Birthday input and privacy question

Hi,
I would like to require member to fill in their birthday. And I tried to make the account field using date.
But it's a real pain to use the calendar to navigate to your own birthday, for some1 who was born in 1966 or so, you have to click many times on the calendar.
Is there anyway to make the date a drop down? It would be more convenient.
Also can I change the order of the date account field, from yy-mm-dd to dd-mm-yy
And is it possible to make some field has privacy option? For example birthday, phone number, I want member to fill in, but they can have the option to public those info or not. Just like in Vbulletin, when you look at member profile or seller info.

Thank you