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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?"
I once read somewhere "c't is a magazine worth learning german for".
c't is a technology magazine somewhere between casual and pro, and deals with gadgets, computers and their peripherals, mobile phones and more. It reviews the quality of service of hardware vendors, ISPs and such, reports on wage situations in the IT-field and the occasional game. Being very broad in content, they still manage to go indepth (?) if questions arise via reader feedback. I have yet to find a publication in that field that matches the quality of research, writing and running this fine line of easy consumable content without being shallow.
Also they used to have the most hilarious April fools articles.
They have a sister magazine called IX, which focuses on linux and security. It's outside my competence field, so i can't say much about it, but it seems it's quite good, regarding to my linux-loving peers.
"Europeans live on an infrastructure that supports pedestrian life."
And you don't even get mugged on it.
They have also highways and bridges that don't crumble to dust, cars that people actually buy throughout the world, high-speed trains, a couple of thousand different cheeses, and also science fiction stuff like global health insurance and powerful unions that actually help people.
I feel the same way about Japanese magazines right now. They have vast numbers of them on every subject from how to choose what type of cat to have as a pet to FPGA programming. In fact there is probably one about teaching your cat to program FPGAs. The selection really is amazing.
The content seems better too. I'll admit my Japanese reading skills are not that brilliant but they give you masses of detail and lots of photos to detail every step. I am building a model train layout from one at the moment. There really is nothing at all like it in the UK.
I feel really bad for you guys in the US if you think our magazines are good, because to me they are pretty poor.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Funny you should mention that. Europeans grow up being exposed to nudie mags in news agents, and we don't really notice them anymore. As a result we don't blow our tops when some wardrobe malfunction causes a nipple to be shown on national television for a second. Same goes for other stuff, like actual sex, or smoking pot: freedom and education work so much better than repression and pretending these things don't exist. (In case you were wondering: the Netherlands has significantly less regular marihuana users than the US despite the fact that anyone can walk into a coffee shop and buy a few grams; people here try it a few times in high school or college, but most stop after a few years).
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Yes, but nowhere near as much as that. To pick a random example, "Digital SLR Photography" has a cover price of £4, whereas a subscription gives you 12 issues for £43.
OTOH, GP was perhaps exaggerating in saying price was on par with a paperback book, as these seem to typically be about £7. Yes, I am aware that they're cheaper in the US -- publishing is one of the few markets where there seems to be a real price disparity between the two countries. Importers typically charge £1 per dollar cover price of US editions, which probably leaves quite a bit of space for profit, especially as they're almost certainly getting >50% discount from the publishers. I suspect the reason for the difference is economy of scale -- the UK is a market only about a fifth the size of the US, and the cost of printing stuff like this is almost entirely in the per-issue set-up costs.
Sadly there is no data to back me up, but i wonder if mugging and other random crime is reduced by a functioning welfare system. This in that it removes the desperation for many people, leaving mostly addicts and the mentally ill as performers of such crimes.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
As the other guy pointed out, you do realise that even then the French healthcare system is still cheaper than the US one?
The problem with the US system is that it's built around an insurance system, where healthcare providers make the most money when they ensure people are signed up, but don't actually get to use the service. So they have to employ many thousands of people to deal with designing their schemes, marketing their schemes, determining the validity of claims, trying to get away with not paying claims and spending months, sometimes years arguing over the validity of claimsm and if they finally agree to pay a claim - actually dealing with the paperwork of paying that claim.
The problem is the US system creates a whole additional layer of bureaucracy that are unnecessary in the European system, so makes the US system grossly inefficient.
Of course, you're right that the French system may run a deficit that's paid up for in taxes, and the US system doesn't, but that's because Americans are paying much more per head directly to the healthcare firms on average than you pay indirectly to it through your taxes on average - in other words, their system is still drastically more expensive.