Or those who are vegetarian for health reasons..

In Australia they don't even both to call it that on the button, my falcon (4.0L V6) has a picture of a wheel doing a burnout for the traction control disable button!

One of the biggest benefits of torrents is that the fake crap gets weeded out quickly and the real torrents rise to the top with a high number of seeders. So it doesn't matter if its fake because it dies off quicker, than normal as people stop uploading it.

Engineering is not a low paying profession. It is only low paying if you are not good at your job and never advance in your career. There are quite a few people i see who go into engineering with no passion and hence pay little attention to details (which is the key to a good engineer). They fail to garner respect from their peers and hence don't make any career progression, and get stuck in their decent paying (but not mind blowing) job.

Really what most of these articles are about is that there is a decline in manufacturing in the US. What i have noticed specifically to the sector that i work in (High Voltage DC Power). Most power authorities request a certain percentage of the project be manufactured in country (e.g. we manufacture thyristors, and transformers in Brazil for the local market) So jobs are not being lost so much as redistributed across the globe.

I get it regularly at my work, some old bloke will complain as if these markets are stealing "our" jobs. What he is failing to see is that this is just the next development. Its not a race to the bottom, its a race to equalise, and people have only realised in the last 15 years that the US won't be top dog forever and has to accept that it has equals.

The upside i have found these days is that i will attend an event with my mates and everyone takes maybe 10-15 shots. Then me and my mates will swap our photos at the end. So for the 10-15 minutes we spent taking photos during the night we all get an entire collection of photos of the event lived at different angles. Its quite nice to then invite everyone around for Sunday breakfast a few months later and go through all the photos from all the events we attended together.

In the end gadgets are just tools, and it is nice to have the best tools for the job. I do understand what you are implying but i think most people actually use gadgets simply as a tool not as a hobby in itself.

Exactly, i have some cousins that run a farm outside a small country town. They all attend church every Sunday which is basically 1 hour of singing followed by 2 hours of cakes and coffee and catching up on all the gossip. I imagine well into the past that it would have been pretty much the only major social activity for the week, especially during the winter months in most northern hemisphere climates. I've never attended church, but I can certainly appreciate why it can appeal to people.

I would say we are quite good for customer referrals though.

Agreed, the biggest problem i see in most workplaces is lack of communication.

I don't work in IT i am an engineer but i see many IT guys who are not proactive at all and just let problems develop, they don't suggest anything to management and just take what is handed to them and manage it. Then they wonder why management doesn't know any better when they haven't been providing any feedback.

This is the equivalent of me designing a power system for a client, recognising a problem, but to just keep designing anyway as it wasn't in the specification. Any engineering doing this would be considered lazy and stupid, i don't see why IT people acting the same should think they are any different. There are far to many IT people who are not proactive, and that is why management doesn't trust them.

Its not that Americas day as a technology powerhouse is over. Its the wests monopoly on technological advancement that is over. We can't expect to have dibs on all the best technology forever, there are another 4 billion people out there that would like access to our technology also, people just need to adjust to the idea that the world is moving forward and changing and one of those big changes is that eventually technological innovation is shared.

Riding a bike through the countryside and most European cities definitely beats driving a car, trust me on this one.

Not true, i have discussed this with friends in Europe and Australia and i think most of the world who follows finance in any degree realises this.

Hey i already bring in my own stationary to work. Ever since my work started buying no name crap pens and highlighters i got sick of eating through a pen and 3 highlighters a week and post it notes that don't stick, or a hole punch that doesn't punch. So i went out and bought it all myself and keep it in a big pencil case in my bag. What makes me crazy is we are suppose to be a high tech engineering firm producing advanced products, but they skimp on the stationary! Couldn't even get them to get me book ends or a book case for my engineering notes so i currently have a massive pile of notebooks and logbooks on my desk.

Agreed, when i was working in Sydney i was pulling 55-60 hour weeks. I moved out to the UK and am doing similar work but only pulling 37 hour weeks (sometimes with overtime if its important like how it should be). The funniest thing is that my girlfriend keeps commenting how relaxed i seem to be, and we now have time to do our dance classes together and i actually can get back into my triathlon training (Instead of training in the middle of the night) and am going to enter the Barcelona iron man later in the year. I can concur with you it defiantly makes me feel like a new man!! I feel like i have time to think clearly now.

Most ships cant have weapons as they are entering the waters of many different countries each that has its own gun laws etc. My mate who use to work on oil ships off the coast of africa said they use to keep a heap of copper pipe and fire hoses left out on deck with the idea that if anything comes up alongside you drop 40kg copper pipes over the edge onto it and hit it with salt water hoses.