Probably not going to happen because of this. Sony doesn't want you to be able to play the games you already bought. Then again, Microsoft doesn't really want you to either, but they're behind in the game, so their hand was forced. Also, backward compatibility only supports a handful of games. I typically don't buy a console until 3-4 years after it's out, then I can get GOTY editions of games for $30 instead of new "patched out of the box" games for $60.

Sony wants you to buy it again. The number of re-releases this generation is staggering - there's plenty of PS3 games being remade for PS4, a few Xbox360 games remade for Xbone (a few, not as many as Sony it seems).

As for Microsoft? They're behind, yes, but not hugely behind. And not far enough to be desperate - when you're talking about both shipping tens of millions already, you're not "in trouble". Plus, Microsoft found the new price point where sales have picked up and even exceeded PS4 sales.

All we can say is life is good when both are actually competing with each other.

(By any measure, the Xbone is a success by itself. Just when you compare it against the PS4, it's not as successful).

And you can bet Sony is probably trying hard to get PS3 backwards compatibility going because Microsoft's announced it, and Sony's game schedule is starting to look skimpy because Sony's E3 presentation was more about games "in the future", while Microsoft's was "this year or next".

You're forgetting about focus groups, which is where most politician's views/presentations are actually crafted. Polls are used as feedback for "how are we doing with 20 to 30 year-old Latino transvestites who self-identify as Republicans" to identify where (demographically) more advertising money needs to be spent.

You know, political parties have the campaigning down pat. They don't rely on public polls for their information and policy positions. They have, through decades of research and analysis, figured out who generally votes for them, and who is in their target demographic they need to convince.

Using that local knowledge Is what gets them ahead - not some political poll run by calling up a bunch of people who aren't controlled.

For example - some political parties ignore public polls altogether because the weighting of the public is skewed. If your party skews towards the middle age and older folks, then issues that affect young people are not ones that concern you. And if the poll was done at the local university? Doesn't matter if you scored only 8% and your opponent 90%. If you know that of that group of people, only 10% actually vote, you ignore them. The time and money can be better spent getting at the 30% undecided in the group that do vote. (See: Elections in Canada where the "popular vote" was nowhere near the actual vote - often because the polls used inaccurate weightings and other errors.)

Political parties know their demographics, they know who votes for them, who's likely to vote for them, and who are the people who actually get out and vote.

So in the free trial to promote the service Apple is supposed to pick up all the costs. It seems unfair since the artists since the artists are receiving some benefit of exposure during the trial too. I think it would be fair to have some sort of reduced fees during the trial period to recognize the fact that Apple still has expenses related to providing the service.

I don't like the argument the artists are using that since Apple is using the free period to promote Apple's service then Apple should pay all of the artists fees. There are lots of ways that the artists are getting promoted yet they still expect to get paid for it. How come they never have to make a sacrifice for the sake of promotion? It's always someone else that needs to make the sacrifice and never themselves. Yes, I can understand that there are many struggling artists out there but the ones that are complaining the loudest are those that have the most money. Taylor Swift could easily make do without three month of royalties from streaming from Apples service but she's the one that screamed the loudest. H

Well, that's how the internet and contracts work these days - if you don't like it, make a big stink in public and companies will go rushing to fix it. Customer service by the noisiest and most demanding.

Anyhow, Apple is going to pay per stream, so it's likely they'll give less play to the more expensive artists and more play to the cheaper ones.

And you can bet that 71.5% or 73% is now going to vanish back to industry standard 70%. I don't know how that extra 1.5/3% would have worked out for artists - how long would a subscriber have to be subscribed before that extra money makes a difference, but I assume others have done the calculation.

And don't feel too sorry for Apple - you can bet they're going to use this to pressure those rates downwards - we'll give you more per stream during those 3 months if you give us 69.9%...

No, not everything where men currently dominate. Not mining, not oil rig work, not farming, not anything involving manual or dangerous labour.

Only fields where there's lots of money and\or social status

Actually, women are making inroads into those manual dangerous jobs. Mining, construction, oil rigs. You know they actually DO pay a lot of money! (Think 6 figures, with less than a high school education - those jobs are the last high paying unskilled labour jobs out there).

And people do believe in its growth - enough so that one woman was fed up with the safety gear and started her own company to create a line of female-oriented work wear. You know, like safety coveralls and the like. No, it's not that the stuff fit improperly (well, there were some issues, but nothing that couldn't be worked around), but something a bit more... conventional. Basically if a woman had to use the facilities, it meant they had to doff all their gear first.

And there are plenty of other occupations, like pilots, where there are dedicated groups trying to improve the 5% female pilot ratio. (It's nothing to do with interest because the ratio of girls interested is quite high).

There are biological differences, yes (see working wear for women), but that doesn't mean they aren't rapidly entering those occupations. And hell, girls wanting to be like boys? When I was growing up, they got to be known as tomboys. Not every girl wanted to play with Barbie - plenty wanted to play with cars, transformers, gi joes, and other "boys toys".

Pretty much this.

I had ordered something over the internet from a company I had previously turned some trade with , and this latest transaction initiated a request for some photo ID to go with the bank card. Or. You can pay with Paypal.

I believe it's statistically safer to use Umbrella Corporations like Amazon and Paypal, than to leave too much info in too many different hands.

This happened to me too - I was about to comply and send off the request when I realized at the last minute that not only was the information "in the clear", but there was no protection of that information at all. I mean, what's the point of SSL and all that when you're just going to email that information in the clear?

Plus, well, most cardholder agreements will shift the liability to you if you intentionally send copies of your card around.

For me, I cancelled the order. I don't know why I didn't just use Paypal in the first place, but no biggie. They lost out anyhow because the first time, they sent me a 10% off coupon. I used that the replacement order so I saved 10% off by not screwing around with companies that may have honest intentions, but go about it the wrong way.

I wonder what happens if they try to do it with Paypal... that could lead to some messy consequences if they held onto the money and refused to ship.

A word of warning for everybody: Neither the new R9 3xx series GPUs nor the Fiji (Fury) parts support HDMI 2.0. That means that you will not be able to output 4k60 pictures to your brand new 4k TV. That's fairly silly for a graphics card that is advertised as making 4k gaming a reality.

Are you sure? Because you only need 10.2Gbps for HDMI 2.0, which is the same bandwidth as HDMI 1.4. It's how current HDMI 2.0 devices support 4k60 right now.

The video card might now have a proper 18Gbps HDMI port, which will also give you 4k60.

Right now, everyone cheats - 4k60 on 10.2Gbps is done using 4:2:0 - practically all 4K60 ready devices on the market today do it. Though full 18Gbps HDMI devices are finally starting to come out (which will give you 4k60 at 4:4:4), but still not common.

Anyhow, I don't think it matters. Work gave me a 4K monitor and I'm doing 4K60 on it with a 7770HD card. Using DisplayPort. Of course I'm not gaming on it, but having all those pixels is nice.

That slashdot didn't support unicode

It does. It's actually fully Unicode-compliant. It's just on the input and recently (as of a couple of years ago) the output side passes through a Unicode whitelist.

You see a Unicode codepoint is not necessarily a character.. It can be a character modifier. So you can be handling a string containing multiple codepoints, and yet on screen it only resolves to one character. Some of these include right-to-left overrides (which alter the flow of text on the screen so you can write a string and the display agent will reverse it). There are other modifiers that include flourishes, and Unicode 8 adds "skin type modifiers" as well for emoji. As in, if you display a face, the font should use a "non-human shading" (Apple chose a Simpsons-like yellow, Microsoft chose a pale zombie-ish hue). But with the addition of a skintone/diversity modifier, when combined with the emoji codepoint, can give you a variety of skin tones.

And it's also what screwed up iOS - the string you send is full of modifiers which makes it extremely hard to decide where to break the line. (Arabic is one where there are lots of modifiers because a character can appear differently based on the characters that appear before and after it).

And what does this have to do with /.? Easy - a lot of commenters abused the modifiers to screw with the website. And unless you know how to handle Unicode, it's really hard to properly reset the parser state. /. used to be able to display the screwed up the comments - if you Google for the oddball string n"5:erocS" it would show it (because Google ignores modifiers). If you wonder, that's the string "Score:5" as commenters use to fake-moderate their posts. But since /. strips unicode on display now, you get to see the messed up post as it was typed out

To anyone. Certainly not to anyone who's got such varied motives as Apple.

I'm pretty sure they can't - as in if Apple bought them Google would shut it down.

DuckDuckGo is just using Google in the end, after all. And I'm sure Google's agreements with Apple would preclude Apple from starting up a similar service using Google's search results. (Remember, Google still pays Apple a few billion dollars to be the default search engine).

Anyhow, doesn't iOS offer DDG as a search engine option besides Google and Yahoo/Bing?

In short, give up on the idea of there *ever* being a "They've got everything" music site. Anyone who puts up a site of any kind will only have agreements with a subset of publishers. That's just a fact of life.

Especially after the iTunes Music Store debacle that nearly killed the labels.

Basically the music industry was so happy with iTunes that they kept giving it more and more, and then they realized that they were no longer in control - they were Apple's bitch, and Apple knew that, for they kept strongarming the music labels into 99 cent downloads always.

With the iPod being the dominant player, it meant any other DRM store was out of the picture. The only break in Apple's stronghold over them was to offer Amazon the ability to sell DRM-free music, which was the only chink in Apple's armor and the only way Amazon could sell music for iPods.

And with that, Apple wanted to also negotiate DRM-free music, and they industry handed Apple their demands including flexible pricing ($1.29 per track) and other deals Apple had to agree to.

So no, the music industry will never let one music service control them again - they will deliberately make it so no one has everything.

The movie industry learned the same lessons, which is why there will never be a store with it all, either.

Sony probably backed it to give them another edge over the Xbox One.

Not really - FF7 is coming to Xbone and PC as well. And FF7 plain old is coming straight to iOS this year. The FF7 remake for PS4/Xbone/PC? Unnannounced release date.

In fact, the big problem with Sony's E3 announcements Is they're for games so far in the future - even Microsoft's ones are for games to be released in 2015 and 2016 and potentially 2017 at the latest.

I'm suspecting the PS4 grew too big too fast and now Sony's in a bit of a bind because they don't have any more games coming out in the near future - at least big splashy titles. I mean, look at the upcoming PS4 lineup and you see remake after remake - not sequels, remakes. God of War 3, Uncharted 1-3, and a few other games - all of which existed already on previous systems.

Granted, Sony isn't exclusively guilty, even Microsoft did it with the Master Chief collection and several others. But other than that, they didn't seem to announce remakes.

But I wouldn't blame Sony for Square's remakes - those are pure profit. Last year, Squeenix released FFX/X-2 for PS3 and Vita, and this year they released it again for PS4. Then there are plenty of them for iOS as well, all priced extremely high for mobile apps ($15+). And I'm sure the money was good - after Apple threatened to remove a few of the games because it broke under iOS8 (worked on iOS7, crashed on iOS8 and many people were angry that Square was basically saying "don't update your OS - we're not fixing it" that they complained to Apple, and I'm sure Apple threatened removal. A week later, new versions appeared that worked).

How do they verify you're not hijacking a Web site? What if you block HTTPS (there's no https server!) and submit CSR, and it tries to verify a cookie on the associated HTTP site, which you're MITM and so replace by inserting your cookie?

Easy. Let's Encrypt doesn't give you a certificate (at least not easily). What you need to do is to run a daemon on your server. That daemon will connect to Let's Encrypt to request the certificate, and on the server end, they verify the IP the daemon is connecting from matches that of your domain (e.g., if you want www.example.com, the daemon will connect form your http server IP, and the Let's Encrypt server will check that the daemon IP is the same as www.example.com before issuing you a certificate).

From then, if the daemon supports your http server (Apache, Nginx), it will automatically install the certificate and configure your server (or it can be a front end service listening on 443 proxying your server). If it's not supported, then it'll give you a certificate you install manually.

Since the whole process is automated, it very well could issue you only 1 month long certificates since the daemon is supposed to automatically fetch and renew the certificate.

I'd post one, but... most small shop car mechanics are independent contractors. They own their own tools (like Uber drivers own their own cars), they carry their own insurance (like Uber drivers carry their own insurance), they set their own hours (like Uber drivers set their own hours), they can decline a specific job (like Uber drivers can decline a specific job), they can work for other shops (like Uber drivers can work for other car services or elsewhere), and they have a written contract (like Uber drivers have a written contract).

And contractors need to take special precautions as well. Uber basically needs to work out a fixed term contract, then kick the driver off Uber for some time - it must be clearly obvious they are contractors and not employees, and are completely free to pursue other jobs in the meantime.

It's on a per-driver basis, yes, so Uber needs to make sure drivers know they cannot work for Uber for more than X months without taking time off, or finding alternate work (e.g., for Lyft) because they need to show independence from Uber.

This can mean that an Uber driver will sign in to both Uber and Lyft and choose jobs from either - while they are logged into Uber, they cannot be exclusively on "uber-only time" (since Uber doesn't consider them to be working for Uber yet).

As for taxis - remember that taxis often have limitations. E.g., you must be able to offer accessible service - if you don't, then you must arrange for accessible service. So if you're a taxi and a handicapped person hails you, and you're not accessible-equipped, the legislation often says said driver must not only hail an appropriate cab, but ALSO STAY WITH THE FARE until picked up. No "oh I didn't know you were handicapped, see ya sucker" - the driver is forced to stay with the fare until an appropriate ride is available. Plus a whole pile of other anti-discrimination and other laws.

I wouldn't be remotely shocked if the businesses that didn't receive payments still find it reasonable to ascribe late penalties to their customers and say "Hey, it wasn't our fault your payments were late".

You're right, and the question is - why should they? I mean, wouldn't you be pissed off if your workplace couldn't pay you on time because of this? It was their bank being the problem, but your creditors don't care that you didn't get paid today. Etc. etc.

And while credit cards not working or ATMs and such for 3 days may not be a "big issue", for some people, it really is a huge issue. It can mean basically starving if they can't get the money for food that day, or maybe a preauthorized payment suddenly doesn't go through on their credit card.

In the lower rungs of society, bank problems can really be huge issues.

Drones put an extra layer of abstraction between the pilot and murdering they are doing, hence the term "bug splat". It's just an image on a screen, like you see on TV. The high number of civilian casualties attributed to drone strikes is thought to be partially due to this disconnect, where as a pilot sitting in the aircraft in the actual country and seeing live human beings with his own eyes (maybe at the AF base, if not from the air) seems to be more restrained.

More correctly, there's a physicality to being there and experiencing it "live". I mean, people go to concerts, despite being able to just watch a YouTube clip of the same. They go to sporting events with all the overpriced tickets and all that, when they could just save the time and money by watching it on their 60" flat screen TV.

There's a difference to "being there" versus "watching it on TV" The fighter pilot is "there" (even from those isolated away from the action - think stealth bombers and such which base in the US, and fly day-long missions to theatre, drop the bombs, then fly back to the US), while the drone pilot is like the guy watching football on TV.

The other thing is, well, drone pilots are often recruited from the gaming population because well, flying a drone is a lot like playing a video game. The controller might be more advanced (as in military drones, though the lighter weight drones often use standard PlayStation or Xbox controllers). I mean, we argue games like Call of Duty and all that are all fake - you're just killing images on a screen and numbers in some computer. Well a drone is the same - except the people you're potentially killing aren't just pixels on a screen, but real humans. (Another reason why they like gamers - most are able to think that everything on screen is fake and it's not real - when you're killing, dehumanizing the enemy is a very powerful tool that lets a soldier be able to pull the trigger. Likening the pixels generated by Call of Duty or Battlefield to the pixels you see on the drone video monitor makes it much easier.

Watch some videos on the drones sometimes - you'll see it referred to video games a lot. There's a very good reason for that - they want it to be like a video game - you're not killing people, you're killing pixels.

does 'certified for iDevice' even matter anymore

It does if you want access to specs.

You can reverse-engineer a connector, a case, etc., quite easily, and many people did with the Lightning connector.

However, if you're a case manufacturer, and you want day-1 sales of your product, you sign up for the program and Apple will send you under an NDA engineering drawings so you can base your designs off them, manufacture your product, package it up and ship it to Apple to sell in stores on day 1 of product launch. Apple even has solid aluminum mockups so you can test your product's mechanicals against a representative sample.

And for complex products, like say a dock, you need entry in the program to buy the special parts that let you make your dock - authentication chips, protocols, etc.

And finally, well, if you want your product sold at Apple stores where people are not only going to be buying Apple's products, but yours will be on the shelf for the user to pick from, you need to be a part of the program.

Anyhow, didn't Apple have this problem with Bose at one time too - Bose was suing Beats as well? It resulted in Apple temporarily removing all of Bose's products of shelves, then Apple and Bose came to a settlement and they're back.