Date:         Thu, 4 May 1995 19:23:26 -0600 (CDT)
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         Jerry Dunham <dunham@devnull.mpd.tandem.com>
Subject:      Re: German Wants To Join!

]Date: Wed, 3 May 95 23:21:12 CDT
]From: dakhlia@wuecona.wustl.edu (Sami Dakhlia)
]
]Jerry "Atari" Dunham on Germans:
]
]>Then I must ask why Germans are such a large part of the Atari groups
]
]Many Germans own Ataris. When I lived there, I knew about as many people
]with Ataris as people with PCs. Almost no Macs. (that was over 4 years ago.)

Exactly!  (Puenktlich!)  And many of them are on MausNet, or EUnet, or
CLSnet, or....  Anyway, they're on the net and active on newsgroups
devoted to an American computer.

]>I can think of is that this group has a much more social orientation, and
]>anyone only interested in the technical aspects of bus ownership has to
]>wade through all of that to find what he wants. 
]
]Germans, too, can be social ;)

Ich weiss.  I was just groping for what might be different.

]I must concede, however, that American
]sense of humor is not easily accessible. It took *me* a couple of months
]to get it--and I've known my American wife for 10 years now.

That could be part of the problem.  If they are baffled by the American
humor in enough posts, they might be reluctant to try to participate and
appear to be not with the program.  There is less of that on the Atari
groups.

]>Any other theories?
]
]How about conditional probabilities: if a German owns a computer, then
]s/he is more likely to be hooked up to a net than an American. 

I wonder if that's really true.  I DO think the net over there is
slightly behind ours, though not by a lot.  One big difference I notice
is that I have no problem getting free net access for my machine at home
(the "hoosier" address below), while that doesn't happen in Europa that I
know of.  Either you have access where you work or go to school, or you
pay (and pay quite a bit).

]And: if a German owns a bus, then s/he probably uses it as a utility
]vehicle and doesn't find much time to play with e-mail. 

Well, I'm sure that many German buses are just used as utility vehicles
and the owners would never think of considering them as subjects for
hobbies or special interest groups, but the same could be said of Chevies
and Fords here, yet there are large and active clubs for both that draw
their membership from the tiny fraction that DO love their cars and con-
sider them as more than transportation.  I am sure that there are active
and organized bus owners in Deutschland, but for some reason they're not
on the net.

It's still curious.


-- 
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Jerry Dunham, MSE          hoosier@rider.cactus.org           (512)432-8598
Tandem Computers, Inc.        Atarian ordinaire       dunham@isd.tandem.com
Integrity Systems Division         GS650G           dunham_jerry@tandem.com

                        I'm just visiting this planet.