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Internet Use Grows to 69 Percent of US Adults
NickABusey writes "According to Harris Interactive, more than two-thirds, or 69 percent of American adults were internet users last year. This is up from only 56 percent in 1999 and a measley 9 percent in 1995. Perhaps more noteworthy is the increase in users with high-speed Internet connections. In 2001 is was 22 percent, now it is up to 37 percent."
The CIA World Factbook is a nice place to go for information like this. (Communications->Internet users for example)
Here's a list of how many internet users there are in each county. No percentages though, which would have been more interesting.
It's a bit of a pain to get news from a wide variety of sources though. Takes quite a bit of time. I've found a couple resources to be useful for this.
Google News and Technorati pick from a wide variety of sources and allow you to search news articles. But I sometimes find it hard to find what I want in all the clutter. Plastic provides moderation and discussion of news, but doesn't have broad coverage. Various RSS aggregators allow me to create your own news feed, but they don't have good coverage of mainstream news sources and they're a bit of a pain to set up. There's a couple recent attempts at personalized news -- Findory News is one -- that try to pull news from a broad variety of sources targetted to your interests.
What do you use?
The reality of life is that many don't see their own biases and mistake for reason and clarity what is actually bias (and often false assumptions). You're in the herd and everyone just reinforces each other.
This is why I wish there were more discussion sites where it wasn't just groupthink plus a few flamers. I don't think it's a problem of people not liking to hear other people points of view (I think when you talk with most people, if presented in the right way, they'll listen to it even if they continue to disagree). But many people dislike arguments and people get their egos bruised too easily. Discussions get out of hand and people love being praised.
And the baises get reinforced. People discredit other sites/groups/whole organizations that disagree and animosity on all sides increases. And slowly people wonder to themselves, when did the madness ensue and why? As with most relationships, it's a matter of communication. And the lack of proper communication of ideas leads to bias, disagreement and sometimes worse.
In times like these, it is helpful to remember that there have always been times like these. - Paul Harvey
IANASA but 2,000 people, mostly students - hardly seems a worthwhile sample when trying to describe a population base of 290 million people
Margin of error
Free XBox, PS2
It's deeper.
Here's a little something I encountered a few months back. Just for comparison: my post, and the response. It's the same joke, but only one gets moderated funny (+5 at that).
I wasn't surprised, though since I understand that lots of people here are pro-*NIX. For me, there's the bias.
Also, I wouldn't have been surprised if my post was modded DOWN as offtopic (since it's not *NIX)!
This is not my sig.
IANASA but 2,000 people, mostly students hardly seems a worthwhile sample when trying to describe a population base of 290 million people.
Actually, you'd be surprised. You don't need a large sample size to run an accurate poll. Look at Gallop and Zogby polls covering elections for an example of this. A poll can be done using a sample size of only a few hundred, yet it will fairly accurately reflect the real-world results.
This is, of course, assuming that the poll is done as scientifically as it should be.
Your comment "It's a bit of a pain to get news from a wide variety of sources...." really hits home. I hate fumbling around the internet, jumping from site to site, looking for info. I prefer sites that offer a wide spectrum of choices, something for everyone, and will take you whereever you want to go with a single click. One such site is Refdesk. I found it a while back when I read that it's Colin Powell's favorite site. I couldn't resist the temptation to check it out. I'm glad I did.