100% useless, even if they are an ISP or hosting company (in some cases, even more so if you can't get online!). Give me the phone number of some middle-manager, though, and I'll have the problem sorted in minutes. The Internet is nothing more than a convenient shield from your customers and some customers won't accept that.
And some people, because of the way they work, just don't want to use / trust the Internet. In time, they will be obsoleted and everyone will start to use it from a young age, but until that time you have to accept that giving people *access* to the Internet is wonderful but you can't FORCE them to use it for everything. And, in fact, you'll learn that as you deal with more and more companies, it's the ones that provide a personal, human service that give you the most return on your custom, not the faceless corporate entities that hid behind a contact form and a privacy policy.
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Amen to all that (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm really getting rather sick of listening to patronising Generation Y'ers that the net is the solution to all day to day transactions and that anyone who doesn't agree is some sort of reactionary luddite.
You know what? If those people want to live their lives online then thats their lookout.
But I actually LIKE going to shops to check out stuff physically before I buy in IT THE SHOP so I have somewhere to take it back to if it fails instead of having to parcel it up and go down the post office and pay mone
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You have picked up the exact opposite of my meaning. The people who should be getting *THE SAME* rates as everyone else are those that can't afford to have huge bills or expensive computers or Internet connections in order to manage their electricity (they may even have pre-pay meters, for example).
And what about blind users? Braille statements cost a fortune. What about deaf phone users? Textphone services cost a fortune too. What about users who can only communicate by letter or via a third party?
The
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Everyone should have access to the internet.
No sir. The problem with the whole idea is that its based on the false premise that people have a right to the overly generalized "internet."
People dont have a right to access 4chan all day long, right? Or watch NetFlix all day? Listen to Pandora all day? YouPorn? Farmville? If there are things you can do on the internet that you believe are essential, why are you trying to declare the entire thing essential, instead of making sure essential things arent only available on the internet?
This isnt to say
It would be nice to see more data about age (Score:5, Insightful)
The article (and report) conclude that "24 percent of 16-74 year olds across the 27 countries in the European Union have never accessed the Internet". Meanwhile in the parts of the EU with the highest Internet use (such as in the Scandinavian countries) the rate of Internet access (ie people who actively use the Internet, not people who've used it only once) is in the 90%.
I would assume part of the reason for the statistic is that 16-74 is a pretty big age span. Particularly when it comes to new technology. It wouldn't surprise me if the "never used internet" population is almost entirely in the 50+ age bracket. Unfortunately the article, and report, doesn't give that information.
I'd bet that is a lot of it too (Score:3)
I've met more than a few elderly people with, well not an Internet aversion but I guess just Internet ambivalence. They didn't have it growing up, they can't see why they need it now and don't wish to learn something new.
Also they are part of the case of dialup stats. You find an amazing number of people still on dialup. Geeks tend to say "Oh that's because broadband distribution sucks, so many people can't get it!" While it is true that broadband penetration isn't 100%, turns out that where most people liv
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Living in the EU (Portugal, with frequent trips to Spain), that seems *very* likely. We have an aging population and plenty of elderly people live in their own house either as a couple or alone, and it's rare to find one with Internet access.
Furthermore, we have free internet access in some places provided by the local government, which reduces the need to pay for a home connection.
Besides, our elderly extremely low pensions and can usually barely afford to both eat and pay for their medicine, so no wonder
I'm looking at you, Greece. (Score:2)
"Lowest standard of living in Europe."
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(Greek here).
Actually, it is not true.
The standard of living is quite high in Greece. Is not on par with the standard of living in Scandinavia, or Switzerland, or France, for example, but it is very close.
Greek people do not use the Internet as much as the other countries because it is not developed much in Greece. Part of the problem is the Government: it is one of the most bureaucratic organizations on Earth, requiring detailed written forms to handle everything. If paper is required, then people are not
Not west, EAST! (Score:4, Informative)
Anyway, Spain is a country with large rural areas, but the broadband is nearly ubiquitous.
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In the places of Galicia where I spend my summers, most people don't have Internet access at home. Locals use the public computers and tourists use 3G.
You probably can get broadband, but that doesn't mean people will subscribe to it.
Wikipedia (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm always amazed when I see the number of articles on Wikipedia in different languages. The German Wikipedia for example has about 1.3 million articles, while the number of German-speaking people is about 100 million. There are *a lot* more people speaking Spanish around the world (Mexico alone has more than 100 million citizens), yet there are only about 850.000 articles in Spanish on Wikipedia.
I think the number of articles says a lot about internet penetration in European countries, because most of them have their own language. The Dutch Wikipedia for example has almost a million articles, while only about 30 million or so people actually speak the language. You see the same sort of ratio between articles to speakers in other nordic and western European countries. This ratio drops sharply as you move towards the east and south of Europe. People seem to be a lot less interested to add content to the internet in those countries. You could argue a poor country has other more important preoccupations, but people in countries such as Spain or Italy aren't all that poor, yet they don't seem to be adding a lot of articles to Wikipedia either.
Re:Wikipedia (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wikipedia (Score:4, Interesting)
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I use the finnish version for finnish stuff quite a lot.
because the english version doesn't have as much. usually it means that the english version lacks all the dirt, actually. especially about politicians.
Re:Wikipedia (Score:4, Interesting)
The Danish wikipedia will accept Danish sources, the English one generally won't. That at least seems to me to be the primary reason why the Norwegian wikipedia is sometimes better for things in, from or about Norway. But yes, for generic information I too use the English one.
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Same here. Particularly since the Portuguese version is a mixed mess (regardless of how they try to make them appear the same by decree, the reality is that Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese are written differently).
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You oversimplify knowledge of English in general society. Most people like to read stuff in their mother language. For example while I know English (and particularly IT English) quite well, I'm still using Latvian interfaces and enjoy reading stuff in Latvian language, including Latvian Wikipedia. Yes, I read tons of materials in English, but still...
It is all about access. Having information in English is better than no having information at all, but having it in local language is a must.
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The Dutch Wikipedia for example has almost a million articles, while only about 30 million or so people actually speak the language.
...perhaps this relative enthusiasm for native Wikipedias in smaller countries with unique languages comes from a desire to pro-actively promote the language?
Dutch, Danish, Finnish, the Norwegian languages and other "minority" European languages could conceivably be steamrollered by English in the long term (English is already the de facto lingua franca* of the EU), whereas Spanish and Portuguese's future is assured by South America. Its similar to Welsh in the UK - the effort to preserve the language i
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That does explain the relative high number of articles in western/northern Europe, but it doesn't account for the lack of articles in equally obscure languages, such as Hungarian or Greek. I still think the ratio between articles in a language on Wikipedia and number of speakers of that language is a good way to measure internet penetration in countries.
It obviously fails for languages without a strong connection to a specific country, such as English or Spanish. But even so, it's interesting to see that th
I'd say it's partly the weather. Not joking. (Score:2)
You could argue a poor country has other more important preoccupations, but people in countries such as Spain or Italy aren't all that poor, yet they don't seem to be adding a lot of articles to Wikipedia either.
I'd say the weather has a part in that. I'd rather enjoy the countryside in the Toscana or a stroll and hangout outside in the town of Florence then go outside where it's raining constantly. Or at least way more often as it does in Italy and Spain. My time spent on the web would be less in those cou
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I think you've just described a lot of people in general.
In France opinion IS fact (Score:3)
Thats why they still think French is the language of the future and that they're still a world power and the most important nation in the EU.
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Give them time (Score:4, Insightful)
Just like with all things, time and a compelling reason is needed to adopt new practices. My mother disliked it when computers were introduced in her job and after retirement was not interested in using the home PC for leisure purposes. When the nest became empty, Skype became a necessity. Last time I visited, she was looking at the camera and saying "hmmm, this photo is too dark but I'll adjust the brightness when I get home"...once at home she was complaining the computer was "too damn slow!" to get anything done...
Been on the Internet since mid 80-ies (Score:3)
There still are ample media available for you to live an informed life without using the Internet.
Personally I find the Internet an invaluable source of CS related information and a nifty tool to obtain good deals on purchases. I actually speak face to face with people I care about. Anything skin deep I ignore completely.
I'm most likely not interested in your life story. The best times I have with actual people. CS is merely a hobby that happens to earn me a living. It took me a few mental leaps in the early stages to realise that graphical representations of bytes will never govern my life.
Re:Been on the Internet since mid 80-ies (Score:5, Insightful)
There still are ample media available for you to live an informed life without using the Internet.
People with internet have invariably canceled their newspaper subscriptions. Once you drop the local newspaper, you've lost local news. The internet seriously does not provide the same sort of information availability for local coverage.
So we now have large demographics that have no clue whats going on locally. I travel through the neighboring town and occasionally I see lawn-signs up saying "vote no!" You think my friends who live in that town have a clue what thats about? No, they don't. Not even a hint of an idea about it, which is probably why they dont bother to vote.
I set up Google News to give me stories that mention my town, and that turns out to be nearly worthless. You simply wont find anything about that application for a liquor license, about the proposed repaving of west main street, about rezoning hill street and parker avenue, or about the shelter needing funds and volunteers desperately. Thats just whats going on this week.
A generation worried about everywhere else.... out of sight, so out of mind. Whats going on in Far Away Place is now more important than whats going on in their own communities. They think the federal government is the solution to every problem because thats all they fucking know about.. they can go on worrying about crap on the other side of the planet that doesnt even affect them and that they also have no power to effect and when things turn sour locally they wonder why nobody (ie, the federal government) did anything about it.
No doubt also true in America, but no big deal (Score:2)
i know some right here in the USA (Score:4, Funny)
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An teh monstar I saws It iz layk big spotteded kitteh, an It can has pawz layk bear, an It can has mout layk big neck-fur kitteh. An Teh dragn gaved it teh powurz an teh chairz an teh autoritiez. Revalashunz 13:2 [lolcatbible.com]
Nonsense! The U.S. doesn't have spots. It has stripes!
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Jumping to conclusions (Score:3)
The lack of Internet at home does not mean those people are disconnected. There are many people who only use the Internet at work, or go to a netcafe etc.
Real Relationships (Score:3, Interesting)
Cause and Effect (Score:2)
Broadband internet access enables higher speed when browsing and performing activities over the internet. The proportion of households with a broadband connection rose in all Member States in 2011 compared with 2006. Sweden (86%) registered the highest share of broadband connections in 2011, followed by Denmark (84%), the Netherlands and the United Kingdom (both 83%) and Finland (81%), while Romania (31%), Bulgaria (40%) and Greece (45%) had the lowest.
Soooo the places where connectivity sucks people don't
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That sentence really does sound a bit misleading, but I think they mean that half the people in southern and western states don't have internet at home. Besides, you can have the situation of the house having Internet, but only the kids using it.
Re:Internet at home (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually.. and i experienced this myself, if you are as a tourist in a area where everyone has internet in their home, it might be very hard to go on the internet.
There are no internet cafe's since there is no business model for it. Everyone has it at home.
There might be free wifi, but that requires a laptop. As a tourist i Do not carry a laptop.
Roaming via 3g is VERY expensive, and i only recent have a phone capable of wifi. That is not mainstream yet.
The effect is that the gap between have and havenot internet people only becomes greater. You can expierence it yourself as a tourist, but for some people this migh be the reality every day. If you have problems getting your daily needs (food, shelter), a computer for internet and a isp connection might be too expensive for you.
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Most first-world countries.
That being said, your *hotel* probably has free wifi, or at the very least, is wired for Ethernet to every room. I've never had trouble finding access to the Internet when I travel, despite having travelled to some extremely unwired countries. Access may be limited to when you're at the hotel, but you will usually be able to find at least some access to the Internet. It may not be 24/7 access to the Internet, but you will be able to keep up on your e-mail. In passing, if you're wo
Re:Internet at home (Score:5, Insightful)
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I guess, you get your groceries online in Neanderthal [wikipedia.org].
Re:Internet at home (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't say half the population. It clearly states half of "some southern and western states".
Lack comprehension much?
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"those" in this case refers to the population at large, not the population who hasn't ever accessed the Internet.
I know the English language can be difficult, but context can help you figure out a lot if you find it confusing.
Re:Internet at home (Score:5, Informative)
should not eve bother to give up :)
Eurostat is full of garbage: they mix data that was collected according to different rules, does not make sense to debate anything they publish.
Most of their data is crap. For example, a few years ago Eurostat put the percentage of internet users in Iceland at 97%, which would have included some 4000 toddlers. The data sent by Iceland to Eurostat probably meant that 97% of the population live in an area with internet access, which does make sense. Another examples: urban/rural are defined differently in each country but reported as being the same (most UK towns under 10k would be counted as villages in Rumania, for example), broadband is reported differently, infant mortality is reported by each country differently (for example, US and a few of EU countries report a live birth if the child has a pulse _or_ moves independently, while most of the EU reports preemies under a certain weight or height or age as "lost pregnancy", no matter how long do the children live after birth so those children don't get into the "infant mortality" numbers) etc. etc. etc.
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(1) "the EU" vs "those in some southern and western states";
(2) "quarter of the EU" referring to individuals vs "at home" referring to households - most households comprise more than one person.
This is the sort of reading comprehension exercise an average ten year old should have mastered.
Re:Internet at home (Score:5, Informative)
You should go drink some coffe.
50% of the population has access to the Internet at home. All of those accessed the Internet at least once, they are not on the headline.
50% of the population doesn't have access to the Internet at home. Half of those (25% of the total) have already accessed the net by other means. The other half (the remaining 25% of the total) have never accessed the net.
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You may want to go back to English grammar class, and pay a little more attention. :)
1. about 25% of the European Union population has never accessed the Internet.
2. about 50% of the European Union population that lives in southern/western states does not have access to the Internet at home.
The two statements are distinct, and not related. TFS/TFA are stating two separate statistics... while they're using a grammar structure that's more logical to somebody who speaks a romance language natively (French or I
Re:No States (Score:4, Interesting)
A state is any politically-distinct entity, which can be as small as a single town, or as large as the whole EU. The word is much more versatile than the particular usage in the name "United States of America".
The State of the Union address states the state of the state of states.
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I once saw a saw saw a saw...
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You appear to have made the word so versatile that it has become almost meaningless. It is worth noting that the term "state" did not appear in the original article.
I think you are simply incorrect that the a "state" is ANY politically distinct entity.
And you are simply incorrect in thinking that the only use of the word "state" is as in the US States.
The phrase "EU member state" is a common one in Europe, and the fact you haven't heard of it is simply ignorance on your part.
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No, it isn't (Score:5, Insightful)
Not all the world is the USA, and you do not have a monopoly on enforcing the meaning of words.
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Using the term "member state" does not mean that country is part of some United States of Europe in the same way that the State of California is part of the United States of America.
Your euro-phobia is leading you to defend an untenable position, as you are simply wrong.
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The term is not employed in the article linked to - only the submission. The common use of the term "states" in reference to the EU, without a modifier such as "Sovereign" or "Member" is in arguments about the precise political relationship of the 27 members to each other. To refer to them as "states" is to take a position in that political discussion.
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The term is not employed in the article linked to - only the submission. The common use of the term "states" in reference to the EU, without a modifier such as "Sovereign" or "Member" is in arguments about the precise political relationship of the 27 members to each other. To refer to them as "states" is to take a position in that political discussion.
Please, just give up, you are making yourself look more and more ignorant. You are fixated on the US usage of the word "State" and think this implies that an EU country must be part of a greater "United States of Europe". It simply does not mean that in this context
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>Declarative statements about the intent of the summary's author are necessarily outrageous fabrications when made by anyone but the original author.
Nonsense! We can state categorically, for example, that the summary did not intend to refer to green cheese.
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"Sovereign State" was not the concept employed.
Okay, fine:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State [wikipedia.org]
As another poster in this sub-thread pointed out, you're not just wrong, you're stupid wrong. I just knew as soon as I saw the summary that there'd be someone making a fool of himself by complaining about the use of the word "state" in this context, and congratulations, you didn't disappoint.
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You just keep on digging that hole you're in, kiddo.
Re:states? (Score:5, Informative)
He probably meant nation-state. Or sovereign state. We often use 'state' to describe independent countries.
In fact, afaik using 'state' to refer to a sub-national political entity is unusual; most countries have 'provinces' or some other local terminology.
Either way, English is a funny language.
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States in the union used to be much more autonomous, and still are if you take the constitution at face value. It make sense they are called states given the historical and legal context, but in the real world, it is quite strange.
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Re:states? (Score:4, Funny)
somewhat like herding kittens
With a large enough laser pointer, this isn't as hard to achieve as it sounds.
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On the other hand, in German, it's not much better. They call the federal states "Länder" (in both Germany and Austria), but at the same time refer to the countries of the World as "Länder" too. They say "in den Staaten" (in the States), and mean the U.S., and they say "in den Staaten Asiens" and mean the countries of Asia.
(And if someone would be linguistically exact, country just means 'beyond the borders', derived from Latin terra contrata = opposite land.)
Re:states? (Score:5, Informative)
I did not know we had states in Europe...
Yes. In English the word "state" refers to a sovereign political entity. The "United States of America" referred to each individual state as an individual and sovereign authority over their own land. However, as the USA has become more unitary rather than distinct, the term "state" in a political sense has experienced a form of semantic shift wherein people believe that it means a political subunit of a larger country.
In fact, the USA as a whole is a state, Germany is a state, the UN is a congregation of states. If you want more fun, The Kingdom of the Netherlands is considered to be composed of four "countries": The Netherlands, Aruba, Sint Maarten, and Curaçao. These collections of smaller politically sovereign entities into a larger politically sovereign entity causes a lot of confusion in this regard.
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Until 1975 Suriname (which NL 'traded' for New Amsterdam / New York in 1667) would also have counted.
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The states within the USA are not sovereign by pretty much any definition of a sovereign state.
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Only if you're young(ish). A huge percentage of the population here (Portugal) is retired, has a place to live and doesn't even know how to use the 'net.
Rural area poverty (Score:3)
Not the Internet per se but mobile phones have been used by yak herders to decide the best time to take their yaks to the valley to sell, and by fishermen to d
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Yeah, what's another hundred mil on the already bottomless pits of debt?