No I don't believe retina scans were part of it.

I was issued a UK fiancé visa back in March and had my fingerprints taken digitally and a digital photograph as well for biometrics purposes. I suppose they measure the distance between your lips and nose and eyes and stuff. For fingerprints, the scanner might have looked at the blood vessel structure inside the fingers instead of the prints, but I can't be certain on that.

I'm glad the ID cards are gone now, mainly for privacy reasons, but if I could have used it as an EU travel document (despite my status as a foreign citizen), I would have put up with it for ease of travel.

Fly with Air Canada next time. They offer the same amenities as Lufthansa.

I know this is kind of a running joke in this thread, but they could go three ways with it.

1) Make it like San Andreas, where you had to eat/work out in order to keep your health up. A lot of people didn't like that because it was too much micromanagement, so they got rid of it in GTA4. They could add the option to pay the charge on to a cashpoint/ATM or something like that. If you didn't pay it within a certain amount of time, you'd get a fine or the cops after you.

2) Set the game in a time period before the congestion charge was introduced, so any time before 2003.

3) Not call it "London" (like Liberty City isn't called "New York") and just not include it in the game at all.

I've been in a bar where someone pepper-sprayed somebody else and the place cleared out in minutes. I'm asthmatic but it's mainly allergy induced, and I was coughing like crazy and I couldn't see because my eyes were stinging and watering like crazy. I wasn't even sprayed directly, it was just in the air. At first I didn't know what was happening until I got outside and my mouth felt like it was on fire.

Not fun for about 5-10 minutes until everything was more or less back to normal. After that, I couldn't imagine being sprayed directly in the face!

It might work if they charged the so-called beta testers an upgrade fee to the end product, so the total outlay of cash is the same or very near the same as if they had just waited and bought the game on release day. The most I would pay extra would be between $0-$5, for the privilege of playing early, but the "demo" had better be awesome. Paying anything more would be rather evil... I'm not paying full price for the finished product AFTER ALREADY HAVING PAID THEM for what amounts to beta testing.. no thanks!!!

The plus side to this is that, like traditional demos, it might be a good metric to see how popular a game will be before release day, but the difference would be that the cash would start flowing in sooner, maybe allowing for better features or something to be developed... but it's EA we're talking about, and I'm sure they'd just "invest" it in a more annoying DRM scheme or something equally stupid.

If I were to claim to be a snob, I'd have to say that I'm more of a beer snob than anything else. As such, I whole-heartedly agree about the beer vs. wine comment. However the "best beer in the world" is also entirely subjective. The only beers I've seen in a large bottle like you describe are Heineken and some Belgian beers (some of which are corked like Champagne!). To some people, that "best beer" might be Labatt Lite. I, for one, do not share the same opinion.

I'm more into the Polish beer at the moment, Tyskie in particular. Of the other Polish varieties available here, I find Zywiec to be too heavy and filling, Lezajsk is alright and Zubr is way too malty for my taste. My previous favourites have been German beers (lived there 2 years) but the selection of German beer is very limited here and it all tastes like it's been sitting on the shelf for 6 months, compared to what it tasted like over there.

It did take some time to adjust my palette from the relatively flavourless swill available here in North America to the more intensely flavoured, hoppy stuff available over there, but I'm enlightened now and will never go back. These days I rarely ever drink more than 2-3 beers in a week so I want to enjoy the taste as much as possible. At $4.25 (compared to $3.50 for a regular sized domestic beer) from the bar we frequent, an ice cold, half litre, Polish beer is exactly what the doctor ordered.

At the end of the day, it comes down to what you can afford. A few years ago, I would never have paid that much for a beer because I couldn't afford to. Cost vs. quality is always an issue in nearly every purchase we make. We love car analogies here, so in brand new cars, the manufacturers have been really focusing on the quality of their interiors. Yeah, the interior in a Mercedes is going to be as good as it gets, but a decently equipped VW is still very nice, comfortable and full of nifty features, with a significant cost savings. Sure you might not get the voice activated back massage or the heated steering wheel and shifter knob, but are those things ALONE really worth the extra 30 grand? Sames goes for buying the latest and greatest iteration of the i7 vs. looking at the prices and finding the best price point for your budget. There's always 1-3 CPUs right at the top of the price ladder and then #4 which is like 1/2-1/4 the price of the top end. That's the one most people, including myself, will buy.

He must have learned how to do it from Strongbad!

My initial thoughts were "Why on earth would you use the engine from an LTD?"

My ambiguous Wikipedia search revealed that you were in fact referring to a Stirling engine (aka. a low temperature difference engine).

Am I right in guessing that you meant slavery? Based on the word, I'd say that you're French, or at the very least a speaker of a Romantic language.

13 years of almost forgotten French immersion isn't all lost!

I'm no lawyer, nor do I play one on TV, but I think the principle of law you're thinking of refers to trademark issues, not copyright. I believe you can nail someone any time for copyright infringement, even way after the fact (there might be a statute of limitations though), but if you let a trademark violation slide, you're unable to defend it later on, i.e. you have to act as soon as you're aware of it or you could potentially lose it.

In my car, a 2002 VW Jetta TDI, there is no butterfly. Engine RPM is regulated by fuel flow, which is regulated by the go pedal electronically. The only valves in the air intake system at all (aside from the intake valves in the cylinder head) are the anti-shudder valve which prevents shudder by immediately cutting off air flow when you turn off the engine, and the EGR valve. The older mechanical diesels VW made were cable operated, but every TDI since 1999.5 in North America (and earlier in Europe) has been drive by wire AFAIK. The gas motors still used mechanical linkage for a while, but I'm not so sure about that for the newer models as I've got no experience with them.

I've been driving this car since brand new and only ONE time did I ever experience anything remotely resembling unintended acceleration. On the last leg of my trip back home this weekend (total of about 3000km) I was close to running out of fuel and had it on cruise at about 85km/h to for sure make it to the next gas station (it was like 4am and nothing was open) and we went through a big dip in the road. As the car settled down it accelerated for a fraction of a second, just a tiny blip, but I noticed it and so did my buddy. It's possible that the front tires were off the ground momentarily, but I'll never know for sure what exactly took place. I'm not worried about it though.

I feel safe with drive by wire in my own car. Replacement of the go pedal assembly due to failure isn't entirely unheard of if you read the forums. It wears out just like anything else. Actually, some tuning packages change the ECU mappings of the go pedal to presumably make it more sensitive.

I was hinting at pot without saying it outright, and I did also say that plants *PROBABLY* won't kill you. Of course there are hundreds of things you can eat which grow right in your back yard that are poisonous. I'm not a retard. We are, however, talking about drugs. Who buys rhubarb leaves from their dealer? Get real you guys..

No.

It's a 3 passenger car. You can hook two 3 passenger cars together to make a 6 passenger car...

I know this is Slashdot and RTFA is usually verboten, but has RTFS become that difficult?

Sucks to be the guy who lives alone I guess...

No pills, no powders, no needles, but if it's still in plant form when you buy it, it's likely not going to kill you.