Slashdot Mirror
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."
Ok, this coming from a european based company?
According to Irish-based industry monitor Nua.com,
That's like me saying that I did a study that shows that I'm the best.
The anti-salmon
182 vs. 186 says nothing if you don't know how many live on each continent.
Perhaps this poll wasn't representative either, then.
oh, and BTW the world wide web was invented in Europe..
The number of internet users in Europe may outnumber those in North America, but the total population also outnumbers North America by over 2 to 1. A quick Google, and I came up with 314 million for NA, and 727 million for Europe. Put in this persepective, NA still has over twice as many people online, but also leaves Europe with a lot of room to grow (and hence probably faster uptake in the future).
"No one likes working in a hamster wheel, and your shop smells of cedar shavings from here." - TaleSpinner
(probably because some of our telecoms companies are yet to understand the internet)
Ours tried to claim patent on Hyperlinks
In other news :
"Take-up of broadband in the UK lags pitifully behind other countries in Europe, according to the latest stats from Nielsen/NetRatings."
UK Govt. sold off the monopoly telecoms company. We could have had fibre to the door from the profits but instead licences were sold to foreign investment. They have spectacularly failed to recoup their investment, not least because BT won;t open up the local loop. I have fibre to my street but copper to the door.
OK hindsight is easy but selling the country's comms to finance slashing income tax wasn't really in the best long term interests of that market.
It is correct that there was a lot of overcapacity of the workforce in the nationalised industries but why it takes private investment to sort it out is a mystery. Reducing expenditure and increasing profits isn't the only way to operate. Providing jobs with lower work rates is good for the emloyees.
The promise of technology bringing more leisure time has come true. The unforseen consquence of that was that the time would not be evenly distributed. We now have millions of people without work and millions of people with too much work to do. Crazy.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Something to bear in mind is that Europe is far less homogenous than the US when it comes to adoption of new tech (and a great many other things as well, I might add). Generally speaking, northern Europe has been on par with the US in internet use since years back, whereas southern Europe is just picking up speed.
This, and the mere fact that the population base of Europe is larger than that of the US means that with time, as the market saturates, Europeans will certainly outnumber Americans (from the US anyway) on the net.
<grumble>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?</grumble>
## W.Finlay McWalter ## http://www.mcwalter.org ##
A large part of the reason that Europe was lagging behind (at least from what I saw in Germany over the summer) is that internet is very expensive. Germans however are nuts for cellular phones (which are often cheaper to use than their home phones) and have ways of downloading music to them and burning that on minidisc. I was staying with a family that had an ISP but still gave me money to go to an internet cafe rather than use their service because it was so expensive. I believe the issue is that the government has allowed a monopoly on all existing phone lines and the only companies that can get around it are newer, like cellular providers.
And what would you (or they) say if the same survey was made by a US company? If the company is reputable, that shouldn't change a thing to the results.
Umm... Let me guess - your site is in English? Yeah, Europeans speak more than one language you know. You have to think of all the sites out there in French, Italian, Polish, Swedish, German, etc.
Your statement is like me saying "My Swedish web site has more than 95% Swedish visitors, therefore us Swedes must make up 95% of all Internet users, woohoo!"
All your internet are belong to us now
This idea was invented by Shampoo.
Since Europe is still larger than the Gringo-land by a fair amount, a somewhat smaller per-capita net usage stat will put the total number of users ahead of the US. Its still only in small countries with a concerted effort to push the internet that net usage per-capita tops the US. And that may only be in broadband - I don't remember off the top of my head.
The US, between immigration and a rebounding birth-rate, will outstrip the population of Europe before 2050, if current trends hold. But net usage should be around 99% by then throughout the developed world.
if ($it != $onething) {$it = $another;}
You probably have a US-based webpage, which would account for the number of hits coming from the US. If that's the instrument I would use to measure net population, I'd have to assume that Internet users are composed of nearly 100% Germans, cause the hits on my German site are nearly all from Germany.
I heard somewhere that one of the reasons Europe is slow on the uptake of Interenet is that we have had Teletext since the early 80's, and therefore 'instant news' was regarded as not that big a deal here. Don't know if that's true, and another reason will certainly be the high telephone costs here in Europe.
-- Cheers!
According to The UN Population People, Europe has a population of 727,304,000. This is compared to the 270-280 million in the US. So, Europe practically triples the US in size. However, I think that if there were more European net users than US net users, then there would be FAR more hits on varius websites from Europeans than Americans. *shrug* I wonder if this NUA place is counting people that are behind firewalls in business networks and whatnot.
The anti-salmon
While your webstats might be originating mostly from the US, that is hardly representative of the population of the web. Perhaps your site doesn't have anything of interest to Europeans.
Think about your web activity, I suspect that you mostly visit US- or North America-centric sites. Wouldn't the logical conclusion therefore be that most Europeans mostly visit European-centric sites?
My other sig is funny!
Um, unless you're using geolocation to detect those sites, using things like looking for '.com' and '.net' is highly unreliable. Almost every European company will try to get the .com as well as the local country code domain, and .org/.net as well for that matter...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Ah! A summer away from /. and I return to find the same stagnant backwater mentality. In a world desperately in need of a sense of community and, all the more so, in talking of a technology carrying with it the hope of *communication* the /. talk is of _them_ against _us_. O me, O my it's back to my cabin in the woods I go.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
There may be a significant difference between 'users on-line' and the amount of surfing individuals. Thanks to our punitive telco here in Ireland, I'm severly limited as to my on-line time as our dialup charges are metered per-minute. *And* we've yet to get decent broadband! There may be more users on-line per-capita (I doubt that, too) but they're not on-line as long & thus not hitting as many URLs. Long-winded, but do you see my point?
Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
Is this meant to be a joke? Maybe I'm missing the humour, or perhaps it's just incredibly arrogant.
Perhaps we know about NAT as well....
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
how about asia? they should be close, too. while the % of population online would be much smaller, the base numbers would be much higher.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Local American retailers have published a new study, saying that the reason that the economy isn't doing as well as it should be is because there are more people OUTSIDE this country than inside.
A spokesman for the industry has been quoted as saying that it is time for Americans to do their duty, and have lots and lots of sex, especially with an overlooked segment of the sexual economy - geeks.
A spokesman for Slashdot, when presented with this news, was heard to exclaim "Whoa.. sweet!"
First of all the population of Europe is over 800 million. The article did not say the EU. Indeed, this report shows non-EU countries contribute to that total.
Canada and the US together have about 315 million people. This means Internet penetration in Europe doesn't even approach that of North America (which is in fact contrary to an observation in the posted article).
Of course I'll admit that it is a semi-interesting statistic, although it will be more interesting when European numbers actually pass North American numbers, including Mexico. As it is, the stat is rather contrived.
Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
Actually we also use NAT muchly (maybe more than in the USA, because here in Europe Internet access is rather expensive), and WiFi is getting very popular here as well.
There are a lot of differences between countries in Europe. Ireland sucks when it comes to internet infrastructure (There's barely broadband available) and the phone system sucks (I'm on a multiplexed line, so I get 16.200bps dialup). And there is no such thing as 'uncapped' or 'flat rate'.
Compare that to Norway where flat-rate, uncapped broadband has been widely available quite a few years, with a VDSL test-project the last year. Or Sweden, where "Bredbandsbolaget" (Dunno if I wrote that correctly) can deliver 10mbps-lines to normal people.
A few telecom companies are confused about internet. The Norwegian "Telenor" started building a *good* infrastructure back in the '70s. Ireland OTOH seems to have a hodgepodge of systems that won't quite work, or works slowly.
Another case of someone needed to be reminded that Slashdot != the rest of the world. Most people, and most internet users, don't even know what NAT stands for, nevermind how to set it up. While it is certainly possible that it affects the results of the survey, it would not have affected the survey all that much. Even then, there is probably a comparable amount of NATed users in Europe as well.
My other sig is funny!
I know my webstats still show majority from US .com, .net and .org aren't necessarily US sites.
It depends on your website's language, too - one of mine's in French, 34% of the visits come from .fr domain names. On my english site, only 9% come from .fr.
How do you know ? whois on the IPs ?
blah
USA is about that, but the EU is about 750 million, not 350 million.
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
While it's true that you can't make projections about someone else's figures without knowing anything about how the data was collected, i'm halfway willing to call all the numbers pretty bogus unless they came up with a pretty brilliant way to collect the data.
There are scores of people that only have internet access at work and are really 'net users but probably not counted. NAT and wireless are technologies that call the numbers into doubt and also, there is no real way to count users on all the various home or home office setup LANS. Also, there are millions of college students that don't have net access in their dorms (or off campus residences) but have access through college computer labs. The same applies to high school students. Factor in internet cafes, kinkos and the like and you can begin to see that it would be quite difficult to gauge an 'actual' number of internet users.
Well I don't know if this is true or not, but it sure seems pretty saturated in Scandinavia, where I live. I live in a town with 35K citizens and we have had DSL and Cable broadband available since early 2000. Everywhere I go (except most of the old folks read over 60) I find at least one PC and they are nearly always if not always on the internet. It is also getting into everything now. My homework and stuff from the university (I recently returned there to finish up my CS degree) I can get over FTP, all contact with the teachers and faculty in general is strongly encouraged to run over email. Our enrollment includes an university email address, our enrollment list has not only email but ICQ on it. And this goes for all faculties not just the CS and Engineering ones. There is a lot more (e-learning portal, webmail, information and so on) and they are constantly expanding (currently they are working on getting a complete wireless coverage, while they build the new university down by the sea). The student housings for the entire town offer 100 Mbit internal LAN and a mighty big pipe out (I don't know how big, but it is a leased part of a fiber) with all the student housings organized by the independent student housing organization (the school has no say over what goes on).
:)
So the internet has spread fully around here and again this is just a very small town in Denmark
A person is smart, people are deeply stupid
Here in Italy the vast majority of users connect through free dial-up accounts. I don't know if it is the same in other countries, but free access usually mean plenty of registered but unused accounts. It is probable that any telcom group counts every account, even the unused ones, for marketing purpouse. I don't know the situation in the USA, but I bet that no ISP offers free (as beer) wireless or ADSL access. I suppose that here in Italy ADSL is about 1% or less of total connections, and wireless networking is almost absent.
Signatures are for stupids.
Things have changed rapidly over here during the past few years, which is what the articles says when it mentions "growth".
For example, there are now 2 competing broadband ADSL companies in my hometown, one offering 2mbit download, the other 1.5 (2x768). Both are flatrate. Other cities are very similiar, and it's selling itself. One company I know actually stopped all their advertisement because they were getting customers faster than they could handle.
There are also Internet Terminals next to the public phones in many places, where you can throw in a or two or use your phone card and surf the web while waiting for your train. These, too, have appeared largely during the last year or two.
Internet cafes seem to be closing, which shows that more people have access at home and just don't need them anymore. Those I know all get their major revenue from online gamers, not from people surfing.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
That isn't necessarily true. Remember that .com != US. I have quite a few visitors from Europe with .com, .net and .org addresses, for example. I just happen to recognize the DNS entries as being from European ISPs.
Also, European visitors don't necessarily frequent US sites, and vice versa -- as an example, Germans are going to be all over spiegel.de, stern.de and so on, but probably won't bother much with cnn.com, news.com or wired.com for their news.
English-language sites still dominate the Net, but the vast majority of non-English speakers of course prefer to read things in their own language, even if they speak English. So your site, presumably in English, won't have that many non-English speaking visitors.
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
Like possibly that we are not the only nation on earth! It'd be great to see the internet become more global and make our (US) sites be more european leaning and actually get some points of view from both sides, not just the propaganda we hear now about things, such as Iraq. Our constitution gives us freedom of speech, lets see what good we can do in the world if we actually used it instead of following like sheep!
compare this to the individual
States in the US rather than the 'country' and you'll probably get a more accurate comparison
of scale.
Uhh... hold on, if you want to compair number of provinces then you might have something. Still, not something that is a relevant metric for this comparison.
Try compairing sheer population of "upper North America" vs Europe and you might have someting. No, I am not interested enough to look it up either, just getting the comparison back on track.
Now, if you want to compair usage/populace of full continents, remember to use the entire European population vs. all of the North American population (includes the political division commonly referred to as "Central America").
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
If the number sounds bogus, it must be. *laugh*
.uk, etc) yeilds some very incorrect numbers. I should know, as I work on advertising delivery engines; you can't use reverse name lookups to determine geographic location. Some companies make $$$ providing a database with an API to map ip addresses to a physical location, but those companies must work arm in arm with ISPs to ensure that the location IP address mapping is correct, and they are constantly updating their database.
Doesn't it strike you that thats the point of surveys and statistical data? To tell us things about our world which do not neccessarily support our (often incorrect) intuition?
Do not look at your webstats. Your page is probably in english, and resolving geographical location by the top level domain name (.com,
"Old man yells at systemd"
"The US, between immigration and a rebounding birth-rate, will outstrip the population of Europe before 2050, if current trends hold."
You have got to be fucking joking. And for once I'm using the word "fucking" in the correct context.
Europe's population is approx 730 million people. The USA is approx 250 million. If you're telling me that the USA is going to TRIPLE in population in 50 years, then you're fucking mental! (ok, a bit of a stretch)
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
No, as I said I live in a very small country (Luxembourg) and we've only got DSL since end of last year. (in very few regions, in most of the country it's still impossible to get DSL and in the North cable is non-existent)
Europe outstrips the US in cell phone usage and now internet because for years their governments have used the telcos to soak the consumer and several countries (the uk in particular) have never moved to flat rate service which is the standard in the US.
What the new cell phone service and internet service does is allow consumers to get around their outragiously high traditional land-line phone bills (especially if the net access is thru satalite or cable) at least partially. Using email and instant messaging for communication in europe is just a whole heck of a lot cheaper than reaching out and touching someone using a telephone.
No spam? Ever seen 'the birds' of Alfred Hitchcock? Didn't you see the subtle parody of the catastrophic effects of European SMPT DoS? I don't know where are you from, but here in Italy pigeons are not wireless networking. As a matter of fact, we bound'em tight to a rope, so we can quickly retrieve them. It's called DSL (Double Speed Lace).
Signatures are for stupids.
How funny that poll is. If you're going to compare continent to continent, why are the Euros leaving out Mexico and the rest of Latin America. After all, if they're north of Columbia, they're in north america. I've also been told that, once you get past the border region, much of Mexico really is well developed.
I have certainly come across plenty of latin americans in the years I've been online...
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
The article says Europe, not the European Union. The estimated population of Europe was 728,981,999 in the year 2000.
The EU makes up a little less than half the population of Europe. Most of the eastern European countries aren't members.
And they're comparing all those to just two countries in North America?
There are three countries in North America, not counting the Caribbean islands and what not.
Count them yourself: Canada, USA, and Mexico.
This is not a suprising fact. The US is not ahead in technology.
You know I really cannot stand when people say nonsense like this. The US is, overall, the richest reasonably large country in the world (note: I am not even an American! I'm a Canadian, and our purchasing power isn't nearly as strong as the mighty American $), so clearly one cannot simply say "Uh, they're behind in technology!" (which is an especially hilarious comment when a large portion of the world's high technology industry is centered in the US): If they want, they can have the best of every technology worldwide: The best, most cutting edge wireless technologies, with handsets that'll clean your teeth while you talk, and compute the next million prime numbers while they slumber. If there is a technology anywhere in the planet, apart from maybe Osama's garagecave, if the US and US citizens found it palatable and worthwhile, they'd have it.
A more reasonable comment would be "the adoption of certain technologies has not been as brisk in the US as it is in some other countries". For instance, the cell phone networks in North America tend to already have a tough time being profitable, so they don't jump on new, non-standardized technologies at the toss of a coin like they appear to do in Japan (where they bleed money on them at unbelievably staggering rates). US citizens, generally, like paying $100 or less (actually, most like the phones to be free) for handsets, because again it really doesn't matter to most of us: I don't want a colour screen on my phone, I just want something that I can talk to people on.
Don't worry - I was asked if we spoke English in the UK "or do we just have an accent" by a particularly dumb blonde in Texas!
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
See look what hapens when you throw a bit of socilism into the mix.... Capatilism good?
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Speaking of Europe can be as ambigious as speaking of North America.
When speaking of Europe one can either mean
a) The European Union
b) the continent Europe
c) the political Europe, which may include Russia and Turkey.
On a sidenote:
Russia is a neighbour of the US, Japan and China.
In your statistic, the total population of Russia is attributed to Europe.
(CIA Factbook 2001: 145,470,197
Your source: 146,001,176)
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
It was certainly meant as a joke. I suppose the obligatory smile-face was needed for anyone to see the humor.
I am well aware that NAT is nothing new to Europe, and sorry for the comment which has sparked so many retorts.
Click here or here.
There's really no good way to measure the actual number of net users for the various reasons you mention. What is likely to be the case is that the Internet users are determined by using a statistical sampling approach. They ask a question like, "Do you use the internet?" to some statistically significant portion of the population and then extrapolate to figure out the total.
:)
We don't know how they came up with the statistics though so I guess we are left to ask if the the statistics make sense. Given that EU's population in 2000 was 379 million and the U.S./Canada combined population is only about 310 million and given that EU, in general has a number of well educated people, it makes sense that they'd have more Internet users. Now, given that europe has 186 million and US/Canada has 182 million that means that the US/Canada leads in per capita internet users. If these numbers are accurate, 49% of europeans use the Internet where as 59% of Americans/Canadians do.
So, the number makes sense when you think about it. But does it really matter?
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
No... it just wasnt funny.
no sig.
from http://www.nationsonline.org, these are estimates.
European countries total 728,659,000
U.S and Canada total 309,504,000
Europe has 2.35x the population of Statsians and Canuks.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
In regards to all of Europe having more Internet users than the USA and Canada combined, we have to consider the following factors:
1. Europe's total population is 350 million plus, and given that Europe is a highly developed continent technologically I'm not surprised that Internet usage has gone so high.
2. Does the Nua.com survey also include users of cellphones? If it does that skews the usage equation since cellphone Internet connections are usually done in short bursts, not the long, continuous connections you get with a desktop computer. Subtract the cellphone users and let's see how many Europeans are accessing the Internet using desktop/laptop computers via dial-up or broadband connections.
However, I am happy that the European telcos are finally getting the message that one fee per month unmetered Internet access is the way to go. The fact I've read on this message thread that DSL access is rapidly growing in Europe tells me we'll see some very rapid growth in Internet usage in Europe over the next decade.
Someone in our village showed us a java applet and we had to burn them as a witch.
no sig.
>>>US citizens, generally, like paying $100 or less (actually, most like the phones to be free) for handsets, because again it really doesn't matter to most of us: I don't want a colour screen on my phone, I just want something that I can talk to people on.
All my phones have been free - I live in the UK and upgrade my mobile every 6 or 12 months at no cost to myself. It's standard here. Finland and Japan have even better commercial tech than us.
I know it may sound silly, but to the rest of the developed world, the US does quite often seem insular and not interested in advances in technology from outside, so doesn't use the huge resources at it's disposal.
Maybe it's because Europe isn't as litigious as the US is. With all the software/business patents it no wonder things move slower here.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Dude, do you REALLY think only American's know how to use NAT? Because, you know people could actually be SHARING a computer in Europe? And in Europe the PC penetration is lower than in the US.
About the higher precentage in Europe than the US is actually very logical. Let me explain. In North America we have a house in Quebec that is about 10 clicks outside the range of DSL. How long have we been waiting for DSL? Years and we are still waiting.
But in Europe DSL is becoming as common as GSM, meaning even if you live in the country you will get DSL. And once you have DSL the Internet is actually fun and interesting. Also DSL is mucho easier and cheaper than ISDN or a modem in Europe.
My point is that in North America the spreading of broadband has been halted and people who were shafted in the country are still shafted. And this is bad because the only expanison left in North America is the country side where many people do live.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Oh come on... Germany has had DSL for a few years now. Ask my brother who lives near Regensburg in the country side. He has been waffling between AOL and T-Online DSL to get better rates.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
I don't have any hard numbers, but I'm confident there are a lot more net users in Asia. Living in Taiwan for the past many years, I've noticed that there is a FAR higher percentage of broadbrand users than in the US or Europe. Competition here is healthy with ADSL and cable modem services available for as low as $20/month. The Taipei City government even provides FREE dial-up access, so those with broadbrand can still get internet access. When returning to the US this past summer, I was very surprised how many of my friends rarely use the internet and how even fewer people have broadband.
The US is WAY behind when it comes to anything hi-tech. Here in Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, etc., we get all the latest and greatest gadgets well before the US. In fact, many of the coolest cell phones, MP3 players, CD players, and other electronic gadgets never even appear in the US.
Its really quite pathetic how behind the US is technologically (especially the consumers and general population). As I'm moving back to the US, I hope that they can quickly play catch-up to Asia!
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!
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
The US has better hardwired infrastructure than many other countries. There's less of a cultural interest in single-purpose devices that do one interesting thing -- general purpose computing is more popular in the US than in, say, Japan, but Japanese gidgets sell better than in the US.
I think that complaints about 3G not being adopted are silly. 3G has some seriously unpleasant bits. Cell phones could already monitor your location (and do constantly, letting the telco/govt build a map of where you go), but 3G ones can be switched on remotely to eavesdrop. Furthermore, most cell infrastructure in Europe associated with 3G is key escrow, and bits of it are even unencrypted. 3G security and privacy blow chunks compared to US cell phone standards.
May we never see th
So, theoretically, each of those super-wealthy types could buy higher tech gadgets than the rest, but in terms of consumer electronics, the hyperluxury set really don't set the pace for economies of scale.
You also may have a lower gross income than the typical American, but your discretionary spending money is probably comparable. The rest of your comment largely holds - that it's a matter of spending priorities.
Worked for Catholicism.
May we never see th
35% of US high school seniors couldn't find THE USA on an unmarked map of the world. About 50% couldn't find Europe. THERE HAS GOT TO BE A REASON. I dare say most EU year 12s could draw an unmarked map of the world with major rivers and mountain ranges.
:-)
I suspect that there *is* a reason -- most US citizens don't really care about anythin outside of the US. They know where the action is. On the other hand, most Europeans spend their days dreaming about how they can emmigrate to the United States.
Yay for Slashdot nationalism.
Oh, and that river would be spelled Mississippi, you geography whiz.
May we never see th
The US is, overall, the richest reasonably large country in the world (note: I am not even an American! I'm a Canadian, and our purchasing power isn't nearly as strong as the mighty American $), so clearly one cannot simply say "Uh, they're behind in technology!"
And why not, if I may ask? Purchasing power does not equal technological advancement. Technological advancement usually implies having purchasing power. The converse, however, is simply untrue. Also, I have no idea whatsoever what "reasonably sized" is supposed to mean.
If they want, they can have the best of every technology worldwide: The best, most cutting edge wireless technologies, with handsets that'll clean your teeth while you talk, and compute the next million prime numbers while they slumber.
Your argument is basically this: if the US would buy technology it does not have it would have it, and thus be equally advanced as other countries with regard to this technology.
This is true, and fairly obvious, but then you go on and conclude that this must mean they are equally advanced now, which is absurd.
I don't want a colour screen on my phone, I just want something that I can talk to people on.
This may come as a surprise for you, but regardless of your reasons for not having a certain technology (in this case, not being interested) you still don't have it. Do you think it is fair to say that a country is technologically inferior if they don't have any computers, regardless if this is intentional on their part? I'm sure you do. To see how this applies to your fifth grade reasoning is left as an exercise to the reader.
Who modded this nonsense up? His head on a plate!
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok
The national unemployment rates of different countries aren't comparable at all. Who is considered as unemployed?
Try the standardised unemployment rates from the OECD.
The unemployment rate in the EU was 7.4. Canada had an unemployment rate of 7.2, the US had one of 4.8 (2000).
Now, compare the social security system of Canada, various EU states and the US and maybe you know why an unemployment rate of 5.6 is considered "terrible".
Hint: People below poverty line: Canada 10.3%, US 17.0%, Source OECD
Imagine, some people consider poverty as a source of social unrest and criminality.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
Does anyone know what percentage of those two groups (US/Canada and Europe) is on broadband? That would be just as noteworthy a figure, if not more so.
PS2 and Xbox are both launching their online gaming services, but I think they (and everyone else) expected broadband to spread much faster than it actually has. Likewise, any business basing their distribution on streaming media has had to deal with the grim realities of sluggish broadband adoption.
And people wonder why Americans are considered stupid? Sweden, Denmark, Finland all enjoy temperate climate, Netherland even more so. The average temperature is probably higher than in New York. We are not living in igloos, you know. Americans are not wery tech-savy outside Silicon Walley. Nothren Europe is. The Scandinavian countries, (Ever heard of Ericsson & Nokia?). Southern Europe has always lagged behind for some reason, but I very much doubt it that it has anything doing with the weather.
According to your reasoning Canada should be numero uno in net connections...
Yes, I'm not surprised either. In my flat in Paris, I have two options for high speed cable, and (I think) two different DSL options.
Holy shit that must be great!
Here in Wash. St., I have one choice for broadband access: It's the state condoned monopoly of Charter Cable. They have recently upped the price again and they have capped our line at 756 K, even though the line could previously give each user upwards of 2 megabits. Now, I can't even view streaming video without gliches.
I count myself lucky, though. In other areas it is capped at 256 K, which I don't even consider broadband.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
> GSM is not some amazing technology:
> It hardly offers any benefits over CDMA
This is a fine example of spin, since it implies that GSM succeeded CDMA without improving on it. In reality, CDMA is much newer than GSM, and of course it better offer some technical improvements. The fact is that while CDMA2000 does indeed offer better call density, its implementation by US carriers (Sprint and who else?) still is missing critical features long offered by GSM, in particular in the area of call management (accounting, roaming etc). Yes, GSM is older technology, but it's not standing still and has shown the ability for incremental growth, such as the development of GPRS. Where can I get packet switched connectivity with CDMA? Besides, all the current advances of CDMA2000 will be subsumed into UMTS when it finally replaces GSM.
start learning from it's elders how to play nicely with the rest of the world
... see Germany above ... China, I think the Tibetans might have something to say about that. Sure the US has made some bonehead calls in the past and will probably make some more in the future. However, compared with the foreign policy mistakes by our supposedly wiser "elders" we are pretty damn benign.
Sure, we could learn how to treat our neighbors from Englands' illegal occupation of Scotland and Ireland. The English could also teach us how to how to create a geopolitical timebomb from their mismanaged colonial and post-colonial policies. The Middle East, the Persian Gulf and the Indian Sub-Continent are problems of their creation. From the French we could also learn colonial misrule. They must know something, they managed to slaughter a million Algerians. Many of the problems in SE Asia and North Africa can be traced back to French idiocy. The one thing we won't want to learn from the French is how to defend ourselves. The Germans? not even going to spend time on it. The Italians, not too bad but it would be nice if they gave the Ethiopians back their national monuments. Greece? No thanks, I like to play computer games. Hmmm... Belgium, wrong again, the current turmoil in Western Africa stems from their colonial rule. Luxembourg? Never been there, hear it is a really nice place. I suppose we could be like them, the only problem is that sometimes, somewhere, someone needs to get their ass handed to them and while I have great respect for the British military, they just don't have the logistical network or the deep pockets to stand in for the long haul. Well so much for Europe, what about Asia? Japan
between the greater and lesser infinities sleep the dreams undreamt
In almost every way, Europe does lag the U.S.
In this case, you're talking about 182 million
out of 325 million, versus 186 million out of
something over 600 million. Europe is not just
Norway and Switzerland. It includes Albania
and Moldova... some places where a straw roof
is a luxury.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
They should be much more reliable than your website to gain a feeling for what kind of peope are online. Check out http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html and look at the Languages Used stats. Keep in mind that a significant percentage of English queries do not come from the US but countries like the UK, Australia, Holland, India etc.
Ya know, this argument is getting old and is very misleading, hell, it's flat out wrong!
Let's just say that I saw two teams in a tug of war, and both sides aren't budging either way.
If I join either team, causing that same team to win, then by your argument (and that of many of your countrimen) there was only one winner of that competition, namely, _me_, not the team I joined. ME ME ME ME, I won, I pulled the entire opposition over so I won. Not the jerks on my team. It was ME, ME, all ME!
If you think it was selfish of me to act like this, I was after all a member of a team, GET OF YOUR HIGH FUCKING HORSE AND GET IT THROUGH YOUR THICK SKULL THAT IT WAS TEAM EFFORT THAT BEATED HITLER'S REIGN (There is no "I", or "USA" or "America" in the word "team").
Sheesh, and they wonder why the rest of the world hates the US so much?
(Hint: it's not the money or so called freedom, IT'S THE ARROGANCE)
Flaimbait? Sorry, but it's supposed to be funny. You know, the famous Southpark... oh never mind.
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
I know that. :-)
It just annoys the hell out of me everytime some "yank" spits out something about how the US came in and kicked nazi ass, like the rest of the Allied Forces were just sitting around with their thumbs up their asses (which thei weren't btw.).
In a way, a European visiting a US-based website is a bad thing for the website, because most advertising networks available to US-based sites have stopped serving advertising to non-North-American IPs. I guess their theory is that no one in Europe would want to buy a GM car, Verizon wireless, etc.
This is becoming more and more of a problem for websites (such as mine) that appeal to an international audience (hockey related). A few years ago when it seemed apparent that the future of the web was truly international, I included quite a bit of content for Europeans. But now that 30% of my traffic is from Europe, I'm finding that this traffic simply increases my server and bandwidth costs without providing me with a dime of income.
In retrospect, my European content was a mistake.
Until revenue can be derived from European visitors, I can't see people actively trying to recruit those European visitors.
Um, unless you're using geolocation to detect those sites, using things like looking for '.com' and '.net' is highly unreliable. Almost every European company will try to get the .com as well as the local country code domain, and .org/.net as well for that matter...
... and for example even the biggest german ISP (T-Online) or Arcor or many of the MSN-Ips assign IPs which almost all resolve to a .net Adress
Lord "not Gargamel's Cat!" Azrael
Where do you get this information from? My personal experience is that Americans are considerably better off on average than Europeans.
Shouldn't they be counted in any NA vs. Europe stats?
And are they talking about europe as a whole, or just the EU?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Personal experience is a very unreliable source of information. You may be associating with wealthier Americans and poorer Europeans; you may be judging wealth by home and car size.
One statistic you should bear in mind is that 8 of the 10 wealthiest people in the world are American (4 of them are members of the Walton family). The combined wealth of those 8 alone is $230 billion - that kind of concentrated wealth really throws off the averages.
Of course you've got good connectivity - you're near a university, and universities are good at getting stuff like that done, and in your case there's also a student cooperative which is good at getting things done. Last time I tried to get an E1 line installed for a customer in Denmark was 1-2 years ago - the PTT was telling us 4 months, and I think the real time was about 6 months. (For you non-Europeans, an E1 is a 2Mbps line, a bit bigger than a US T1 line.) I've sometimes seen similar delays in the Netherlands, where there's even less excuse for it. Some of this may be because we had our partnership with BT Concert at the time, so several different phone companies were involved...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
OK, so the web started in Europe, or more precisely in Academia, a country that doesn't play by the same rules as the mundane world. That was a decade ago. Now that you guys are getting all this broadband, and generally without the same stupid rules as US cable TV companies (can't run a server, etc., so you can't develop anything new or interesting), what else have you developed that's new and interesting?. US college students took advantage of campus LANs to develop Napster (note: students, not university-organized activities); I got the impression that some of the MP3 craze started in Europe before becoming common in North America. What's next? Korea's also heavily wired for broadband, and somebody here said Taiwan is. What are people doing with it?
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I'm fascinated by the situation in Luxembourg, because of the similarities between it and the ACT (Australian Capital Territory), where I live. For USAians, the ACT is the equivalent of the District of Columbia - a territory just big enough to contain a city. Canberra's only got 300,000 people, so the ACT's only 4000 sq km or so ( vs 2800 sq km for Luxembourg).
Anyway, 12 months ago there were basically no good broadband options. Now we have 3 - I've got a package involving free local (ie anywhere on the network) phonecalls, a dozen or so cable channels, a 256 kbps 800 MB/month line, and an ISP with the usual website, e-mail etc for less than $50 US/month total. And despite a letter saying "we're going to actually slow you down to 256kbps real soon", I'm still getting 400 kbps+ according to various speed measurers.
It beats the heck out of my 56k modem. And it SURE beats the heck out of downloading stuff from Australia to a German server over a 300 Bd modem back in the late 80's. The international lines couldn't take 1200 back then, and 300 was iffy for large (multi kilobyte) data transfers. Geen Gouden Eeuw!
Ma, dann nach ee scheinen daag! Vlaams? I speak and write both Plattdeutsch and Nederlands so badly that I can even understand that. Interesting spelling (Ma instead of Maar for example). Maybe I'd even fit in with the Luxembourgeoisie. A Bientot, Tot Zeens, etc.
Zoe Brain - Rocket Scientist
You've misspelled "resume" in your sig, unless my font is rendering it wrong.
You've used the accente grave.
Or is this some sort of subtle French joke?
fifth sigma, inc.
60 million British (are there any people left who only speak Welsh?), 4 million Irish (again, maybe a small proportion who only speak Gaelic?). What fraction of the population in other EU countries speak English to a sufficient standard to write a comprehensible post on Slashdot? (yes, I know that rules out half the /. posters whose native language *is* English).
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
However, that doesn't mean that the US situation is any better - analog cellphones aren't encrypted, and none of the encryption protocols used in the common TDMA systems are at all strong, and in most cases they're not turned on (if you've got a Nokia phone, the message is "Voice privacy not active".) The first generation of CDMA phones also had bogus encryption; the people who designed it were competent but under political pressure. I don't know if newer CDMA standards are any better.
The only encryption in these systems that has any strength at all is the authentication side that's used for the billing, and with GSM, that's also been broken. But that's ok, you're secure in the US, because the US government made it illegal for anybody but them to eavesdrop.
The real problem with 3G was that the government was convinced it could get billions of euros in revenue by auctioning off the spectrum licenses, and the telcos also believed it. The governments got most of their money upfront and let Darwin sort out the impacts on the telcos. Fortunately or unfortunately, the US wireless carriers were in a different phase of their build/deploy/sell/replace cycles, so they didn't deploy that infrastructure before the market crashed. If Europeans can use their 3G data services at a reasonable flat-rate price, say 30-50 euros/month for unlimited service, they may really accomplish something, but otherwise it's mostly a waste - and with the debts that the telephone companies accumulated, it's unlikely that that will happen.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Sigh. Not very much more. It's Cheney's (Sec of Defense during Gulf war) obsession, he and select others of Bush 2's boys that are retreads of Bush 1's.
Saddam is not a threat to anyone. He's not threaten-ing, he cannot threat-en. Use of the terrible Weapons of Mass Distraction will result in his immediate incineration, along with ancient Mesopotamia.
What he is is an embarrassment to the Bush dynasty. The Bushes and Cheney will not rest until they feel their dicks are longer than Saddam's.
What he has is oil, and we want it.
What he is, is a huge distraction from the fact that Al Queda *got away*. Bin Laden *got away*.
Bush wants a big win. Cheney et al are trying to create an emotional link between Saddam and Al Queda where no logical one exists. A gullible, and extremely uninformed and snookered, public has swallowed the unfact of Saddam's menace, and want to blow up a few tens of thousands of people.
What the U.S. is collectively doing is trying to feel *safe and in control* again. We are blowing up Afganistan, tho the attackers are primarily from Saudi Arabia, and this makes us feel good and effective, tho the objectives (shut down Al Qeda, kill/capture Bin Laden) have not, and will not be met, 'cause Afghanistan doesn't HAVE Bin Laden or Al Queda.
The Admin, as in so many other things, is trying to set new precedent. In this case, that they can invade and neutralize a country because they *believe* it *may* be dangerous. They are expressing the belief that they, and they alone, can decide the guilt or innocence of a nation, and unilaterally exterminate it, based on their *assertion* that the enemy must be up to something.
They have set a precedent similar to this by declaring U.S. citizens "uncitizens" at the whim of a man in the Defense Department. They are trying to establish precendent that the President can execute war at his whime as well. They are establishing precedent that they are immune to the judicial system. To the Constitution itself.
Because we are at war with terrorism.
Excuse me, but how does one win a war on a common noun? What we have is the precendent of a President declaring that he can declare war unilaterally, suspend the Constitition, jail in secret anyone he likes for the rest of their lives, and lie if he wants to to the press. The precendent that questioning of such policies by the press is tantamount to treason, so watch your mouth -- we're *watching* you.
The President alone shall decide when the war is won. When it all stops and goes back to normal.
But it can't, by definition. How do you defeat "terror"? How do you defeat...
Being afraid.
What we are, is afraid, and we hate it, and will do anything we can to stop being afraid, including following an administration who has grabbed illegal powers in defiance of the Constitution.
Now we will blow up Iraq, mumbling something about Weapons of Mass Destruction. I guarantee ya, there will be no reporters allowed on the ground in Iraq post-annihilation to see if there were any WMD factories. The admin has no interest in whether the claims can be proven or disproven.
This is insane, and the idea is rejected by every nation on Earth, as it should be. It declares the power of Rome over the nations of the world; it declares Empire.
I would ;-)
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"