What Magazines Do You Read?

Osgyth asks: "Everyone is quick to complain about a magazine when the author makes a mistake or a stupid comment. Wired and PC Magazine are only some that have fallen to this attack. Which 'PC related' magazines does the Slashdot crowd read? Are they informative and accurate? Or merely read for their entertainment value?" Why limit the topic to just PC Magazines? What other periodicals do you all read that you find interesting?

Currently in the bathroom...

[MrIcee]

...Scientific American, National Geographic, 2600, Mens Health, Instinct, Gourmet, Wired, Time (latest 3 weeks), and a myrid of catalogs on a variety of topics.

Scientific American

[wormbin]

Scientific American [sciam.com] is the only magazine that is interesting enough to make me regularly read it cover to cover.

Yes, given the state of education in America, the magazine title is becoming an oxymoron. :(

Re:Maxim!

[Caceman]

Did you ever notice that if you line up the copies of Maxim in chronological order, that there is a picture of a woman on the spine of the magazine?

-Andrew

Car and Driver

[imac.usr]

I've been a subscriber to Car and Driver [caranddriver.com] for the last fourteen years, despite having bought only two new vehicles in that time. Why? Several reasons:

• I like cars, and it's clear they do too
• I trust their testing, which they do a good job of explaining
• most of all, they're endlessly entertaining, especially when they're testing some goofy vehicle like an airplane tug [caranddriver.com] or a fire-fighting tank [caranddriver.com]

I look forward to every new issue just to see what they'll do next.

My magazines

[Big Nothing]

Living in Sweden, I'm not sure how relevant my answer will be to you, but here it goes:

* Nätverk & Kommunikation
* PC för alla
* Mikrodatorn
* Internetworld
* Computer Sweden
* Linuxworld

Of those N&K is the most "professional" and "PC för alla" is the most versatile.

The Atlantic

[Nspace13]

It is not a PC magazine but I read The Atlantic [theatlantic.com]. My favorite 'everything' magazine and it contains "Real Information" (not just a bunch of celeb news). Sometimes they lean a little to the left in the ditorials, but overall I think they attempt to present a fair view of the world. Check out the online version for some pretty hefty reading.

Major Topics

• Books & Critics
• Fiction
• Food
• Foreign Affairs
• Language
• Poetry Pages
• Politics & Society
• Science & Technology
• Travel & Pursuits

telepolis

[roskakori]

while most articles are german, there is an english edition [heise.de].

topics include information society, privacy, computer games, influence of american politics on europa, technological advances and so on.

however, beware of the wide range of article quality. most authors are freelances. some obviously suck, but they are easy to identify.

Re:Chicago Tribune's 50 Best

[Sgt. Pepperoni]

Esquire and Cook's Illustrated are indeed fantastic.

Esquire: David Sedaris... some great articles on politics (a scathing look at Karl Rove's power)... a recent tech-savvy article about astronauts... it goes on and on, and is only about $10/year to subscribe to.

Cook's Ilustrated is, of course, the paper version of America's Test Kitchen, the geeked up cooking show.

What do I read? Got an hour?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, just from what I have on my desk and my limited memory of what I regularly browse at the library:

Popular Science
Popular Mechanics
Scientific American
Linux Journal
Linux Format
Linux Magazine
PC Magazine
PC World
BYTE
Network[ing?] World
Wired
Time
The Economist
Bicycling Magazine
Fine Woodworking
Electronic Design News
ACM
Electronics Week
Nuts and Volts
Circuit Cellar
Monitoring Times
2600 Magazine
Dr. Dobbs Journal
Linux Developer
Aviation Week & Space Technology
Flight!
Navy Times
Strategy and Conflict
QSL{? The ARRL's magazine}
Stars & Stripes .. some space related journal.. AJ Astrophysics?

Re:C't

[isj]

I read C't too whenever I travel. It is a very well-balanced magazine having both articles for the beginner (ok, not completely newbies) and for the advanced. It has very comprehensive product comparisons and tests. The Q&A sections are accurate as far as I can tell.

In addition, when I read the magazine on planes chatty people leave me a alone (non-germans thinking "oh no! a german", while germans think "oh no! a computer nerd" :-).

Re:The Economist

[ratsnapple tea]

I would have posted about the Economist myself, except that the topic was which PC magazines you read, not general interest magazines. Still, the Economist comes out with a quarterly technology issue (the latest one [economist.com] covers smart fluids, smart dust, wireless recharging and congestion charges, among other things) and it's not only informative but highly entertaining. Oh, and there's an article this week on "the smart tag revolution" [economist.com]. Definitely worth a look.

Re:EXTRA! The magazine of FAIR

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I've found the news reporting on FoxNews to be fairly much down the middle of the road. Now their *commentary* such as that given by Sean Hannity or Bill O'Reily, is definitely tilted to the right. But the actual news reporting seems fairly unbiased. Not at all like CNN, in my opintion. CNN tilts so hard to the left I feel dizzy after watching it. Speaking of Bill O., I have to laugh when he mentions his show is a "no spin zone". He has more spin that just about any show I watch.

Re:Economist and the New Yorker

[slashd'oh]

I agree with you about the New Yorker - it's currently the only magazine to which I subscribe, but the cost isn't too expensive, since they publish close to 50 issues per year. Plus, its proper grammar counter-balances Slashdot. :)

My favorite columnist is Peter Schjeldahl, the art critic. I learn - or at least am exposed to - at least one new word in every article he writes and he has amazing density. Take this example, from a recent issue (June 7): "The god of the plains is an orthodox minimalist, specializing in brute coups of uninflected space and light."

Re:Simthsonian

[enforcer999]

Finally! Going through all of these posts had me worried that /. er's only read porn type paper magazines. I am happy that is not the case. I was envisioning a rather disgusting type of picture in my mind. Oh nevermind. I love Smithsonian too. I also subscribe to Discover and Fitness.

No Maximum PC?

[EvilNight]

I mean, 300 comments and nobody mentioned it yet? Maybe I have a grossly inflated opinion of them, and someone can clue me in as to if they suck, and why.

The magazine is short, to the point, has a truckload of awesome tips and tricks sections (most of which would be of interest to even advanced computer users), has phenomenally accurate hardware and software reviews (to the point where I'm almost inclined to take their reviews as gospel) and it has a good geeky attitude that makes it an entertaining read. I've been a subscriber since they were called Boot magazine in the mid-1990s, and to this day I've never seen anything to make me doubt their integrity or make me want to cancel my subscription. It's also a damn cheap mag, renewals are usually $12 for the year.

Basically if you give a damn about computer hardware, you should have a subscription. Very highly recommended.

Re:Maxim!

[JoeBar]

Maxim/Stuff/Blender/FHM can be regularly be gotten for free. Look on slickdeals.net from time to time -- they post the offers there. I got subs to all of them that dont expire until 2009 (every time a free offer comes around, you can tack it on to your current subscription).

Re:I "Read"...

[krs-one]

Every month Playboy has something where the review software, games, and other tech stuff. They once reviewed Mozilla (Firefox didn't exist at the time, I don't believe) and gave it rave reviews. I thought that was pretty cool. I even brought the issue to school to show my nerdy friends, heh.

-Vic

Consumer Reports and Linux Journal

[Omega]

Consumer Reports [consumerreports.org] is great. They don't accept advertising, the magazine is published by a non-profit [consumersunion.org] company and they actually buy every product they test (no freebies or special "demo" models). It makes them incredibly trustworthy and unbiased.

Linux Journal [linuxjournal.com] is a great magazine too. Their articles are incredibly rich in technical details - and the coverage isn't just linux kernel focused. They also have great articles about system administration tools, embedded systems, new hardware and general open source software development. They do accept advertising, but the ads are actually useful and relevant -- embedded h/w suppliers, cluster computing manufacturers, hosting providers, etc. I'm sure this is all preaching to the choir, though.

Scientific American

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

The articles are far too long to read online, and many of the good ones are only in the paper edition.

Re:EXTRA! The magazine of FAIR

[Anonymous Coward]

I read StratFor not for its impartiality, but rather for its expert opinion. This seems to me to be the real difference between StratFor and other news sources.

Free magazines

[deuist]

If you want a free subscription to many of the nation's popular magazines, check out this thread [slickdeals.net] on Slickdeals.net. Updated each week, this list will point you to websites that provide subscriptions to some of the magazines already named by other Slashdot members -- Wired, Stuff, etc...

Re:I "Read"...

[MikeDawg]

When is the last time you opened a Playboy? Picture content isn't very high. . . There are maybe 10 pages of pictures while all the others are either ads or articles.

Re:EXTRA! The magazine of FAIR

[Rei]

I'd have to disagree. I flipped randomly to Fox News over the past couple years, and here is a rough example of what I encountered, uncritically, as if it were indisputable fact.

Iraq is building weapons of mass destruction. Iraq kicked the inspectors out in the 1980s. Saddam has secret nuclear facilities and clandistine mobile labs. Scott Ritter is all wrong, and a child molester to boot. Iraq just launched Scud missiles at our troops, which they weren't supposed to have. We made a chemical weapons find! Whoops, no we didn't, but we just found some now! Whoops, no we didn't, but we just found some now! (x15). Jessica Lynch heroically fought to the last minute, and was raped by brutal Iraqis and abused in a hospital. Mission accomplished!

Few to no retractions.

Re:Read Something Different Every Month.

[mr i want to go home]

Hey yeah, I care. I don't know if you read replies, but you might want to look at MusicMobs.com [musicmobs.com]. It's a great way to find new music by seeing what other people with similar taste to you listen to.

Re:I'm not sure what this will achieve...

[HappyProle]

I've found the Atlantic (they dropped the "monthly" I guess after going to 10 issues/year) to be the most consistently excellent general magazine around.

It seems to have a pretty intelligent, well-informed and even influential subscriber base. You can tell a lot about a magazine just by reading the letters to the editor. After it published a somewhat disparaging article ("The Fall of the House of Saud", by Robert Baer) on Saudi Arabia's ruling family, the Saudi Embassy's Propaganda Chief, err, I mean "Director of Information" wrote quite a lengthy letter [theatlantic.com] to the editor contesting the article. I doubt he writes many letters to "Details", but hey, I could be wrong.

I used to subscribe to the Economist, but I could never get through an issue before the next week's came. Their often severe editorial slant bothered me at times as well.

As for Wired: at one point I viewed my subscription to Wired as some sort of geek passport, some sort of sign I'd embraced geekdom. But somewhere along the way their articles stopped holding my attention. I don't really miss it.

Science News

[14erCleaner]

Science News [sciencenews.org] is an excellent source for recent stories about science-related topics (even better than Slashdot most of the time, I think :).

nature

[Danny Rathjens]

Ever notice the huge percentage of all the neat news stories you read about scientific progress in biology or physics are actually just summaries of the article that was published in nature?

Now if they would just stop selling my address to all those snail-mail spammers that seem to think every nature subscriber is a microbiologist.

Re:Car and Driver

[santos_douglas]

I too am a Car and Driver subscriber, and you can now check out their newest offshoot magazine Boost [caranddriver.com]- dedicated exclusively to compact sports car tuning. Interestingly I saw no mention of it in C&D, and ran across it randomly at the magazine rack. Worthwhile for all the real gear heads out there.

High Times, The Economist & the WSJ

[Anonymous Coward]

All the news that really matters.

Re:Arts Letters Daily

[Any Web Loco]

Poor form to reply to myself, but the ALDaily sister site - Science and Technology Daily [scitechdaily.com] - is always worth a look too.

Re:EXTRA! The magazine of FAIR

[nachoboy]

/. automatically rips the underscores out of URL's (or out of yours anyway), so the URL to which you want to direct readers does not work. Try copying and pasting the following:

http://fahrenheit_fact.blogspot.com/

Note: This post was going to be dedicated to pointing out the sad state of your linking skills. Until I hit the preview button and realized my corrected link was no better. Carry on.

"Linux Format"!

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux Format [linuxformat.co.uk] not as good as LJ, but often comes with a CDROM of linux software.

sys admin [samag.com] is interesting from time to time.

Nuts & Volts [nutsvolts.com] has PC projects from time to time.

I also like Popcom and ARRL mags.

A news junkie's favorites

[guanxi]

I've tried just about everything, trying to find an efficient way to stay as informed as possible. One principle I've learned: The longer time there is between publications (hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, etc), the better the articles. I guess it shouldn't be surprise.

Not just magazines, in rough order of how essential they are.

NEWS AND CURRENT EVENTS

* National Journal Daily Briefing: If you read one thing every day, make it this national headline summary from the beltway publication, the National Journal. Available for free here: doonesbury.com/media/dailybriefing/index.html (there's nothing about it that will remind you of Doonesbury).

* The Economist: I can't add to what's been said above

* The Atlantic: They ask great questions, and think well. They get a little too far from the facts some times, but otherwise fantastic.

* Foreign Affairs: Written by the leading foreign policy experts.

* Stratfor.com: Cold hard geopolitical intelligence, not news. Far superior to most other sources in their predictions, analysis, and willingness to address the fundemental, practical questions.

* NY Times, Wall St Journal, Wash Post, LA Times, Christian Science Monitor: The dailies worth your time.

* BBC World Service Newshour: The toughest journalists around. The interviews are the best, with regular pregnant pauses from world leaders. Unfortunately, at an hour a day with no index to the segments, too time-consuming.

WORLDWIDE PERSPECTIVES

* News International from Pakistan: (jang.com.pk/thenews) I've looked around for good '3rd world' media; this daily isn't perfect, but they're far ahead of most peers. Esp. good when balanced with ...

* Hindustan Times: Another excellent daily from the developing world.

* AFP: The major French newswire covers stories omitted elsewhere.

* Institute for War and Peace Reporting: (iwpr.net) Unique, close-to-the-action coverage of Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and other hot spots.

* Far Eastern Economic Review (feer.com) Owned by Dow Jones (publishers of the Wall St Journal), matchless coverage of the 'far east'.

OTHER SUBJECTS

* SCIENCE: ScienceWeek (scienceweek.com) If you want efficient, serious coverage of science, there's no peer; Scientific American is for wimps. Absolutely take a look at this weekly. I can't recommend them enough.

* PUBLIC OPINION: PollingReport.com: Summaries of all major polls at one, well organized, no-nonsense website.

* BASEBALL: Baseball Primer weblog: (baseballthinkfactory.org/files/primer) If you're as much a baseball geek as you are a computer geek.

I read

[BluedemonX]

Powerlifting USA, The Horse, Ol' School Rodz, Street Rodder, C++ User's Journal, American Iron, and 2600.

Found it... kind of

[Anonymous Coward]

The cover was a picture of two camel's copulating: http://www.sover.net/~daxtell/CamelsHump.html [sover.net]

My favorite magazines

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that all the playboy jokes are out of the way....
Smithsonian Magazine for general interest, it introduces me to things I wouldn't normally discover on my own.
American Heritage for interesting history.
American Heritage - Invention and Technology, for history of technology (I'd guess that many Slashdot readers would enjoy this one).
MacAddict just for fun.
Fine Homebuilding because I like to see how craftsmen build (I'm an architect).
I've been meaning to subscribe to Skeptical Inquirer.

Re:I "Read"...

[Anonymous Coward]

I dig the 60s editions of Playboy. Very attractive, natural women, but none of the horrible vaseline smeared lenses and fros of the 70s and 80s. You won't see any bush in the 60s, but in a way that's refreshing, when you're used to net porn. Even less pics than todays editions, though - more or less just the centrefold and a few of the playmate. Some of the articles are actually quite interesting as well, for a bit of perpective.

And no, it's not even nostalgia - I'm only 19.

Re:A news junkie's favorites

[sebek4]

If you can read french, I advise you Courrier International [courrierinternational.fr]

It's a weekly magazine of only articles from all around the world translated in french with very nice pictures and cartoons from world newspapers.

One or two articles for each continent from different newspapers, plus a special part on a topic, I strongly recommend!