"50 Images that are now YOURS" is a bit misleading. The point of the Creative Commons License is that the images still belong to Wired, but now others are allowed to use them. This will only contribute to the "Creative Commons means it's free for me to use however/wherever I want" mindset.
Apparently the pictures are also not allowed to be used within a non-commercial context.
Taking into consideration that most of them cover public figures I don't see any use of them except for a journalistic context. And unless someone needs them in poster format it should be covered by the same rights that allow Google to show preview images in their image search.
So I'd say overall pretty much useless and just a PR story for Wired Mag.
I think you got that backwards. You are allowed to use the images in a non commercial or editorial context. You can't use them in a commercial context. I thought they made that pretty clear.
The images are licenced BY-NC, which means they can't be used commerically. So you probably couldn't include them, at all, in your commerical magazine, say/
That was my understanding of cc-nc as well, but the linked announcement specifically says they're okay to use in an editorial context in any publication
"Photos must be properly attributed to the photographer and Wired.com, and we ask for a link back to the original story where the photo first appeared."
Some of these images are interesting, but I'd be very hard-pressed to call any great. Journalistic composition style / centered subjects at average distance and normal focal length, as-found lighting, some missed focus, several are crying out for a caption to find meaning (e.g., Ballmer).
Actually, this isn't possible as the images are CC-NC[1] and Wikipedia has a policy that forbids images with a non-commercial clause in their licence[2].
