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Ask Slashdot: Does Europe Have Better Magazines Than the US?
An anonymous reader writes "Now that all the large chain book stores have disappeared from the landscape, I visited my local independent book store. In the basement I found a dazzling array of amazing magazines from the UK and Germany. Not only were the magazines impressive, they included CDs and DVDs of material. Nearly every subject was there: Knitting, Photography, Music, Linux, and Fitness. I snapped up a magazine called 'Computer Music,' which had a whole issue dedicated to making house music, including a disc of extra content. I subscribe to U.S. magazines like Wired, 2600, & Make, but their quality seems to ebb and flow from issue to issue and I don't ever recall a bonus disc. Are the UK magazines really better? If yes, why and which of them do you subscribe to? The other interesting thing about them is they weren't filled with tons of those annoying subscription cards. What is the best way to subscribe?"
EU Linux mags rock, especially the UK versions.
I do design work and find that most magazines especially if they pertain to computers are very nice. The paper is usually a very heavy stock glossy with a larger format. Also, there are a lot of detailed 'how to' articles with examples. The only real downside is that they seem at least 2 to 3 times as expensive and US counterparts, always on par price wise with a good paperback novel. I used to sit in the bookstore and drink coffee while reading those magazines but never buying. They were a good source of information, but they were IMHO too expensive to buy.
Here in Australia, we get American and English magazines equally. I hardly ever burn ISO's for Linux, but rather buy a magazine every few months and so have good-quality boot/install/recover disks around all the time. The articles aren't bad -- I've learned about some cool apps there -- but I buy the mags for the disks mainly. And they're all UK magazines, now that I think about it. This presumably goes back to when Amigas and C64s were hip; there were always gaming magazines with playable demo disks.
A lot of the UK special interest magazines are by Future Publishing. A company with roots back to 8-bit magazines like Zzap64 and Crash. I think they're partly responsible for raising the game in the UK market.
My 15-bucks-a-month Internet subscription comes with a bonus from my ISP: a country-wide*, unlimited traffic, 3.6 Mbit/s 3G USB stick.
For free.
I used it more than once as back-up for my main connection and it rocks.
So yeah, you're not so far-fetched.
*Country-wide means wherever they provide coverage, for now limited to medium-sized and major cities but good enough for what I need.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
+5 Insightful, Informative. I'll add that it is also quite funny, if you enjoy that dry, British, Monty Python style. The English level may be intimidating for non-native speakers at first, but if you want to learn top-notch English, here is your benchmark. After reading this, everything else seems written at a Dr. Suess level.
Oh, and take a look at Viz as well, a satirical adult comic. Low humor for high brows.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Well, I'm from Germany and can only describe the situation here, but "bonus" discs really are pretty standard for a long time now. Especially with computer and gaming magazines, although some have abandoned them for online content.
For example, Linux magazines often provide a disc with the software that is reported about in the magazine, and often they're also bootable (rescue systems, latest Debian, whatever) which comes in very handy in case you're system broke down and thus can't get online (happened to me once a few years ago). Other computer magazines' discs have demos, free software and drivers but I've also seen them provide movies (I have no idea why). Luckily the notorious AOL discs have vanished ;-) A noteworthy example of a really useful bonus disc is from the popular computer magazine c't: about once a year it provides Knoppicilin, now called Desinfec't which is a Linux Live-CD with content to fix your Windows system: it comes with a few virus scanners (latest version: the commercial scanners Avira, BitDefender, Kaspersky and the free ClamAV) and always support reading and writing NTFS partitions.
Gaming magazines also put these discs to good use as some of them put video reviews of games on their discs and that really is useful additional content as often two or three screenshots printed in a magazine just can't transport the experience of a game. Of course the PC targeted magazines also have game demos.
Here in Holland you can show full frontal nudity on magazine covers, but not on children's eye level or lower if it's erotic. If it's non-erotic you can place it anywhere you want (including daytime commercials).
'For we walk by faith, not by sight.' II Corinthians 5:7
>a couple of thousand different cheeses
I hate to stop your wonderful support of my country, but cheeses wise we have about 3, and feck the rest from France :o)
Whaddya mean?!
We have Cheddar, Scottish cheddar, Scottish Highland cheddar, Scottish Island cheddar, Welsh cheddar, cheddar from other places ... we'll even claim Canadian cheddar as our own if you give us half a chance!
Oh, and more seriously: Cheshire, Shropshire, Wensleydale, Stilton, Caerphilly, Y-fenwi, Yarg, and of course Brie (most of which is made in Somerset).
If the French banned export of cheese tomorrow, I confess I'd miss Roquefort. Other than that, they can keep em! :)
I know it's funny to joke that British food is bad, but that's a totally outdated view It's based on what happened to British food when the country went bust after WW2. It's easy to forget that while the 50s were a time of rising prosperity and living standards in the US, the UK still had rationing, and living standards barely above what they were at the end of the war. Nowadays the UK has some of the world's best restaurants. (e.g. see The World's Best Restaurants, and compare the number of UK and US restaurants, adjusting for population). The British are obsessed with home cooking too: just look at the number of TV cooking shows that it exports. This may not always translate to great home cooking, but it does illustrate that the terrible food of the 70s is a thing of the past. Except in Scotland, that is, unless you consider deep-fried pizza to be good food. Actually, on second thoughts..