I gave up on Wired years ago. Same with Fast Company, which is Wired with an BS in Business Admin from the University of Phoenix.

I’ve recently subscribed to Acoustic Guitar after getting several free issues, and I get fretful when Kitplanes is late.

I’m only vaguely aware of Fast Company, but it sounds like an excellent magazine…to avoid.

As for Acoustic Guitar and Kitplanes I do own an acoustic guitar, but I don’t play it, and I don’t know if I’d have the patience for kit planes, if my unfinished model of the Millennium Falcon—not a kit plane, I know, but still something you build—is any indication.

I’ve recently subscribed to Acoustic Guitar after getting several free issues, and I get fretful when Kitplanes is late.

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Subscribing never seemed optimal to my goal of finding interesting content.

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Giving WIRED magazine your home address seems a dangerous proposition at best; in Feb of ’08, I’ll celebrate the end of your subscription by raising a cider high. Good luck with the recycling effort – that’s going to be a real trick!

I initially subscribed to WIRED because a co-worker’s offspring was selling magazine subscriptions to buy school uniforms or home pregnancy tests or some such. I believe the initial subscription was for three years, and then I got roped into resubscribing when DialAmerica Marketing called to inform me of all the suffering children and wouldn’t it be great if I could ease their suffering by reading a magazine. Unbeknownst to me, my wife (laboring under the false impression that WIRED was bringing some joy into my life) had already renewed my subscription, retroactive to 5 billion years before the beginning of recorded human history.

As for the recycling, my procrastinatory (that’s probably not a real word) nature will likely result in future civilizations building a residence on my ancient WIRED burial ground. The film franchise based on the ensuing terror will undoubtedly be very popular and successful.

1 – there were two (2) articles that I wanted to read in them

-and-

2 – the specific copy I was looking at had no plastic wrapper (this allows the majority of subscription cards to fall out into the rack where I’d picked it up initially)

Giving WIRED magazine your home address seems a dangerous proposition at best; in Feb of ’08, I’ll celebrate the end of your subscription by raising a cider high. Good luck with the recycling effort – that’s going to be a real trick!

What you should do it what I do every time I receive a new PC World Magazine. (I subscribe to Wired, and as far as ads PCM is worse)

You page through, tearing out every page that’s an ad on both sides. There are plenty of ads you can’t tear out because there’s legitimate content on the reverse side of the page, but after you’re done, you’ve got half the magazine you had, and it’s easier to read.

I haven’t subscribed to an actual PC magazine in several years, but I do seem to recall that the advertisements in PC World and its ilk were at least PC-related, whereas an unfortunate percentage of the ads in WIRED (let’s say 82.5%, just to make something up) are for vodka, cigarettes, fast cars and cool clothes. If I was looking for that, I’d read GQ or Redbook.

I generally can’t find the ToC at all, so I just give up.

But what IS the deal with refusing to number the freaking pages?

I really couldn’t say. I suppose the policy is that they don’t number ad pages, but the ratio of content to advertising is such that the policy renders navigation nigh-impossible.

Said ratio is also, I believe, an imaginary number.

You page through, tearing out every page that’s an ad on both sides. There are plenty of ads you can’t tear out because there’s legitimate content on the reverse side of the page, but after you’re done, you’ve got half the magazine you had, and it’s easier to read.

But what IS the deal with refusing to number the freaking pages?

So what you’re saying is, it’s a magazine?

Well, it certainly purports to be. However, in my experience, it bears little resemblance to the other magazines I’ve read over the years (People, U.S. News & World Report, Entertainment Weekly, even PC World), the bulk of which are easy to navigate, have plenty of content that isn’t prettied up to look like more advertisement, and weigh less than your average cocker spaniel.

WIRED is like Cosmopolitan with a penis.