This has happened before. Copyright infringement trolling is a very lucrative business in Germany. There have been cases of lawyers sending out thousands of letters demanding payments of over a thousand euros, of which about 75% consisted in legal fees. At the end virtually noboby was taken to court for this, but if only 10% of the recipients pays up (I'm guessing the number was higher though) it already means a very high ROI for simply doing a mass-mailing.

It's also very lucrative for VPN providers, as their market in Germany is constantly increasing.

Er... I don't see Qatar asking Israel for any help... nor Israel granting it

I'm surprised no one has suggested it yet...

In Spain we used to say SEAT = "Siempre Estaras Apretando Tornillos" (you'll spend your time tightening screws). Anyway, that was before VW took over (they're pretty decent now).

I live in Germany and I can only say good things about the health care system. True, taxes are high but you do get something in exchange and salaries are high enough too so you have a good paycheck at the end of the month.

If I wanted I could switch to private healthcare and step out of the public system for about 300 euros a month; I doubt that will cost you less in the states.

I remember taking bunches of old DD 3.5'' floppies and drilling a hole on the lower left side in order to later format them as HD (1.44 MB). Of course many of them were destroyed or ended up with lots of defective sectors in the process.

Aaaaah, the good old days!

Gengo?

I have done a few jobs for them too; some of the topics are really quite interesting (contents of self-help websites, quite a few pages from ehow.com, caribbean resort guides, etc).

I don't think you would have any major problems to work in India being a US citizen, any more than viceversa. The only question is if you would be willing to work for an Indian salary. I think that is the reason why the migration flow is pretty much unidirectional.

What you said about Apple and lawsuits just reminded me of something that happened to a (small) company I worked for a few years ago.

This company was called "XXXXMAC", a name which it had since 1989, which it received because one of the founders was called Macario. Well, this didn't stop Apple from sueing them for a large amount of money just because the name of the company contained the word "MAC".

Eventually the company won the lawsuit and Apple had to reimburse the legal costs, but it did suppose an enormous pain in the ass for such a small company. I bet many others would have simply folded and changed the name just to avoid fighting against Apple.

The care you get isn't that much worse. I live in Germany and I have never had to wait more than a few days for any specialist appointment.

True, in some countries public health care isn't as efficient as here, but at least people who normally would not be able to afford that care can also get checked and/or treated. And people like you who have a decent salary and don't want to wait can always purchase a complimentary private health plan to speed things up and have more comfort.

And why does he have the exclusive responsibility of providing for the family (in this case only for her since they had no children)? Did it occur to the bitch to actually WORK to compensate for the money he wasn't making any more? Yes, she IS a greedy whore. Now I only hope that the rich guy will dump her in a few years for an even younger girl leaving her with nothing.

It is pretty crappy, I know, but is it better anywhere else in the world (like US for example)?

Yes, that's why Switzerland (the only real direct democracy in the world) is suffering so much from poverty, unemployment, corruption, etc Oh... WAIT!

I recently had to get rid of a really old iron bathtub in an appartment I bought and had redone. The flat is on a third floor without an elevator so it was a real problem to get it out to the street as I couldn't carry it alone.

Finally, one day while I was trashing some other junk a gypsy came to me and asked me if I had anything metallic to throw away. I told him that if he was able to get the bathtub out of the building I would give him some other old stuff too as a bonus. Needless to say, 5 minutes later he showed up with a buddy and together they carried the thing out.

I'm sure they must have made a few bucks selling it as scrap by the weight

True, 90% of politicians give a bad reputation to the other 10%