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Comment You're creating your own problem. (Score 4, Insightful) 298

I have been a reader of WIRED magazine since their first year. (calm down now; its just an example. let's argue the merits of Wired's newsworthiness elsewhere).
I got an iPad, and when Wired came to the Newsstand app, I thought it would be an excellent thing for me- now I could read the magazine anywhere, anywhen. I didn't even have to pay, being a print subscriber was enough. But the thing is, I had to laboriously download each issue, they took up a lot of room on my iPad, and I just never remembered that there was an issue sitting, waiting for me.
What did I do all those times i was stuck at an airport, or babysitting a sleeping baby, and had time on my hands? You'd THINK I would open up Newsstand and read an issue of Wired, but what I really did was opened up my RSS reader and skimmed headlines from dozens of blogs, all at once. Gizmodo, Engadget, Techcrunch, boingboing, Ars, Slashdot, and yes, Wired.
I don't even read Wired any more. is it because of DRM, or watermarking? of course not. it's because: why would I sit down for an hour and read month-old news when i can get the headlines up-to-date every minute of every day, in bite-sized chunks?
If you want to modernize and get online, that's great. But why are you only thinking of modernizing ONE part of your hundred-year-old delivery service? If you're just going online because that's what everyone is doing, I would say: forget it. Save your money. Keep printing your magazine, and the people who really need it for their jobs and their wellbeing will continue subscribing. But if you want to get with the Now, do it right. Stop thinking in monthly/bimonthly/quarterly/whatever publishing cycles. Publish a steady stream of articles and news, when they're ready, when they're relevant. Give subscribers a way to log in and go thorugh old content whenever they need it. Create a community, get information flowing in both directions. Add value. No one will bother pirating your content because there will be NEW content tomorrow. You can't pirate breaking news, and you cant pirate community feedback.

Comment Re:13" MacBook Air (Score 3, Informative) 732

Doesn't have the internal optical drive, but its coming in under budget so they probably wouldn't mind buying an external. Don't know about the screen, though. It's the resolution of a 15", but its physically 13". It is cool, it has an SSD, the performance is great, and its a fabulous machine. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.

Comment Re:Too Much Imagination Required? (Score 1) 429

So why spend so much time and energy limiting the simulated world to be just like the real one, except with blacklight decor?

The real answer is probably because the artists tried all those things first and they looked bad on screen because that's not how we are used to visualizing things so they changed it to make it more palatable. But if you want a more philosophical answer, I'd say it's because the world, while simulated, was designed by Flynn, a real man, who's vision was limited by his real-world concepts.

Comment Re:So what? (Score 1) 304

User replaceable parts, redundant power, and hardware monitoring of hard drives, power supplies and fan speed. Plus lights out management and a serial port. All in 1U, not 6. Redundant product? you obviously dont work in a datacenter.

Comment the answer is in the question (Score 1, Insightful) 451

Facebook IS for non-uber-techy folk: non-uber-techy folk don't care about their privacy.

Face it, the key to a useful social media site isn't the features, or the security, it's the one with all your friends on it. You know, the "social part." Everyone you know is on Facebook. Learn how to deal with the privacy features such that they are, or do without the usefulness.

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