The Finnish business landscape is highly monopolistic and duopolistic, and every new thing consolidates into such much sooner than later. The duopolies, when they're not fighting, often collaborate with one another behind the scenes on a broad range of issues, including making it virtually impossible for new competitors to enter the market.

There is very little doubt in my mind that this "traffic plan", if realised, would turn into the same sort of price-fixing duopoly designed to extract the maximum amount of disposable income from the maximum amount of people in order to buy sailboats and coastal islands for the board of directors.

I live in Helsinki. I can attest that the popularity of driving one's own car is only increasing, not decreasing in the least. All you need to do is drive on Ring 1 or go to any supermarket to witness this phenomena. Additionally, petrol prices have remained almost unchanged in Finland for nearly two years now (after several years of extreme hikes) - and it's cheaper and easier to find a parking spot in Helsinki than it is, for example, in Tampere.

If that's the case, then why do I need to circle the parking lot looking for a spot every time I go to the supermarkets? Only single people can get by doing their food shopping with a backpack. I need to go shopping two or three times a week because it all won't fit inside of our Honda Civic.

This story has been circulating around the internet, mostly on the treehugging sites, for several months already. Funny that I live in Helsinki and never once heard of this nonsense from any local media. They've also been working on a train from the city center to the airport - for over 15 years. No signs of that track yet. They've also been working on the Länsimetro (west Helsinki metro) for over 15 years. No signs of that yet, either. They've also been trying to ban smoking in Finland, as in entirely, but it's only served to increase smoking (despite what the numbers say, I see it). Bottom line: Finnish government will not give up their car tax revenues and Helsinki residents will not give up their cars.

They had the same system in downtown Frankfurt already 15 years ago. I know because I used it.

The statistics are only referring to the normal police, not the intelligence services. In the USA, the intelligence services tap 100% of the people. In the USA, the police don't even need a warrant to do a "wiretap" so there is no oversight. In the USA, county police departments routinely monitor the positions of people on probation via warrantless cellphone tracking.

Amsterdam is to global intelligence agencies what Las Vegas is to gamblers - they all go there at least once and many of them maintain a constant presence there. Amsterdam is the global exchange for the drug, money laundering, prostitution and human trafficking market. Intelligence services around the world fund their covert activities via the illegal business deals they carry out in Amsterdam.

Amsterdam has always been a trading city. The Dutch police keep a pretty close watch on things but they are largely unintrusive. If a tourist is being harassed, though, a burly plainclothes policeman will appear almost out of thin air to handle the situation.

If you truly believe that, then you also have no clue.

If you think that a person who has taken an introductory course can subnet a large office network, segregate and switch it with vlans, route it all together, and get dhcp and tftp working reliably over all that, then you are sadly mistaken. In fact, you are probably an IT manager.