Slashdot Mirror
Magazine Eyeballs Its Subscribers
No_Weak_Heart writes "Talk about 'know your customers' -- the NY Times has an interesting article about Reason Magazine's upcoming June issue. Each of the print magazine's 40,000 subscribers will receive a copy of the mag with their name and a satellite photo of their home on the cover!" Although described as a "cover stunt", the magazine's editor "said that the parlor trick could have profound implications as database and printing capabilities grow."
If they sent it directly to your gmail account?
This is your rights online? I guess it must be a slow newsday. It might be useful for showing John Q. Public exactly how powerful these systems have become but somehow I doubt that will happen. The article even states this:
On the flipside I suppose this justifies my paranoia in continuing to use a P.O. Box for all my mail. And to think I only got the P.O. Box because I was worried about my neighbors stealing my mail. I wonder if my copy would have the Post Office circled?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
BFD. I routinely get the coordinates for addresses (usually geocaches but sometimes business addressses and residences) and make both standard Mapquest maps and aerial/topo maps of the location. Terraserver is quick and easy to use if you don't have access to some of the scripts out there for this...
How does this have far reaching implications? The information is freely and easily accessible. As databases grow? The information is out there now... It's not exactly as if magazines selling your name/address to others is a new/novel idea. It's been going on for ages.
Perhaps if they had your name and your CURRENT, exact, location on file I would be more concerned...
Why didn't the Slashdot summary text warn me that a free registration is needed to read this New York times article? I had no idea this would be required.
It is a totally legit fear. But they make our lives unbelievably easier as well, in terms of commercial transactions, credit, you name it [...] Rodger Cosgrove, president of Entremedia, a direct marketing firm and a member of Reason's board, assisted in coming up with a program that allows the subscriber list to be integrated with satellite photographs.
Direct Marketers thinking this is a good idea, nice one. Conveniently enough, they are *gasp* direct marketers!
Give me a break. PR Stunt to get on the front page of slashdot maybe. This is only a good idea for those who plague humanity with the title of marketer.
Of course the data itself is not new and there is nothing controversial about this per se. The real issue is in the visual representation of your geographic data which demonstrates to you specifically that your home location is *known*. Of course the magazine has always *known* where you live because they mail the periodical to your house. But for some reason, showing folks information in a graphical or visual format makes it more real. Therefore, I would not say this is a gimmick, but that it would enforce the idea to those who may not think as much in their daily lives the issues of privacy and information customization and product dissemination to consumers.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Putting 40,000 Readers, One by One, on a Cover DAVID CARR
Published: April 5, 2004
When the 40,000 subscribers to Reason, the monthly libertarian magazine, receive a copy of the June issue, they will see on the cover a satellite photo of a neighborhood - their own neighborhood. And their house will be graphically circled.
On one level, the project, sort of the ultimate in customized publishing, is unsurprising: of course a magazine knows where its subscribers live. But it is still a remarkable demonstration of the growing number of ways databases can be harnessed. Apart from the cover image, several advertisements are customized to reflect the recipient's particulars.
Nick Gillespie, editor in chief of Reason, said the magazine, with an editorial mission of "Free Minds, Free Markets,'' used the stunt to illustrate the cover article about the power and importance of databases.
"Our story is man bites dog," Mr. Gillespie said. "Everybody, including our magazine, has been harping on the erosion of privacy and the fears of a database nation. It is a totally legit fear. But they make our lives unbelievably easier as well, in terms of commercial transactions, credit, you name it."
Rodger Cosgrove, president of Entremedia, a direct marketing firm and a member of Reason's board, assisted in coming up with a program that allows the subscriber list to be integrated with satellite photographs. He also worked with Xeikon, the manufacturer of the printer that made the endless customization possible.
"They were interested in showing what this technology could do," he said, "and we were interested in demonstrating the power of databases to customize information."
The cover article, written by Declan McCullagh, suggests that while databases can lead to breaches in privacy, it allows Dell to provide instant credit to computer buyers, grocery stores to stock goods that their customers want, and mortgage lenders to keep their rates down.
"It's obvious that databases provide enormous benefits to modern life," said Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "We could no more operate without computer databases than we could without electricity."
"That doesn't mean that there aren't still some serious debates to have about government databases," he added, "including the monitoring of the general American public under John Poindexter's Total Information Awareness program and the passenger profiling that has gone on."
In some respects, Reason's cover stunt is less Big Brother than one more demonstration that micromarketing is here to stay. "My son gets sports catalogs where his name is imprinted on the jerseys that are on the cover," Mr. Rotenberg said. "He thinks that's very cool."
In his editor's note describing the magazine's database package, Mr. Gillispie left open three spots - commuting time, educational attainment and percentage of children living with grandparents - so he could adapt his message to individual readers. Mr. Gillespie said that the parlor trick could have profound implications as database and printing capabilities grow.
"What if you received a magazine that only had stories and ads that you were interested in and pertained to you?" he asked. "That would be a magazine that everyone would want to read." -DAVID CARR
What cover will they put on newstands? The home of the person who buys the magazine? That would be impressive.
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
The magazine's trick here really isn't that hard... in that for every subscriber they of course have an address, and adresseses can be converted to geographic coordinates using the same technology MapQuest has had for years. It's just a matter of getting a satellite photo that shows that coordinate as the center point, and applying the circling to the image. After that, it's just a typical variable printing job.
Modern printing technologies make it very easy for a 40,000-subscriber magazine to send out a different cover to each and every subscriber. It's just a matter of doing a 40,000 page run of each of the "customized" sets of pages with the image database available, and then the common pages can be wrapped around after printing them the typical way. Here's the homepage for VIPP, Xerox's technology for doign such "variable data" printing jobs on its industrial class printing products.
You mean when I subscribe to a magazine they know where I live????
So that's why the NYT wants us to register! But I'm way ahead of them... the way I've polished my tin foil hat lately all they'll pick up from my location is their own flash! Hah!
... whaddayamean satellites don't use flash photography..?
"What if you received a magazine that only had stories and ads that you were interested in and pertained to you?"
They already have this. It's called the internet.
Personally, the fact that this is cheap enough to be feasible for a print medium is far more impressive to me than the fact that it is technically possible.
The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer. - Albert Einstein
Seems something like this happened not so long ago in California and somebody got upset.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
...the satellite image be taken? I want to do some nude sunbathing in the backyard when it happens.
Next, we'll send you free family portraits you never posed for! What a magazine, huh?!
What if I live underground like the Mole People?
I am defenseless. Use your button. Mod me down with all of your hatred.
I think the point is some people don't think about/realize that the ability to integrate information like that is so easy.
Plus its pretty damn cool they can demand print the magazine covers.
Obviously its a stunt, though... anyone who subscribes to a libertarian magazine probably understands those issues anyway... its a rallying call for them.
they will see on the cover a satellite photo of a neighborhood - their own neighborhood. And their house will be graphically circled.
Hopefully some of the subscribers live in neighborhoods with a lot of rooftop pools--and pool parties.
The coolest voice ever.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world > > Those who understand binary and those who don't
Neat!
Now all I need is my cardboard mooning man cut out to put in my window. Hoo ha!
This signature has Super Cow Powers
My mailing address is a PO Box. Heh. Go get'em, Reason.
Actually, no registration is required as the link is a Google partner link.
Either:
a. Slashdot is wilfully defrauding NYT of their free registrations; or
b. Slashdot has been taken over by Google in a deal under which the existing VA Software shareholders each get one GMail account per previously held share.
How much do you suppose that cost them?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
"Hey! I can see that cute chick's house from here! Hey, what's she doing to the fireplace?"
- Some Architect Dude
The problem with this stunt is that it is a harbinger of things to come. When marketers are able to fully customize each page of a magazine to appeal to a particular consumer, they will acquire a lot of personal information from tens or hundreds of different marketing databases in order to do so.
In essence, the improvements in printing technology that made this possible will contribute to the proliferation of your personal information.
The only way to solve this is to implement EU-style privacy protections at the Federal level. We need to ask ourselves - who's looking out for you? It's obviously not our government.
There is Constitutional "right to privacy". Some try to conjure one out of the Ninth Amendment, but the same tactic can be used to conjure a "right to security" or something else that cancels it out. Some try to conjure it out of the 4th Amendment, but it is a real stretch to apply this to information that is hundreds of miles from your house and person.
I think there should be a "right to privacy", but it just isn't there in the Constitution. Judges who conjure one out of thin air can just as easily make it go away. For such things, we should rely on the amendment process, not the fickle imagination of judges.
Maybe they just have a lot of problems with the Postal Service delivering their magazine to the wrong address.
I wonder if they will use an HP/Indigo DigitalPress. These things are monster offset printers that can do huge jobs, but are able to print a different image/source on each successive page.
They are really quite amazing.
Check them here: HP.com
He's totally creeping out the Great One, eh...
If you're in the USA, you can see your own address plotted for yourself by TerraServer at this page here. The version that the magazine is using is likely a higher resolution source that they had to pay for. These guys even have pictures over "Area 51".
...if you live in Missouri (microscope not included).
Yeah, right.
More likely then not the person who submitted the article submitted it with that URL and the editors didn't notice it.
Not cool because I really don't want the New York Times to take this feature away from us. I suppose it's only a matter of time and we can all blame /. when it happens. At least we'll have a scapegoat ;)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Do you honestly think that the quality from an orbiting satellite several hundred miles away is going to be particularly great? It's already been said that the picture displays the entire neighbourhood and surrounding area of the person's house, so I'm not exactly concerned by this technology. Its application, maybe, but it's just not high-resolution enough to be particularly important.
It saves us the hassle of creating a "Roger Rabbit at zip code 12345" registration ID just to look at it.
I hope they didnt take the photo of my home while I was sunbathing in the nude on the roof-deck!
But probably all they're doing is going to Terraserver and punching in addresses for each subscriber in bulk somehow. So unless you've already been photographed sunbathing nude when that satellite whizzed overhead, you're probably not gonna be able to pull that stunt.
:-)
However, yeah I'd want to know to if they're doing a fresh satellite pass, tho I'd probably do that with my arse in the air instead, go ahead and moon them (and ultimately myself)
...in bed
There's now no excuse if the mailman delivers this to the wrong house.
I suppose this might also help with collecting overdue payments (we know _exactly_ where you live...).
(I know they obviously have the address, but it's different when they also have a picture.)
Post your address so I can come over to your house and paint a giant goatse on your roof.
...of anti-ballistic missile defense for the individual.
You mean it will be interesting for the people whose houses are more than 10 years old. The satellite photos on the public databases are so dated it's ridiculous. Wow look, I got a magazine with a picture of a corn field on the cover!
Public use of any portable music system is a virtually guaranteed indicator of sociopathic tendencies. -- Zoso
And their brilliance shows through with this cover.
The real killer app will be when Home & Garden's magazine zooms in on your home and analyzes your landscaping and house. Different people might get different covers and articles on rejuvenating dead lawns, trimming overgrown trees, or xeriscaping. You might even discover you've won the contest for most beautiful garden with an aerial view.
And they could even analyze your house & land for marketing opportunities. If the satellite veiw is oblique and the paint is peeling, they could forward your name to the local aluminum siding company or house painters.
Time to get a PO box!
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
...when the cover is updating in real time showing me taking a dump. So will you.
...by the discount the post office gives them for the thoughtfully included map to the delivery address on the cover.
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
...you live in Area 51?
Bureaucracy loves company.
Ostensibly, the main idea was to make readers more aware of the realities of living life as a row in a database. But then there's Chief Editor Gillispie's closing quote: "What if you received a magazine that only had stories and ads that you were interested in and pertained to you? That would be a magazine that everyone would want to read." This seems to indicate a conflict of interests; that Reason recognizes the peril, but can't help but consider the possibilities of catering to individual readers by exploiting personal data.
Of course, this attempt at pandering generally fails in my experience. My being interested in 'Gardening' or 'Outdoor Life' is lightyears away from wanting a subscription to Better Homes and Gardens or Sports Illustrated, personalization or no. This is due to the critical distinction between essence and product.
The phrase "Free Minds, Free Markets" also seems to me to be a contradiction in terms, although "Free Markets" leaves room for interpretation. I guess I'm reading this wrong, because to my mind, the notion of individuality resists the concept of demographic marketing, no matter how "free."
This has to be one of the coolest magazine stunts I've ever seen in a long time.
If you're really concerned about them being able to get satalite photos of your house by knowing your address, you should also surf under a proxy on the internet at all times. An IP can be traced, as well.
---
Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
Can anyone think of more possibilities when satelite photography/videography become pretty common to the public a few years or decades from now?
The military uses have been in effect for years.
As always business is now getting a peice.
Will the public get a useful peice of this?
My mailman will still manage to deliver it to the neighbor's house by accident.
Ironically, for a magazine that runs so many good articles on privacy issues, they whored my address to anyone and everyone. I never got so much crap junkmail as after I started a subscription. And tenacious bulkmailers, sending thick wads every other month or so for years.
While I can understand the reasoning behind the stunt, they might want to take a long hard look in the mirror first before preaching.
My magazine cover would feature the goatse guy.
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
now iGen's are a different story.
...you got a mobile phone?
Is "Current Location" down to a couple of meters considered exact enough?
also..
Can you get a magazine to a PO Box? Its not like its sent fedex. Whats it going to have on the cover, a top view of the post office maybe?
Morphing Software
A couple of the magazines that I subscribe to have ads in them (*gasp*) that are targeted at me. Somewhere on the ad there will by my name, and, for example, the address of the Napa Autoparts store closest to my house, or something similar depending on the ad. However it has never been something that is this well done. It is always low resolution sloppy text squirted reasonably close to where they meant it to be on the ad.
Opportunities multiply as they are seized. --Sun-Tzu
...parked in my driveway?!
Go Reason!
(I've actually found 'current' sattelite photos of my neighborhood on the 'Net from several years ago - with the previous owners cars parked out front - at least I thought they were from before we moved in...
Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code...
from the article:
"What if you received a magazine that only had stories and ads that you were interested in and pertained to you?" he asked. "That would be a magazine that everyone would want to read."
wasn't this one of the promises of the web? is "narrowcasting" in print form really economically feasible?
Why is this article a News ??
For example, this is what I did:
(1) Find on Google. Look at first phonebook result. Took 30 seconds.
(2) Find address on terraserver Took a minute.
Now before you flame, all this is public information. It takes less than 2 minutes to obtain...so what's the big deal about the magazine's offer other than that they are printing it and mailing to you...
Prior to this, mapquest was providing free aerial views as well...
-wife- Hey hun we just got the customized Magazine in the mail. OH kewl it even has a picture of the whole neighborhood! What quality even!
-looks closer- Hey hun is that you? What are doing with the neighbors wife? Why is she naked??
- my $.02? - you can't have it...it's all I have!!
Wow. Somebody bought Keyholw - Earth Viewer and ad space on slashdot. whoop whoop. I guess I should customize out the your rights online, the constant privacygasms aren't that fun either. I know use the tools so you don't have to list to the tools...
Onward to the Aether Sphere!
OK, tell me where I am. My phone number is 312-259-7809.
They've been printing my ADDRESS on the cover for months.
John.
Really anyone with reasonable knowlegde could do this with a phonebook and and internet connection. Now when the magazine comes and says, "Bob Smith, This is your life..." then I'll put my tinfoil hat on.
no way theres someone named John Poindexter.. so THATS the guy who started the whole nerd = poindexter thing! my god i always wondered where that name phrase came from!
"What if you received a magazine that only had stories and ads that you were interested in and pertained to you?"
It's called Maxim.
See my Home Theater
I thought most printing press houses ran high-speed presses with no time to include a specific cover for each individual issue printed. I assume the specific cover will include the mailing address for mailing purposes. If not, associating the right issue with the right mailing label on a print line is even more of a feat. What's next? Totally individualized dead-tree magazines for every subscriber of every rag out there? This could get interesting.
Now answer the phone!
I'd like to see the magazine use the Freedom of Information act and insert some of a person's file into each magazine (maybe a random person?). Of course, I don't think you could automate it, it would be expensive, and the feds would give you a hassle... but if you could...
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
..Osama Bin Laden.
Naw never work. I can't get that jackass Postal puke to stop putting my mail in the next door neighbor's box so how is going to get it to the correct cave.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
A customized magazine. One article from Home & Garden (approximately never, for me anyway,) an article from Wired, the occasional Jolene Blalock pictorial (often please,) maybe some stuff from Scientic American about oceanography and you have a fine magazine.
There just aren't many big name magazines out htere that are independent. As in all mass media these days, a few players hold most of the marbles. It stands to reason that each large company could cherry pick from tehir different lines to make a super-mag. Basically you'd have an instantly customizable source of reading material with just in time delivery. Or just use the web.
Still, high res alien babe goodness on dead tree format... That may be worth it.
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.
I think it would have scared people if they would have instead used a picture of the address the person first lived at. Just imagine getting a magazine with a picture and address that you hadn't lived at for years. That'd cause people to think more.
Welcome to 1984. Done deal.
meanwhile we get all these warm fuzzies about private industry playing around with rockets. We also know private industry keeps records on us and swaps information with their buddies.
How long before there's a satellite scanning your town, every few days, and the information available to commercial clients?
"Hi, I'm Lionel Hutz, I saw on the internet that you were at home today, so I thought I'd drop by."
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Any opinion you like, as long as it's capitalist extremism.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
WTF? are you talking about. Libertarians are the main faction of the Republican party. The Heritage foundation runs Washington and the republican party. Like any idology, the have to compromise. So we get tax breaks (mostly for the rich) but no legal dope.
Oh well.
they took the picture of your house while your mistress was parked outside?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Libertarians support private businesses knowing about people. It's called "marketing" and "free enterprise". What does a Libertarian have to complain about? It's not the government doing it (in which case it *would* be a crime and an abomination).
I just got my May copy of Playboy, and it had My NAME IN BOLD PRINT AND A PICTURE OF ME NAKED ON THE COVER!!!
And that's not just my copy, that's *all of them*. I hear Hugh Hefner was pissed because I dissed him on Fark.
The Lesson? Don't mess with guys who buy ink by the barrel and can photoshop a tattoo of Fabio onto your butt.
I'm not normally an irrational zealous dickhead, but I figure "When in Rome..."
But what kind of magazine would it be? People read Car and Driver, Discover, Time, whatever because, on the whole, most or all of the articles already appeal to the reader. If I only got one magazine, and that one magazine had everything I might want to read in it, it'd transcend the definition of "magazine" and go straight on to "encyclopedia". After all, I'm a guy with a lot of interests - porn^H^H^H^H art, computers, little sports, little world news, little business, etc. etc. etc.
There'd also have to be a fantastic way to keep track of my changing reading habits. I'm not reading the same thing I was a year - or even 6 months! - ago.
There'd also be no more "Did you see the article in BLAH?" If they fine-tune this thing too much, get my profile so unique, it's possible that none of my friends will read the same articles as me, and have no opportunity to do so, since their ultra-huge-personalized-magazine won't include it, and they can't get just that article or 3.99 magazine on the rack anymore.
Besides, doctor's offices would be filled with magazines that nobody would want to read
The resolution doesn't look very good based on the photo. Looks like very coarse black and white photo? Old weather satillite data? So what?
It doesn't like like 1m resolution, color, recent photos. This is like the weatherman getting up and circling your city and saying "we know where you live".
BFD.
associating subscriber name with a TIFF of the aerial photograph of the house. There's lot of variable data software that will output PostScript (or the equivalent), combining the name, address and image.
Given that, you could probably do the cover for all 50,000 subscribers in about 3 days of printing time, running two shifts. Add a few days or weeks for prepress work ahead of that, of course.
Actually, what they are using is a big four color laser or ink jet printer. Instead of having a printing press consisting of four units (one unit per color) using KCMY inks, they use KCMY toner cartidges. They drive it with PDF files that can be generated from a database. Each copy can be different since there is no waste compared to a change over on a convential four color press.
Somewhere in Chicago with a 312 area code.
I don't know the 259 exchange though...
Except FOX will most likely misreport the story so badly that it will sound like Reason magazine is surveilling it's subscribers.
Anyone remember the story about the teacher and the baby rabbits that FOX (Chicago) misreported? Fox News reported that a school teacher asked the children in her class to bury some baby rabbits alive since no one wanted them. When they refused, she did it in front of them. Well, it turns out that the real story was the babies were rejected by the mother and were already dying. The teacher also didn't bury them alive.
"in Soviet Russia the magazines read you!" jokes?
I subscribe to Time and live in North Carolina. My weekly magazine is full of hotel and cacation ads around NC. So this concept of data mining from the subscribers address is not unique, it's just used to a lesser degree than reason is.
Oh...You mean like the internet?
postmodernsideshow.com
I've been working with digital printing on Xerox machines for a number of years. This kind of thing has been available for quite a while. The issue is generally what to do with the technology, and these guys sure beat our customers receiving junk mail with their vehicle images!
Now I have to get out there and mow my damn lawn...
You can have my cynical agnosticism when you pry it from my cold, dead logic.
No, there would be no waste in changed toner, but wouldn't it require substantially more time than a normal printing run to load in each individual PDF for printing rather than make 50,000 copies of a single image already loaded into the printer? Also, isn't the cost substantially higher on this big 4 color laserjet printer than a four unit printering line for a 50,000 page run (of a single image).
I checked Google...your phone number did not yield any relevant data. Consider yourself lucky.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
You certainly wouldn't hand create every cover, but you could use a VI program or plugin to determine the cover layout based on a few fields in the database.
Then you need a fast 4 color laser to do the covers, and a fair amount of money, since it would be a bit more than offset.
I can see it now, I picture of my weedy front lawn with "Mow Your Freakin' Law, John Doe" as the cover story. What is next? A picture of my car with words "Wash Me" add to the trunk by the Magazine editors!
I can't afford a sig!
I don't know how much, at least for certain quantities. Below 1,000, laser presses may be cheaper than offset.
That'd be a magazine that only you wanted to read.
for a good color laser press. And it costs more than offset for long runs, but for short runs, it may be cheaper. Many offset presses will print thousands of sheets before the colors get right. It might cost just as much for 10 prints as for 1000.
You are right, though, for 50,000 prints of one image, a traditional offset press would be far cheaper.
O Canada, my home and native land
... drove both the tour guide and the customs agent nuts ("shut the hell up, assholes, that's not funny anymore")
true patriot love in all thy sons command
with glowing hearts
we see thee rise
the true north strong and free
O Canada, I stand on guard for thee
God keep our land
Glorious and free
O Canada, I stand on guard for thee (repeat last line)
I had fun singing that with about half my bus tour on our way back to the States
dc70, dc100, dc2060 or iGen?
it will have my name and a sat picture of my house? What happens if someone picks up my copy first? That is a privacy concern!
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
terraserver.microsoft.com. Big deal.
The only worthwhile topic of this article is that printing technology has come down to a point where they can print a customized cover for every subscriber. Now that's amazing.
i think a new sci-fi channel mini-series should be made, exploring the loss of privacy issues, set 20 years from now.
they should call it "dbNation"
throw in a mulder/scully type duo and the geeks will come.
It's Soviet Russia, you insensitive clod!
Customizable news sources help their users to fit themselves with invisible blinders. They become more biased as they're innundated with information about only what they're already aware of or already interested in.
Don't read censored news. Read something from a source which you can't control.
Source here
here. *everyone's* house is in this picture
vodka, straight up, thank you!
Remember the ads in Minority Report that talked to you as you walk past the displays?
I wonder how long it will be until every page is customized according to your personal tastes. You might receive your issue of Popular Electronics filled with ads for embedded systems and circuit boards while your neighbor receives the same issue but with ads for mini spy cameras and weird sex toys.
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
They might even know your credit card number, maybe even your checking account!
Totally legit? This is their chief editor? How old is he, 14 - or is he just a big Bobby Brown fan? Holy language moron, Batman!
give me a satellite photo of me on the cover!
Its called DPOD . digital print on demand. Customize the marketing and sales to a person entirely ... not just a word mail merge... a photo merge, where the vacation photo you took on your cruise is sent back, superimposed on the larger, cooler cruise ship out this year. a few companies merge output from popular graphics design tools, like quark, with XML and other stuff, which get their feed from marketing databases.
I work for a small firm who develops software that is sold to companies that do specific mail marketing. a lot of people are looking for this.
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
First search yielded:
:>
The phone number "(312) 259-7809" is a Chicago, IL based phone number and the registered carrier is Southwestern Bell Mobile Systems Dba Cellular One.
If I felt like spending $85 I could get the billing address, but it's not worth it
Three dits, four dits, two dits, dah!
Radio, radio, rah rah rah!
I knew that bastard next door still had it! Gave it back my ass!
I'm a pretty bad satt map junkie. I've built a collection from various web sources of old home towns, vacations spots, places I've been, etc.
I don't really see the problem with it. About the only thing that's roughly close to being up to date is the landsat 7 IR maps, and those will give you a headache if you look at em too long.
But for general viewing, I usually go though lostoutdoors.com or teraserver depending on what kind of map format I want. lostoutdoors has a pretty limited interface, but if you get your coordinates narrowed down from teraserver, you can get a nice big detailed map of the area, as well as the topo map. Usually you can get something within the last 5 years from airplane survey photos stitched together.
Was fun looking at old places I'd been and seeing what had changed. Was disapointed that the hardware store in marshalltown iowa had not kept the writing on their roof so I could see it on there. Was primarily something used by the local pilots back in the day. Would have been really cool to read it off of satellite, web server airplane photos, or even landsatt(unlikely on that though as the resolution is iffy).
Until you have cheap lifting vehicles for space, you can forget the enemy of the state nonsense. You'll get some interesting views, but the chance of it being more recent than a year ago if you live in the sticks is nil. It would simply take way way too many birds to get same day data on everyone, not to mention a lot of luck unless you were also in a very arid pollution free area. Being a several thousand feet about sea level helps too.
Also this will be a great personal collectors item to subscribers. But I suspect in time it'll be like the national geographic holographic skull pic. A neat gimick, soon to be copied by everyone and old news really fast.
I think the upside will be that interest will spike for a while, and people will want more up to date and higher rez photos, faster web servers for the data, etc.
For me though, there is no downside, I got most of what I want for the moment, so if all the USGS servers choke for weeks, its no big deal.
Besides, the newsstand version has a shiny reflective front cover.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Web subscribers get traceroutes to 127.0.0.1.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Could be worse. I'm sure a lot of people would get a lot more nervous if it were not a circle but crosshairs.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Reason is a great magazine, btw. I really enjoy it, and suggest you check out their online site. It has every article the dead-tree version does, just a month later. I still get the print version just because I like to support such a great mag and the cover art is usually worth having around in print format (like a dominatrix dressed Rupert Murdoch... oh the nightmares!).
- I love animals. I try to eat at least one a day.
What happens if you're a subscriber but your copy has the house & name of someone else? Isn't that against some kind of privacy law for which NY Times could potentially be sued?
http://www.chmodoplusr.com/
printing 40,000 covers is that any different than posting 40,000 magazines and putting an address label on them.
:)
ok this address label has a certain amount of additional data but not that much more. Is this much more complicated than putting in my postcode / zipcode in a webpage and getting an arial shot of my house. I dont think it would be much harder than putting a cover mount on a mag.
after all if its got the address it doesnt matter which magazine it goes on.
bet it does go to a few po boxes thou
Last I checked, satellite images of my hometown were not publically available because there is a US Army Depot nearby....
When will the satellite image be taken? I want to do some nude sunbathing in the backyard when it happens.
Don't bother. There wouldn't be anything interesting to see, anyway.
Bad-dum, Bum!
Software Wars
- High-income areas get the Mercedes ad
- Lower-income areas get Chrysler
- Rural areas get Dodge Truck
thus maximizing their investment, by showing people ads for things they might actually want to buy (and be willing to afford). With access to the right data, this can be fine-tuned far beyond what census data about your ZIP code discloses.[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
'cause I'm wearing my tinfoil hat!
The top of this page says:
(arg!)Styopa (232550)
(arg!)Styopa
(email not shown publicly)
Karma: Excellent
ICQ UIN: 13478584 (Add User, Send Message)
That's ME!
Holy crap! Next they'll be able to get a satellite picture of my house!
Huh?
Oh, I guess it's not that big a deal then.
-Styopa
Can't they just print one photo for the whole lower 48 states? Did they say everyone's house would have its own pixel(s)?
"I" can't tell you where you are, but "They" can .. "They" as in your mobile phone carrier. If the the state (or the court) want's to know where you are or were on a specific date, it will just pull the logfiles from the phonecompany.. Where were you on the morning of september 11. 2001 is just a control question .. they already knows where you were..
..
Some mobile phonecarriers have had "treasure hunt" games, where you could win if you found a specific grid in town. Sending an sms would give you a clue and you would find the treasure if you were withing 10 meters and send an "I found it"-SMS
Just a game, but it shows what logfiles can be used for.
Thanks for the link. Of course, the first thing I used it for is to post a link to a satellite pic of Reason's editorial offices to Slashdot...
Reason
I wonder if this what the cover of the boss' copy looks like...
THe circle is so big, that it probably encompasses a whole zip code. There may be dozens of subscribers living er urban zip code.
I guess you can always just stay inside all day if you don't want satellites to see you.
Imagine a Beowuld clusters of those.... WAIT !!!