On Fri, Jan 21, 2005 at 08:55:53AM -0500, hlshaw wrote: > Jeff Kinz wrote: > >Currently 64.8% of those online are non-english language users. > >35.2% are english language users. Current growth trends indicate that > >this ratio, almost 2 to 1, will soon be 7 or 8 to 1. > >Stats from recent CIA publication: > >http://www.glreach.com/globstats/ > > > Being an American, you should know.....that history teaches us...."Never > believe anything coming from the CIA"!! ( that includes statistics!!) Getting the basic "quantitative facts", (like those above), right is easy and I suspect that the CIA probably does OK in this regard especially since this type of information is easily cross checked with other authoritative sources. (Especially if you happen to be near the New York Public Library, the help/info librarians there, as with most libraries are an utterly unbelievable resource. Try them sometime. Even w/the internet, they will save you oodles of time!) The problem comes when you need to interpret what the facts mean. Then, in any dysfunctional organization, pressure associated with the needs of "Those In Charge" manifests in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. This pressure is directed at causing the facts to be interpreted in a way which supports the affect they want. This affects project scheduling, budget forecasts, and of course, political assessments. If you are in an organization where budgets and schedules are regularly "padded" to insure that a group gets the time or money that it really needs, then you have encountered this situation. Now - has anyone ever NOT had this happen to them? :-) (It seems to be an automatic part of any human organization) ;-) -- Linux/Open Source: Your infrastructure belongs to you, free, forever. Idealism: "Realism applied over a longer time period" http://www.scaled.com/projects/tierone/ http://kinz.org http://www.fedoratracker.org http://www.fedorafaq.org http://www.fedoranews.org Jeff Kinz, Emergent Research, Hudson, MA.
