Slashdot Mirror
A Quarter of the EU Has Never Used the Web
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."
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.
Members of the EU are often referred to as Member States. Or Constituent Countries.
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
As a Spaniard (South and West of EU) I have to say the summary is wrong. The fine article says the South and EAST!
Anyway, Spain is a country with large rural areas, but the broadband is nearly ubiquitous.
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.
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
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.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
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.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
"State" is another word for nation or country. These were called states before the EU existed.
I think you mean secede, not "succeed"
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.
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
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.
Rethinking email
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.