Europe Net Users Now Outnumber US/Canada

palefish writes "From this article in the Media Guardian: According to Irish-based industry monitor Nua.com, Europe has almost 186 million users, while Canada and the US register 182 million. The difference may not seem substantial, but Europe is still a growing market. I've always thought of Europe as lagging somewhat behind the States in the internet uptake stakes (probably because some of our telecoms companies are yet to understand the internet). So, I don't know about you lot, but this statistic came as a bit of a surprise to me."

Comments

Yeah!

[Anonymous Coward]

FP baby! In yer face!

first fucking post?

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah

Re:In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

Define a wuss?

Elegant, smart and witty?

tee hee...

[Anonymous Coward]

the american /.'ers are going to go apeshit ! can't wait to read the thread !

Spelling and grammar troll v1.5

[Anonymous Coward]

It has come to my attention that "slashdot", subsidiary of VA Software, is a refuge for people with a terrible sense for grammar and spelling. As a remediation, please accept the following recommendations about the use of some frequent linguistic expressions :

• "Alot" vs. "A lot" : There is no such word as alot. In fact, when confronted with the word alot, ispell tells us the following : "how about : allot,aloe,aloft, alto, blot, clot, lot, plot, slot"
• Just the fact moronic Americans pronounce Bernstein, neither, Einstein and other 'ei'-words as "Burnstean", "neather", "Ainstean", etc... doesn't mean they have to write those words "Bernstien", "niether" or "Einstien". Special mention to "thier", "becuase" and "amatuer".
• "Than" vs. "Then" : Just the fact that in some inferior dialects of the English language, "than" and "then" are pronounced about the same way doesn't mean that the comparative "than" has any reason to be written as the conjunctive/logical "then".
• Your vs. You're : The former means "not my, not his, not our", in other words it is a possessive. The latter is a shortcut for "You are". Similar point for There vs Their vs They're.
• Hobbyist and lobbyist are not superlatives. Hence they musn't be written as hobbiest and lobbiest.
• Thi fuct thit ya ridnucks prunince any avelible vowal as "uh" doesn't forbid you to open a book from time to time to actually build up some vocabulary. It's "ludicrous" and "compatible", not "ludacris" and "compatable".
• Its vs It's. The former is the genitive form of "It" and will therefore make the following word an attribute of the word replaced by the pronoun. Example : illiteracy and its consequences. The latter is an shortcut for "It is". Example : Illiteracy. It's so annoying.
• lose vs. loose : the first is the verb associated with a loss. The second is the contrary of "firm"
• to vs too : Your spelling is too pathetic for your post to matter to me. The same goes for your grammar too.
• I could (not) care less. Most people say "I could care less" when they don't give a flying fuck. If they really could care less, then their lack of interest isn't that big. What they mean is that they could not care less.

...many more to come. Reply to this comment to suggest some.

A definition of irony :

A bunch of computer nerds without a sense for spelling and grammar mocking japanese game translators for their lack of skills in english spelling and grammar.

Contribution by Erpo :

I'm not any kind of grammar nazi, but decent spelling and grammar are important to me. The occasional affect/effect problem doesn't bother me (it just lowers my opinion of the author), but when a piece is riddled with errors (there/they're/their, its/it's, then/than, etc..) it's hard for me to read. Partially, I think this is because I sight read and I don't subvocalize. In other words, when I see, "It's over their," in print the first thing I think is, "It's over their what? Is it hovering over their kitchen counter? Is it over their heads? What is this person trying to say?" Of course, I don't just sit there pondering those questions (it only takes a split second to see there was a grammar error in the sentence), but I can't read as quickly when every few lines my eyes flick back to an earlier word.

Maybe I'm just hypersensitive. I don't know. If you don't know what I'm talking about though, check out this piece by Prince. It doesn't have very many grammar problems, but the "creative" spelling is really distracting.

Re:More 'Net users in Europe than North America

[Anonymous Coward]

Good afternoon, Mr Troll.

One URL should solve your question.

Re:CERN

[Anonymous Coward]

fags

the www sucks

the internet is cool, but www sucks ass

id rather chat on irc and get porn from newsgroups than read web pages... even slashdot!

Bush will put a stop to this soon

[Anonymous Coward]

You see, Bush is about to cause an oil embargo. Just like in 1973, just bigger. Europe will pay more for oil and they will drop there internet connection in favor of food.

mod away pudknockers, you know I'm right

The problem is Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

Blame Canada!

Re:The US is not ahead in technology

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't believe this statistic, I think it's propoganda.

I have a cellphone the size of a wine cork and twice as light, and I live in Missouri.

Re:The US is not ahead in technology

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup. I always laugh when I see new american movies, and the guy pulls up his cellphone - more like a slede hammer.

Re:Major improvements in UK telcos internet offeri

[FigWig]

Okay, I lived 1/4 mile from El Camino in Mountain View, and stupid PacBell said I couldn't get DSL (toooo faaaar). If you can't rely on broadband in the densest area of the world's technology capital - where can you?

Yeah, but you should have been able to get AT&T cable broadband there, at least I could when i lived in Sunnyvale near El Camino. And it's much better than DSL, I never experienced any slowdown due to over subscription.

Re:Germany

[shiva600]

Erm .. sorry ?
You have been to germany exactly what summer ?
Actually, internet access and especially broadband is not expensive at all imho.
For example I'm posting from my 768/128-DSL-Line, which costs me ca. 50/month, *inclunding* flat rate, which means I can be online as long as I'd like to and do not have a download cap.
It would be even cheaper (for me) if I wouldn't be too lazy to change access providers every now and then.
Now on to your cellular-phone-thingy.
This story is so strange it made me laugh. Yes, everybody and his dog usually has a cellular phone, and I like it that way, but downloading music ? lol ? "Burning" to minidisc ? Come on.
You've been to Amsterdam and smoked one, right ? ;)

HA!

[budalite]

That probably just means that the European Polltakers are more efficient that ours. I think there are a lot more Internet users in the US than most people realize. For example, until recently, I refused to buy anything over the Internet because of the security problems. I was very adamant. Then I found out that my wife had been doing it anyway, for years. Then, again, if anyone gets hold of my bank and credit card accounts, they'll be in for a rude surprise. They've already been drained. (I have children.) Maybe that's the best security measure of all -- always be BROKE! Works for me.

Dumb Europeans

[SerpentMage]

I watch this talk show called TvTotal, which is hosted by a guy called Stephan Rabb. Since in Germany there is an election he did a series on "First voter check". Basically in the first voter check he tested the "intelligence" or lack of the first voters. Folks, ignorance is not specific to Americans. Some people were REALLY DUMB! For example they asked the people to place where countries were in Europe, with the boundaries drawn in. And hardly anybody got it right. They kept putting the capital of Germany, Berlin near Paris.

So I think we Europeans and we North American's should come to the conclusion that idiots exist everywhere and nobody has an exclusive contract on them!