Or the US (watch Zeitgeist)

...it is being actively encouraged to have more female applicants for technical degrees. Every year most major tech companies host a "Girls day" where they invite soon-to-be female college students to spend a day at the company trying to convince them that the tech world can be fun and rewarding.

However, despite that, our virtually non-existent unemployment in the field and the fact that our engineers are among the best-paid in the world, technical degrees are still sausage farms. And I'm pretty sure all those guys would be more than happy to have some female presence in their classes and later in their workplace.

On the other hand, non-technical degrees (psychology, translation, arts, etc) are virtually full of chicks. I guess there is a genetic factor after all which makes every sex more prone to make one choice or the other.

Unfortunately the amount of information out there is so vast that in a very short time this reference to your name (if they actually get to know your real name) will be buried under heaps of other data and even the people who have read those references will have forgotten pretty quick.

That is the reason why people keep falling for the same old scams, even though the information is out there to prevent this happening

Except for some lucky owners of modern Lamborghinis, BMWs and some other high-end cars, who actually miss the good old roar of their powerful engines and have it piped in the cabin through the stereo system:

http://www.bmwblog.com/2011/09/23/active-sound-design-brings-the-m5-engine-sound-into-the-cabin/

In both of these countries where I have recently lived, many companies (mostly the big players like Vodafone, T-Mobile, Orange, etc) are already either blocking VoIP or forbidding its use contractually. Yoigo, a spanish subsidiary company of Telia Sonera is one of these.

However, luckily users still have the option of changing to other operators (mostly "virtual" providers who sublet the network infrastructure from the main players) who are more than happy to allow access to VoIP in order to get new customers.

I think they will all eventually have to change their attitude; in Spain the 3 big players have been losing millions of customers in the last years because of their arrogance, poor customer service, institutionallized scams, etc.

P.S. there is a way of getting around VoIP blocking for making calls to regular phones. Just use "local access numbers" (normally you can call them for free) from one of the many Betamax clones and make your calls through there.

It is Norway. There is a website (I don't know which one exactly since it's in Norwegian) where you can type in a person's name and see how much he/she earns and how much money he/she has in the bank.

So, I don't see any big scandal in this issue.

In Spain it is similar. We have to pay a fee on every kind of digital media (HDD, DVD, CD, etc) which goes to SGAE (spanish equivalent of RIAA).

The problem is, at least here, that this organization are no more than a bunch of crooks who pay no taxes (or hardly any) since they have a tremendously obscure accounting system (there have been several big corruption scandals among the heads of the corporation), and the way they distribute these profits among the artists is also very obscure and unbalanced (many artists have already broken up with them because they are hardly getting any revenues).

Apart from this, they constantly lobby the political parties (especially the socialists) to give them more and more rights and use mafioso methods to get what they want. For example, they are known for:
- breaking into weddings and other parties and sueing the performing band if they haven't paid a licensing fee (even though they have already paid for their records previously)
- demanding monthly fees from pubs, clubs and even hairdressers or taxi drivers for performing music or even playing the radio (!!) inside their business.

For these and many other reasons they have a very bad reputation inside the country, and I believe that with their arrogance and wrongdoing they are actually causing more harm than benefit to the majority of the artists.

And of course I'm not mentioning some other facts why there is a stron opposition to this fee:
- People who are using digital media to copy their own data (no music or movies or games) also have to pay the fee. It's like an implicit assumption of guilt.
- Copying is not legal in Spain if it's not for your own use (you cannot lend the copied CDs to youtr friends), so the fee doesn't give you the freedom you mention for Finland.

Well I do believe there is a big difference between being againss the Zionist regime and saying it should be "wiped off" (there could be also many interpretations for this) and sayin the WHOLE COUNTRY should be erradicated.

I don't like Israel's rulers either, and probably they would deserve being "wiped off" for all the bloodshed they are causing in Palestine, but I don't wish anything bad for the people of the country or jews in general. Will I now get the same treatment as Ahmadineyad?

While I don't like Ahmadineyad because after all he is a ruthless dictator, he never really said that Israel should be destroyed:

http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/24-media-misquotes-threat-from-irans-president/

It's just one more example of media manipulation for the generation of hatred to later justify an invasion and/or screw-up of a country.

You f***n biggot. What do you think, that their government was ELECTED?

Yes, I would maybe extend the situation to other Southern countries like Italy, Portugal or Greece, where there are also plenty of well-prepared people who are willing to go abroad for a good job.

I studied Telecommunication Engineering in Spain. It's one of the toughest degrees in the country, with an average time of just under 8 years to complete the courses (officially it's 5 years + 1 year for the Diploma Thesis).

When I started my studies, the entry requirements were pretty high. You needed to bring very good grades from high school to get accepted, and lots of students applied lured by good job perspectives. Of course, a great number of the ones who got accepted fell out in the first years because they couldn't cope or simply because they realized they didn't like what they were doing, but the ones who finished did get pretty good jobs for local standards.

However, in the last 15 years everything has turned upside down. Nowadays, an engineer barely makes more than a policeman or a regular public servant for example, funding for R&D (the thing which people are willing to do without thinking so much about the money) is being cut by every government that comes and young people simply don't see any benefit in spending so many years at University, specially when it's becoming more and more expensive to study and people have less and less money.

In the last course, an old colleague who now works as an associate professor told me that only 25% of the places offered in our course were filled, so now virtually anyone who applies gets accepted. And a great number of the engineers who study in Spanish universities emigrate to other countries (now especially to Germany) desperate to get a decent job.

I don't know it this has anything to do with what is happening in the US but I do know in other European countries the situation is similar. Right now, there are still a few good havens for engineers in Northern Europe (Germany, Holland, Scandinavian countries), but who knows what will happen in another 15 years.

I remember that when I lived in France, I wanted to get a loan for a car and the guy in the shop asked me how much money I made and how much rent I paid per month, and if I had any other fix expenses.

He later told me that the French law forbids banks to give you any loan which will make you get into a situation of paying more than 33% of your salary for loans+rent. So if you earn 3000â a month and pay 500â rent you will only get a loan which has a maximum repayment of 500â per month.

This was back in 2005. Now we can understand why France hasn't suffered the same real estate crisis as the greatest part of the rest of the world.

How much energy would be needed to lift a house for a short period of time using magnetic levitation?

At what cost could the electro magnets and the necessary batteries be installed. Would it be even feasible to store the needed energy in affordable batteries (to make it work in case of a power failure)?

Just a thought...

So you are saying that all Germans who drive at 200kmh+ on the Autobahn are inmoral people although they are perfectly abiding their law?