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Comment Re:An awful lot of wet blankets in here (Score 1) 82

Downside for Esquire is that with a web image of the front cover (or of Gillian Jacob's page, etc.) viewed on my iPhone, I could trigger the AR event in their Mac software and enjoy the content without buying Esquire.

I'll still buy the magazine anyway since a) my iPhone's reflective glass screen is not optimum for recognition and b) I'd like to support their ingenuity and effort.

Comment An awful lot of wet blankets in here (Score 1) 82

It's a gimmick. Obviously. Meant to generate sales. And it will work for some people and not work for others. It's not meant to be new technology to people such as slashdotters who are generally on the cutting edge. Magazines using marketing gimmicks to boost sales isn't news. However, it is a use of technology that we haven't seen magazines do before. As e-ink becomes more affordable and viable, we'll see more magazines trying to stay in business with interactive gimmicks, perhaps even on the page itself. Where's the harm in it? I only hope they sell enough magazines to recoup their investment.

Esquire most likely paid RDJ and other actors to produce video content for a special edition magazine. They had software for both PCs and Macs produced. And they're advertising it on the web. It's all pretty slick, even if it IS limited. Has your favorite blog produced something like this lately? Personally, I'd like to see more ad campaigns using current technology in creative ways.

Books

Submission + - Kindle DRM Limits How Many Times You Can Download (geardiary.com)

Absentminded-Artist writes: "According to a story over at Gear Diary, the Kindle's DRM has reared an ugly head: Download limitations. Upgraded your iPhone recently? Bought a new Kindle? You may not be able to reload your entire library. There's an unadvertised flag:

"You mean when you go to buy the book it doesn't say 'this book can be downloaded this number of times' even though that limitation is there?" To which [the rep] replied, "No, I'm very sorry it doesn't.""

Comment Re:Why Pay for a Degree (Score 5, Interesting) 469

A degree isn't everything. All it does is prove you took a certain number of units at some universityâ¦

You're absolutely correct. I couldn't agree with you more. However, it still doesn't change the fact that degrees are used to filter out applicants. If you're able to get the jobs and experience without a degree that look good on a resume then more power to you, but not having the degree will make that a harder task, as well as affect your pay scale.

Moon

NASA's New Mission to the Moon 283

mattnyc99 writes "Popular Mechanics has a new, in-depth preview of NASA's Orion spacecraft, tracking the complex challenges facing the engineers of the CEV (which NASA chief Michael Griffin called 'Apollo on steroids') as America shifts its focus away from the Space Shuttle and back toward returning to the moon by 2020. After yesterday's long op-ed in the New York Times concerning NASA's about-face, Popular Mechanic's interview with Buzz Aldrin and podcast with Transterrestrial.com's Rand Simberg raise perhaps the most pressing questions here: Is it worth going back to the lunar surface? And will we actually stay there?"
Businesses

January Game Sales Explode, Wii Dominates 478

njkid1, as he does from time to time, passed us a link to a story on the GameDaily site. Today they're discussing the January NPD numbers for the games industry. In short, they're terrific. Software sales totaled $549 million for the month, up a staggering 53 percent over last year. Hardware sales were brisk as well, with the Wii selling around 436,000 units. Trailing behind were Microsoft and Sony, with 360 hitting 294,000 units sold and the PS3 selling 244,000 units. January had an extra week, which resulted in 'inflated' sales, but even after normalizing the data things were tremendous for the games industry in a month where there's normally a post-holiday slump.
Microsoft

Microsoft Apologizes for Serving Malware 171

dark_15 writes "Microsoft has apologized for serving malware via its websites and Windows Live Messenger software. APC reader Jackie Murphy reported the problem: 'With Microsoft launching Vista along with their Defender software to protect users from viruses and spyware, it seems therefore to be an oxymoron that they have started to putting paid changing banner advertisements for malware, on the popular MSN groups servers.'"
OS X

MacResearch Introduces OpenMacGrid 123

Drew McCormack writes "MacResearch.org has just introduced OpenMacGrid. It is a distributed computing grid similar to SETI@home, but unlike other networks, it is built up entirely of Macs utilizing Xgrid, and access is unrestricted. Anyone with Mac OS X 10.4 can donate cycles, and any scientist with a reasonable project can burn cycles."
Space

Cosmic Rays and Global Warming 548

Overly Critical Guy writes "The former editor of New Scientist has written an article in the TimesOnline suggesting that cosmic rays may affect global climate. The author criticizes the UN's recent global warming report, noting several underreported trends it doesn't account for, such as increasing sea-ice in the Southern Ocean. He describes an experiment by Henrik Svensmark showing a relation between atmospheric cloudiness and atomic particles coming in from exploded stars. In the basement of the Danish National Space Center in 2005, Svensmark's team showed that electrons from cosmic rays caused cloud condensation. Svensmark's scenario apparently predicts several unexplained temperature trends from the warmer trend of the 20th century to the temporary drop in the 1970s, attributed to changes in the sun's magnetic field affecting the amount of cosmic rays entering the atmosphere."
OS X

Spotlight Improvements In Leopard 356

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is set to feature several new enhancements to Spotlight, Apple's desktop search, and ComputerWorld outlines them. The improvements include searching across multiple networked Macs, parental search snooping, server Spotlight indexing, boolean search, better application launching (sorely needed), and quick-look previews.

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