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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."
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.
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
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.