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?
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.
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
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..?
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.
What if I live underground like the Mole People?
I am defenseless. Use your button. Mod me down with all of your hatred.
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.
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.
"Hey! I can see that cute chick's house from here! Hey, what's she doing to the fireplace?"
- Some Architect Dude
Maybe they just have a lot of problems with the Postal Service delivering their magazine to the wrong address.
Post your address so I can come over to your house and paint a giant goatse on your roof.
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
This is just a civillian use of it. The satellite *can* take a picture from several hundred miles away that's detailed enough to recognize people on the ground.
This is not paranoid conspiracy thoery, the government freely admits it can do that but of course they won't share the images.
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.
That could explain all the email I receive about suntan oil and penis enlargement......
...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.
My mailman will still manage to deliver it to the neighbor's house by accident.
My magazine cover would feature the goatse guy.
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
You must not be using the same internet I'm using!
cpeterso
-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!!
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.
"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
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
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
It goes something like "Oh Canada, eh?", right?
Money for nothing, pix for free
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.
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!
"just picking up" "whored" "sending thick wads" "take a long hard look in the mirror"
Hmmmm
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
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!
Perhaps this is their way of illustrating just how bad an idea it is to give anyone your address...Teaching by demonstration, if you will...
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
It's actually not really that impressive. According to Terraserver my street doesn't exist and I live in a tree. The terraserver image for my place is from 1998 - not exactly current.
Of course now that I've looked at the image I have this huge feeling of guilt for all the trees that got knocked down to build my house. Oh well...
Be happy. Nothing else matters.
If I wanted to move to a frozen wasteland with a bunch of heavily armed blog-fags with egos big enough to kill a man from 80 yards I'd just saw my balls off with a rusty bottlecap and get the experience without the trouble of moving.
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
I doubt they will stand the /. effect...
Or at least make some people wonder why so many people are interested in that address.
I hate Liberals and Conservatives.
If you are a Liberal or a Conservative, then HAVE A NICE DAY!
Courage.
Don't be a sheep.
I can't wait to see how it works for me: I live in Finland and my address has non-English letters in it.