I mentioned in a previous post that before I buy something, I have to have a plan for how I'm going to use it. I've struggled with valid use-cases for tablet systems for quite a while now. Though I would have bought the HP TouchPad at its $100 fire-sale price, the full-price tablet that changed my mind was the Amazon Kindle Fire.

The Fire is a unique device for me because it fits a good niche. First of all, I have wanted to buy a Kindle ever since my last overseas trip where I wanted to bring several books but could not because of the added space and weight in my carry-on bag. Just as I was considering a standard Kindle Keyboard edition, a new round of Kindles was announced: the Touch and the Fire.

The Fire is unlike other Kindles in that it is not an E Ink display, the battery life is measured in hours instead of weeks, and it has features far beyond the standard Kindle. It's an Android tablet with good Amazon integration, and it's affordable. Here's how I plan to use it:

Reading the news

I often eat meals at my desk, both at home and at work, because I want to read about current events while I dine. The Kindle Fire will enable me to read Google News and other sites easily from the breakfast bar and breakroom table without having to lug around a laptop or netbook.

I will also be able to read more magazines and perhaps even consider a newspaper subscription for reading during times when I am unable to do any work, such as in waiting rooms and while travelling.

Reading books

Admittedly I do not read a lot of books anymore, but I do have a few on my Amazon wish list right now. I'll get the Kindle versions of those and read them before bed and when I'm not doing anything else.

Like I mentioned above, I will also be able to use the Fire to bring several books with me when travelling.

Monitoring email while gaming

When I'm playing Rift or the new Star Wars MMO, I won't have to run my netbook off to the side, or run a browser in the background and alt-tab to it to check email. I can just have the tablet on a stand off to one side of the monitor and see email and IMs as they come in. I don't know if I'll respond on the tablet -- we'll see how the touchpad keyboard goes -- but at least I'll be aware of messages.

Music listening

I'm evaluating Amazon's Cloud Player right now, and I'm pretty impressed with the speed of playback, considering how dog-slow the S3 storage service is when playing MP3s from it. Unfortunately, it only works with MP3 files, whereas about a third of my music collection is in the OGG/Vorbis, FLAC, or WAV formats. The Kindle Fire will play all of these files, but not through the Amazon Cloud Player. I'll see how this works out exactly, but I think I can arrange it such that I can store everything on the Cloud Drive for a low monthly fee, and do playback from the Fire whenever I have an Internet connection.

Since I do not have an MP3 player or smart phone, this will be my only portable music player aside from my netbook.

The occasional TV show or movie when I'm not at home

I can't see myself watching too many shows on the Fire, since it's a small screen and I have a great home entertainment system. I like Blu-Ray films at 1080p with surround sound, so little handheld devices with headphones don't impress me. However, if I find myself in a waiting room or in some other situation where I don't have my netbook with me, and I want to be mindlessly entertained, I have the full power of my Amazon Prime membership at my disposal.

Without a Prime membership, the Fire loses this bit of value. Streaming movies and TV shows are a key part of the device and the service.

Overall

I plan to get a decent amount of sporadic use out of the Kindle Fire. Mostly, it'll take some time and usage away from paper books and my netbook, while replacing any minor needs or desires I had for a smart phone. We'll see if it works out as expected.

I've been interested in handheld computer systems since the Apple Newton made its debut some 20 years ago. With the Newton's quick demise, my affection transferred reluctantly to a laptop computer and TI graphing calculators, and then to PDAs. For some reason, when PDAs evolved into smart phones, they lost all appeal to me. I think it's because I want a phone that is first and foremost a reliable voice communication device that will save me in an emergency, and there are no smart phones that fit that description.

I was interested in MP3 players for a while, too. My biggest problem there was finding one that would play OGG/Vorbis files. I thought I found one with the Neuros Digital Audio Computer, but it was discontinued just as I was prepared to buy one. (Actually I did buy one, but it arrived defective, and I opted to return it for a refund instead of a replacement because I really needed it immediately to record some interviews, and was forced to buy a cheaper iRiver device for that purpose.)

I had some interest in early tablet systems, but I was disappointed that they all ran Windows and used traditional desktop input paradigms without good input devices. Some things you just don't want to do with a stylus or your fingertip, and lugging around a keyboard kind of defeats the purpose of a tablet system. For this reason, I own a netbook and absolutely love it -- the portability of a tablet with the input and software of a desktop machine.

I always have to have a plan for how I'm going to use a new machine; this is how I justify the expense of buying it. I have to have very good reasons to spend the money. "Because I want a new toy" is not good enough. There are lots of toys I can buy.

And, actually, I did buy some literal toys. I had handheld gaming systems from the original Nintendo Game Boy to the latest Playstation Portable and nearly all valid stops inbetween. I loved handheld gaming when I was a teenager, and I continued upgrading systems all the way until a few years ago with the PSP 2000, using my newer systems mostly when travelling.

The PSP was the best portable gaming device ever created. Not only could it play games, it could connect to the Internet and get on the Web in a limited fashion, store a decent MP3 library and play back music in a few different formats, play videos (even entire movies), and connect to the Playstation 3 seamlessly. Despite all these awesome features, and some really great games, I rarely used my PSP and eventually sold it on eBay for about half what I paid for it.

I had trouble figuring out why I didn't use the PSP despite liking it. In the end, I determined that my sense of "fun" had changed over the years, and I was much more focused on reading and writing. When I wanted to play a game, it was a complex game that required time -- World of Warcraft, mostly. Working on books and blog posts and reading the news was the new "fun" for me, so I began looking more toward devices that would enable me to do that.

That's where tablet systems come back into play. You might think that because I was excited about the Newton that I'm an Apple fan. I actually hate Apple; I consider it a brand that caters to poseurs, metrosexuals, and simpletons. It seems to me that people who buy Apple products think that they are buying into some kind of lifestyle instead of buying a device that they will use for some valid purpose. People want to be seen with Apple devices like they want to be seen wearing Gucci or Douchebag & Gabbana clothes. For a while I would hang out in coffee shops and work on articles and books on my Thinkpad (running OpenBSD!). There was always at least one haughty-looking hipster in the room on his Apple computer, ostensibly working on his Great American Novel, but in actuality just browsing his Facebook feed. That, to me, is the epitome of the Apple lifestyle: using a gadget to supply a personality and image that you can't create on your own.

I have more concrete reasons for disliking Apple. Price, first and foremost -- Apple is always more expensive. It's also a limited-time item. If I buy a Thinkpad, I can expect to find a new 9-cell battery for it five years from now. I can install new operating systems on it for years to come, and I have a choice of which ones I'd like to use. Apple, not so much. I'm also against vendor lock-in when it comes to software, and Apple is so immersed in vendor lock-in that it makes Microsoft look like the Free Software Foundation. Lastly, I hate the fucking interface. OS X is unusable for me. I've got no taskbar to see what's happening in my programs at a glance, there is no mouse acceleration, and I don't care for the Candyland-style desktop theme. Give me GNOME 2 ala openSUSE or Linux Mint, or let me enjoy the beauty of a plain command line environment ala OpenBSD or FreeBSD any day, but get that gaudy Apple shit away from me.

Maybe it's just me, but I remember everyone saying the iPad was crap when it first came out. Even Apple fans were all like, "Eh, it's just an oversized iPhone, and I already have an iPhone, so why do I need an iPad?" Yet they still went out and bought one. And then the second one came out and everyone was like, "Eh, it's not much better than the first one," yet they still went out and paid through the fucking nose for that, too. I stood by and watched in awe as people blew $1000 on two tablets that they had to struggle to fit into their computing lifestyle. Apple comes out with a product, and some people will just go and buy it and proclaim its greatness no matter what it is or what it does.

So I watched as friends and co-workers bought iPads and dutifully carried them everywhere for a few weeks, rarely using them for anything other than playing games. I did see one co-worker use his iPad for taking notes and reading email for about a month, but he ended up replacing it with a Macbook Air after that. After two months, nobody was carrying their iPad anywhere anymore -- it was back to the laptop computer and the smart phone.

Remember when HP killed the TouchPad, and there was this insane run on all of the stores that sold it to buy it at the firesale price of $100? I wanted one. I was willing to pay $100 for a computing toy, to see if I could make it work for something in my world. $500? No way. But $100 was certainly worth it. I didn't get one, but a friend of mine did. He thought it was really cool for a day or two, then shelved it because email didn't work correctly through it, and there wasn't much else to do with it.

That pretty much sums up tablets: They don't actually do much that is useful. Sure, you can watch movies and listen to music and play games, but why are you doing all of that shit on a tiny 7" or 9" screen with headphones when you bought a $2000 (or more) home entertainment system to do all of the same things in 1080p with surround sound? (Or maybe you didn't -- maybe your tablet IS your entertainment system. If so, I sincerely applaud your planning and frugality.) Why would you listen to music on your tablet when you've already got an MP3 player with more storage, or a smaller smart phone that you already carry everywhere? Why would you play games on your tablet when you already have the same games for your smart phone or PC, and you have three unused gaming systems in the living room plus a portable gaming system or two on the shelf?

I think people get caught up in the "wow" factor, the marketing, and the projected lifestyle of a tablet and buy on impulse. Few people honestly expect to use a tablet for anything meaningful.

So I have been sitting on the sidelines watching the tablet game unfold before me. I didn't want the early Windows tablets because netbooks made more sense. I didn't buy into the iPad for all of the reasons I mentioned above. I didn't get to the right store at the right time to get an HP TouchPad for $100. None of the other ~$500 tablets impress me enough to spend that much money. But last month, Amazon unveiled the Kindle Fire, a 7" tablet for $200, and I was immediately interested. It's affordable, it connects to my Amazon Prime membership to stream TV shows and movies if I have an Internet connection to work with, and it's based on Android, so it should have some decent software availability.

I always thought the Kindle was a great idea in general, but I didn't think I would ever want to buy one. I don't do a lot of book reading. It wasn't until I was packing for a trip overseas and had to worry about bag space that I finally realized why a Kindle would be useful to me. The Fire, unfortunately, is more of a computer tablet than an e-reader, despite its name. My plan, though, is to use it both as a portable music player for times when I am waiting in line or in transit someplace (remember: I don't have an MP3 player or a smart phone), and as a complement to my netbook when I don't have the time to concentrate on writing. We'll see how it works out.

Every phone menu system ever:

1. Greeting message in two languages, explaining which numbers to press for English and Spanish
2. Please listen carefully as our options have recently changed
3. Press 1 for a long pre-recorded message containing only shit nobody cares about, followed by "Thank you, goodbye!" and a hangup
4. Press 2 for a long pre-recorded message containing only shit nobody cares about, followed by "Thank you, goodbye!" and a hangup
5. Press 3 for an overlong vocal description of shit I can find out through the Web site, which I have already consulted prior to calling, followed by Goodbye/hangup
6. Press 4 for options that don't apply to anyone in any reasonable scenario
7. Press 5 for something that seems like it might be useful, but is actually not; Goodbye/hangup, call back
8. Long pause
9. Or press zero (or pound, or 9) to speak with a representative
10. After pressing the only valid option -- 0/#/9/whatever to get to a human being -- a prerecorded message is played, asking me if I know that the Web site can answer most of my questions, including a URL and directions on how to use the Web site
11. All of our representatives are currently assisting other customers. Your call is important to us. Your wait time is approximately {wildly incorrect estimate}

Let's get one thing straight, bucko: If my call were important to you, you would not have just tried to get rid of me through a phone menu.

My favorite variant is American Express, which is entirely voice-operated (except for the card number entering question, which is optionally touch-tone). Despite the fact that I speak clearly and have no discernible accent, the system can never understand what I am saying. However, I have discovered that yelling "FUCK YOU" into the phone when asked for which options you want to choose will forward you to a representative without further questions. Apparently it knows when you're pissed off, and what you want when this occurs.

Alright, look. I know about your fucking useless Web site because that's where I got the phone number to call. Where the hell else would I get the number from? Do you think that I have time-travelled from 1990 and therefore do not go to the Web as my initial method of solving any and all problems? I am not a moron. For this reason, I think every company should have a non-moron, direct-to-representative phone number cleverly posted in a way that only non-morons would see. Phone menus are designed for the lowest common denominator -- the stupidest people imaginable -- so the rest of the above-100 IQ customer base must suffer through narrative designed to boot people out of the call center.

I wish the useless Web site weren't useless. Who thinks up these FAQs and support question trees? Yes it is plugged in and turned on and I have read the fucking manual. I'm here because I have a problem not covered in the manual and therefore not anticipated by the company, so what right do you have to call them Frequently Asked Questions? If these questions were asked frequently, you should have written better instructions or made your UI more user friendly so that I never had to ask them in the first place. And what research is that assessment based on? I'd bet a million to one that that the MOST frequently asked question is "What is the phone number for customer service?" yet I have never seen that covered in a FAQ. Every question and answer in a typical FAQ is some derivative of:

Q: My head is up my ass. What do I do?
A: Gently remove it and continue enjoying our product!

Imagine what an industry-changing breakthrough it would be to have a FAQ actually composed of evidence-based frequently asked questions. Imagine the revolution in customer service if the phone system wasn't stuck in the 20th century and actually focused on helping customers solve problems instead of punting them or making them wait.

These insipid phone menus have taught me that companies see customer service as a huge pain in the ass that they don't want to deal with. It's like warranty fulfillment and taxes and regulation compliance -- it's something to try to avoid, get out of, and reduce if at all possible. Money-pits to walk around. It makes me feel like I'm some kind of bad guy for having to call up and talk to someone, and as a result, I avoid it as often as possible. I now see customer service as a small battle between the corporate machine that takes money and offers minimal service, and the little guy with a problem that the company does not want to solve; if they wanted to solve it, they'd do it through their Web site and make it easy on customers.

This is the result of paying for the physical "product" and getting support and service as a "value-add." The sale of the product makes money, and the service and support increase overhead costs, so in a perfect world, the company would just sell products and successfully punt or divert all customer support requests so that the costs associated with service can be cut.

But what happens if you invert the process? What happens when your "product" is service and support, and the physical item is free? This business model is such a small part of the market at large that it forces you to make customer education your primary business challenge. I came to this realization because recently I was asked to (theoretically) think about how to prove the value of phone and email support to customers whose primary "product" that they pay for is support and service. If the physical item is free and you sell customer service instead, it had better be the best customer service in the whole industry. There are instances where customers need initial help in installation and configuration, then never contact the company again and end up cancelling their support contract because they don't find value in it once everything's working. This is short-sighted, of course, because if there's a third-party hardware failure or change in infrastructure that causes problems with the software (or it has to be reconfigured to work with new technologies), then your production environment is down and it's your fault for not being able to fix it with a high-priority support request. In this instance, the majority of the physical product corporate world has tainted the customer base with hidden phone numbers, idiot phone reps who know nothing and can only apologize and redirect you to the next level, "designed to punt" phone menus, nonsensical support Web pages, and horrible documentation.

So the challenge, as I said above, is to teach service-model customers that they are not being a pain in the ass by emailing or calling support (and there is no phone menu! You talk to a real human being), that the support department will gladly help them or direct them to excellent documentation or, if their needs are more basic, to the training department where they can purchase classroom time with an expert or, if their needs are more advanced, to the services department to purchase a consulting engagement with a highly-trained professional. And all of this stuff has to be top-notch, so you cannot have any of these programs be developed or managed by people who come from the other side of the industry, where the "pain in the ass customer" philosophy keeps the business in the black. Management of this inverted business model is a special challenge unto itself, and involves a certain degree of faith in the process.

So back to the question: How would I prove the value of paid support and/or service? This would be my approach:

• Ask the sales manager to ensure that all sales personnel create a positive first-impression on prospects regarding contacting the company. Nobody should ever feel like they are being a pain in the ass for calling.
• If there is a phone menu system, kill it. If it's at all possible, use fire to kill it. In fact, best nuke it from orbit, just to make sure.
• Tell the marketing droids to make it publicly known that we don't use a phone menu, and that a human being will answer the phone, if available. Perhaps encourage them to use a video of you killing your phone menu system with fire.
• Set up a voicemail system to catch missed calls; make the message as short as possible and promise callers that their call will be returned as soon as possible. And mean it!
• Designate a customer liason team to keep contact with customers up to the customer's comfort level. Some people do not want to be called every month, some might like that level of attention. It might be a good idea to establish this during the sales process.
• In addition to the previous point, act like a drug company rep as budget allows. Take high-dollar customers out to lunch, offer them a vacation package that takes them to the area of the corporate office so you can talk to them and give them a tour. Send them cool stuff on special occasions. Give them gifts, within an affordable budget.
• Train support personnel to act like customer calls and emails are affirmations of the business model. Most support people are going to come from an environment where customer contact is poison -- it adds to overhead and reduces profits. Get this out of their heads.
• Make the price non-negotiable. This instills in customers the fact that the service has a solid and unassailable value. Never offer a deal on the price of service. Add more to the service, give gifts and perks, but do not reduce the price. This is a psychological ploy to teach customers that the service is worth what they are paying, and it will encourage them to interact more with the company in order to take advantage of the value.
• Align commodity product development, UI design, and documentation to make company interaction mandatory. Prove that the service has value, and that the necessities are readily available and competent. Since you are selling the service instead of the commodity product, you must prove the usefulness of the service, not the commodity product. This is tough to do without making the commodity product look like it sucks. There's definitely a delicate balance here.
• If there are "users" and "administrators," then design the commodity product such that people who don't interact with the company have an easy time using it. Users should love it, and admins should love the fact that they can get expert help to implement it.

Unfortunately, this is almost an abandoned business model and I will probably never be able to test my theories. Similarly, though, the pure product model seems to be fading away as well. The trend appears to be toward selling hardware or software plus a required service component. A different battle for a different day.

Recently a shitload of people cancelled their Netflix subscriptions. I was one of them. Upon making that choice, Netflix asked me to explain why I was leaving and what they could do better via a multiple choice survey. Unfortunately, my chief reason for cancelling wasn't part of the survey, and I'm a little bothered by the fact that Netflix will be misled about my departure. So I'm going to explain it here in the unlikely event that anyone gives a damn.

Up until the infamous price hike, Netflix did everything right. They had support for the Nintendo Wii when I had one, and the Playstation 3 when I switched to that system. I saw a ton of movies that I'd been meaning to see for a long time, and discovered a few films that I would probably not have heard of otherwise. Overall I was very happy about the service and considered it a bargain.

I had a "one DVD at a time" Netflix subscription with the Blu-Ray add-on service. I did stream some shows and movies over the course of my subscription, but I was extremely displeased with the availability of content (especially when I could find the show through the search function, but then when I went to play it I was told it was not available). I felt that the streaming service was nice to have, but unnecessary. I was very happy with the disc-by-mail service. I paid good money for a fancy HD home entertainment system and I prefer to use it to its full ability when watching movies. The cheapest way to do that is to get a disc-by-mail service with Blu-Ray support.

If I was so happy with the service, why did I cancel? I can't even give a solid answer, other than, "The company seems unstable, they've made a lot of bizarre choices lately, and I don't trust them." Thinking about it a little more deeply, I cancelled after approximately two years of service because:

• Each month for the past three months, something the company has announced has upset me. Raising prices for the streaming service I rarely use, forcing me to choose a new level of service to avoid the price increase, isolating the disc-by-mail service. Only reason I didn't cancel sooner was, these announcements always came a few days after I'd been billed for the month, and when my billing cycle came due, they either did something to make up for it or I forgot to cancel.
• Being too wishy-washy. Splitting out the disc service, changing their mind, raising prices and thumbing their nose at subscribers, then apologizing when it was evident that more people would cancel than they thought. The organization is poorly managed. I had no clue what new shitty announcement would come from Netflix this month.
• Blockbuster sent me a month of disc-by-mail service for free, and it was about the same price as Netflix, but with better selection.

If Netflix had said, "We're raising prices but delivering higher-quality streaming or a much wider selection," then I might have accepted it because I'd be getting more for my money. But I was actually getting less because Starz backed out of Netflix around the time of the price hike. I didn't even watch any Starz content, but the fact that less was available to me for a higher cost really stuck with me. I sort of said, "No, fuck you for making me pay extra," even though the price actually got cheaper because I removed the streaming option and there was ultimately no change to my disc-by-mail service.

I could have afforded the marginal price increase without any trouble. But I cancelled because there was something about it that offended me on principle. I'm not even sure what it was, exactly, but I would have actually paid more for identical service through Blockbuster simply because Netflix offended me.

Even if I were an over-principled bastard in making this choice, I'm sure there are more people like me who were part of the exodus. I don't think the majority of cancellations happened for that reason, though, and I also don't think Netflix' mass cancellations are because people are unwilling to pay the extra money. I think it's more because, due to economic difficulties or the allure of competing services, it was already on their mind as an unnecessary expense or inferior service, and the price hike simply sealed the deal. The sturm-und-drang of the announcement made subscribers think critically about the service. We all just paid automatically and used it as we pleased, but suddenly, with a price increase of some kind (any kind), we were forced to really evaluate what we were getting for our money. It could have been a ten cent increase and the result would have been the same. There is a definite lesson in business psychology here, but I don't know exactly what it is.

My previous post on Unity being the end of Ubuntu attracted attention, and it made me realize I didn't do nearly as much constructive writing as I should have on the subject. I didn't expect anyone to read my stupid blog. I should have known better. So here I go:

Don't like the new Unity interface in Ubuntu 11.10? Here are some reasonable alternatives:

GNOME Shell

apt-get install gnome-shell

The default interface for GNOME 3 is GNOME Shell. Like Unity, it appears to be designed with tablet computers in mind, so there are going to be a lot of similar annoyances to Unity: no taskbar, single-focus for each running application, low (almost nonexistent) customizability, and a lot more clicking or keyboard shortcutting to switch applications or desktops.

There is a way to add a taskbar to GNOME Shell, though, and that might get you through the day if you can't take the time right now to stop and install other DEs or distros:

apt-get install tint2

Then run tint2 from the command line to start the taskbar.

GNOME classic in Ubuntu

If you install GNOME Shell, you also get the old GNOME "fallback" session, which has GNOME 2-like menus and a taskbar. Unfortunately, your old GNOME applets are gone and never coming back, and forget about customizing any meaningful part of the interface. What you see is all you get.

Again, this might be a good temporary alternative to messing with other DEs or distros in the short term. To use it, install GNOME Shell as explained above, then log out and choose the gnome-fallback item from the session list in the login screen

KDE

Download and install Kubuntu as a replacement; or from Ubuntu 11.10:

apt-get install kde-standard

KDE was once the ideological enemy of GNOME. Originally it was Windows-like where GNOME was Mac OS-like, and in its default configuration it still uses the same Start menu paradigm as Windows 9x/Vista. However, in recent years KDE4 has become highly customizable, and contains many of the same kinds of applets and widgets (more, maybe?) as GNOME 2.

It's probably easier to switch to KDE and spend a half hour customizing it to your preferences than it is to suffer through Unity on a computer with a keyboard.

Xfce

Download and install Xubuntu as a replacement; or from Ubuntu:

apt-get install xubuntu-desktop

Xfce is less resource-intensive than GNOME or KDE, while still being a complete desktop environment. It works with GNOME applications quite well, and bears a slight resemblance to GNOME 2's interface. I have little experience with it, but from what I have read, seen, and heard, I think Xubuntu is going to be my Ubuntu replacement for my netbook.

LXDE

Download and install Lubuntu as a replacement; or from Ubuntu:

apt-get install lubuntu-core lubuntu-icon-theme lubuntu-restricted-extras

Like Xfce, LXDE was designed to be lightweight and resource-efficient. While Xfce is a shadow of GNOME, LXDE is a shadow of KDE. Since I'm personally GNOME-inclined, I don't think I will try this out, but I wouldn't discourage anyone else from installing and using it.

Linux Mint

Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu (there is also a version based on Debian; not much difference from a desktop perspective), and has the ability to replace Ubuntu while keeping your /home directory intact. I tried this with Linux Mint 11 and Ubuntu 11.10, and I ended up with a strangely distorted desktop that needed quite a bit of configuration-fixing before it was usable. Eventually I abandoned the effort and switched to another distro. However, from a clean installation, Mint works just as well as Ubuntu, but requires less messing with repositories to get proprietary extras, and is still on GNOME 2 as of this writing. However, Linux Mint 12 will ship with GNOME 3.2, which uses Shell as the default interface. According to this suggestion with a quote from the Linux Mint project leader in the comments, GNOME 2 support will remain in this release, and there are plans to support the GNOME 2 fork project (MATE) in the future. So at least you're safe if you switch to Mint.

openSUSE

This is among the oldest extant Linux distributions, and uses unique hardware and software configuration and control frameworks. openSUSE has always standardized on KDE, but also has excellent GNOME support. Unfortunately, the default GNOME configuration is the "slab" menu, which I've always hated, but it takes literally 5 minutes of configuration work to convert the default theme into a traditional GNOME 2 interface.

Once you add the right package repositories, you've got all of the right applications, drivers, and codecs you need. I was actually shocked at how capable and bug-free openSUSE 11.4 was for me, and the default theme is quite attractive. I think I'm going to keep this one on my home desktop computer; this is where I do a lot of XML editing work, remote server administration, music-listening, and sometimes some recreational writing.

Other distros

I called out Linux Mint and other Ubuntu derivatives because you can switch to them without having to learn a new package manager or worry about software or hardware compatibility problems. openSUSE was the exception because it's been around a long time and has an excellent GNOME 2 implementation, and if you're going to make the switch to a non-Ubuntu-based distro, that's my top recommendation.

Next in the list is, of course, Debian GNU/Linux, which is what Ubuntu is based on. Same package manager, but not as much pre-configuration as Ubuntu. If you're already an advanced Ubuntu user, it will be easy to switch to Debian, and you may find that you like it better because it gives you a little more control.

Beyond that, there are many, many other distributions. Most of them are specialized to certain tasks, computers, or computing paradigms. Take a look at Distrowatch to learn about the top distributions that others are using, and try some out for yourself if you've actually read this far into the article and haven't seen any viable options.

(Note: this article is just an amusing complaint. If you want actionable information, I wrote this as a follow-up: Alternatives to Unity.

I foolishly upgraded to Ubuntu 11.10 yesterday on my work laptop. Usually Ubuntu upgrades are fairly smooth, with a few configuration and third-party repository and application installation tasks at the end. Last release was a hassle because someone mutilated the user interface with something called "Unity," which was supposed to be a next-generation replacement for the familiar and highly usable GNOME Desktop Environment. Ubuntu was designed with GNOME in mind; now it is designed for Unity.

Why does Unity suck so much? Because it assumes you're a complete retard who can only click shiny buttons. It assumes you don't care what is going on in any programs except the one you currently have focus on. It assumes you want to run everything maximized. It assumes you don't need proper notifications from certain applications. It puts the hideable launch bar on the left, where you accidentally activate it every time you go to the File menu in a program, or aim for the refresh button in a browser. Speaking of browsers, Unity hates Google Chrome (the browser I use most) so much, it buried it three levels deep in a ridiculously oversimplified, slow-loading, nonsensical menu system. It assumed I wanted every LibreOffice program in my application dock; I use those programs so infrequently that I may as well uninstall them, but somehow Unity thinks they are more important to me than Chrome. Hell, Unity thought I would prefer Chromium, and up until now I thought I'd uninstalled it!

I can no longer quickly switch between programs without having to cycle through alt-tab or fishing through the application dock and possibly selecting from a list of program instances. My desktop is well-hidden and difficult to get to. I can no longer quickly pause a music application, especially if it doesn't work with a multimedia keyboard (Pandora). Instant messages and emails are not easily seen because the notification applets don't recognize the programs I use. I can no longer look at the taskbar title of Firefox to see what the Jira case number I'm working on is -- I now have to unhide the application dock, click Firefox, look at the case number, go to the application dock, select my XML editor icon, click it, select the XML editor from the turntable selector, and... and... shit, I forgot the number! Back to the application dock, Firefox, etc. Look at all I have lost in my computing experience because of Unity.

To be perfectly clear, I am not complaining that Unity is different from traditional GNOME. I can deal with things being in a different place. I can deal with improvements that are hard to adjust to. What I can't deal with is extra actions that make me think too much about the software; I can't have these kinds of distractions. I've lost productivity because the Ubuntu UI was redesigned for the utterly stupid, leaving experienced experts like me to rot.

In 11.04, you could switch back to GNOME by installing the gnome-panel package and selecting Classic GNOME from the login session screen. This is no longer possible in 11.10. While you can install that package and get a half-working GNOME menu system, you cannot get your taskbar or configurable panels back. There doesn't seem to be any reasonable way around it, except if you want to install GNOME Shell, which is the next-generation GNOME interface that is somehow worse than Unity. What the fuck is wrong with these people? What are they thinking? Do they actually use these abominations they create, or are they designing for some mythical, completely theoretical user base while themselves relying on something more expert-friendly?

To make matters worse, the 11.04 to 11.10 upgrade crashed my system at about 90% completion, which caused it to hang when starting the X server. Fortunately I fixed it by switching to a virtual terminal and doing this:

sudo su -

dpkg --configure -a && apt-get update && apt-get upgrade

Half an hour later, I had a working Ubuntu 11.10, though I've been slow all day long because of the interface.

So what do we, the Ubuntu-experienced, do? Well, maybe someone will fork Ubuntu and do a Classic GNOME remix distribution. That probably won't happen anytime soon. There are Lubuntu and Xubuntu, which use lightweight desktop environments as alternatives to traditional GNOME and KDE. There is Kubuntu, but I don't like KDE's single-bar interface.

In the old days when your distribution failed you, you'd switch to something else because there were a hundred other desktop Linux distributions. Sadly, since I switched to Ubuntu a few years ago, most of the high-end commercial distros are gone -- they never made enough money. Xandros makes middleware now, and its desktop distro looks ancient and forgotten. Mandriva fired most of its engineers and discontinued PowerPack Edition last month. openSUSE is switching its GNOME implementation to GNOME Shell, but you can still get GNOME 2 in openSUSE 11.4. Ubuntu was like this big, old, shark that gobbled up the users of other desktop distros until there were few swimmers left. Now that we're all on Ubuntu, we're slaves to Mark Shuttleworth's shitty opinions on UI design.

Somehow, somewhere along the line, the desktop Linux realm took some serious drugs and became obsessed with UI paradigms that don't make sense, aren't usable, and impress no one. Like a cranky old man refusing to sell out his land to the railroad, I've now got a Unity/GNOME Shell train running through my yard and the only option left is to move... except there's nowhere else in the neighborhood to move to. I guess my options are:

1. Switch to Linux Mint, which is Debian-based and appears to use the "old" GNOME 2
2. Use Debian or Arch and install a non-Shell GNOME 2 environment
3. Switch to KDE and use a different distro (OpenSUSE, probably, though the most recent release also has GNOME 2)
4. Switch to FreeBSD and install the forked non-Shell GNOME environment
5. Continue to suffer with Unity or GNOME Shell (I honestly don't know which is worse!)

Many of these options involve relying on GNOME 2. I wonder how long some of the GNOME 2 distros will avoid GNOME 3. Perhaps they just haven't caught up to the current release?

The likely scenario will be to use a variety of these methods. My work computer will probably go to OpenSUSE; my netbook will probably go to FreeBSD or Debian; my home desktop will probably go to Linux Mint. Any way you put it, I'm done with Ubuntu. Considering how many people around my office, among my friends, and on the Web feel similarly, I wonder if this is the start of an Ubuntu exodus. Many of us switched from Windows 98 or XP to Linux many years ago. At some point in the interim, everyone seemed to standardize on Ubuntu because it worked well and was highly usable. Some people I've talked to refuse to upgrade their older Ubuntu to avoid Unity; others are looking at other desktop environments to use with an Ubuntu variant. A few, like me, are switching to other distros. I wonder, though, if some people won't just go back to Windows, being that it's no longer the horrid beast we so eagerly escaped. More than one person has seriously suggested it to me this week.

I've seen this happen before. Someone at the top makes a boneheaded decision and sticks with it until near or complete collapse. I'll give you some examples and you can look them up:

• BitKeeper
• Xfree86
• KDE 4
• NetBSD (leading to the OpenBSD fork)

With Mark Shuttleworth insisting that Unity is the only future for Ubuntu, and the GNOME project insisting that GNOME Shell is the way the environment will develop, you've got to wonder if this is the end of Ubuntu. I predict that the post-Ubuntu dominant distro will rise by sticking with GNOME 2, or whatever fork of it survives and flourishes.

I use many writing programs in my daily work. I don't think they are all necessarily "best in class" according to some falsely objective criteria, but for one reason or another, I prefer them over their competitors.

Text editors

Text editors are in a competitive class. For entirely subjective reasons that matter to no one but me, I prefer Vim for command line work, and gedit for GUI work. Part of what I appreciate about both of these programs is, they aren't struggling to innovate. Sometimes you have a solid feature set that the userbase likes, and there's little or nothing to be done to improve on it. In those cases, the "improvements" are only qualified as such by a subset of users. Some people will like them, some won't, but in all instances everyone who uses the program and updates it regularly will have to go through a new learning period. I don't want to do that with my text editors, and I'm glad they're reasonably stagnant in terms of new feature development.

XML/HTML editors

XML editors, on the other hand, really piss me off. The first thing I do when I install one is disable or remove the majority of its most prominent features and turn a few necessary ones on. Tag completion fucks up my workflow. I need text wrap, thank you, because I don't enjoy side-scrolling to edit a paragraph of text. Courier New for the default font, really? And 10pt on that horrible default font?

Despite my frustration with such programs, I find Bluefish and Oxygen to be the least infuriating of the bunch. Bluefish is excellent for Web-based work (HTML, JavaScript, CSS), and Oxygen is superior for DITA and DocBook because of its syntax parser. HTML tags are easy, and if you screw them up it doesn't usually matter much; DITA tags can be hell because the DTD is strict and in many cases nonsensical.

Document processors

This is a weird category, and I can actually only think of one program that exists in it: LyX. I truly enjoy the concept of LyX; it assumes that you're going to set the styles by hand at some point, so it just lets you go nuts with content creation without having to worry about presentation. You are forced to use styles to define the layout; you cannot select a line of text and increase the font size and center it and bold it and use that for your title (you shouldn't be doing this in a word processor anyway), you must use a style designed for titles. If you don't like the way the title style is fashioned, you must edit it yourself.

When I've drafted large book projects in the past, I preferred to use LyX. I would copy my plain-text outline into it, create headings from the outline items, and then fill in the blanks. When I was done with the draft, I'd export it as RTF, import it into Word or LibreOffice, and apply publisher-specific styles and do spell-checking and other revision work.

Though LyX (and LaTeX, which is the text presentation technology behind it) is intended for print work, publishers rarely accept LaTeX or LyX files for author submissions. This is one of those head-in-the-clouds misconceptions that a lot of free software advocates have when they try to convince people that Word is unnecessary. If you are writing a book and you think you're going to do it all in LyX or LaTeX because it was designed to produce print-accurate manuscripts, you're horribly mistaken. Maybe some academic publishers will accept these formats, but the half-dozen professional book publishers I've worked with either did not accept such formats (and in some cases had never heard of them), or they reluctantly accept them and then turn them into Word files.

Admittedly I haven't used LyX in a long time, but that's because Word (2010) got a lot better at creating ad-hoc outlines from headings and putting them into an interface object that makes a large document easy to traverse. Since all publishers prefer to work with Word files when dealing with pre-production manuscripts (what goes to the actual printer is not important -- the author is far removed from that process), it's easier to stick with one tool than it is to start in one and transfer to another.

Word processors

First of all, do you really need to use a word processor? If you're writing a quick note or list, editing a configuration file, taking notes on a lecture or meeting, writing poetry, or in situations where you just need to start typing right now, stay the fuck away from word processors -- they're only going to get in the way and make your task more difficult.

I've written a few individual and roundup-style word processor reviews in my day. I recall most of my conclusions being that OpenOffice.org (now LibreOffice, fortunately without the ill-conceived ".org") was the best you could do for free, and for people who truly needed good style and comment/change-tracking features, TextMaker was the best option. For many years, I preferred WordPerfect. It was awesome -- it had a built-in Oxford dictionary, so I could right-click a word and get a definition quickly. I could also select a word, then go to the Synonyms drop-down box in the button bar and see a list of synonyms. It was -- no pun intended -- the perfect word processor for professional book writing. That was version 10, circa 2000. Version 12 was not much of an improvement for me; it did have a really cool "compatibility mode" feature that made it look like WordPerfect 5 for DOS and Word for Windows, but what am I going to do with that? Then came the much-hyped version X3, and its default interface was a huge step down -- it had the mark of evil upon it: a built-in Yahoo toolbar. As far as I'm concerned, WordPerfect is dead. If someone from Corel wants to let me know when the Yahoo shit is out of the interface, and it's once again focused on professional writing (not legal documents), that's cool. I'll give it another shot.

One thing that WordPerfect had nearly 10 years before anyone else is tabbed document views. If I have two documents open, I don't need two instances of the program running; all I need are two tabs in one program instance. Aside from decreased memory usage, tabbed views also decrease the amount of space a Word processor occupies in the taskbar. I frequently need to have multiple documents open along with multiple browsers and other programs (image editing, music player, terminal window, text editor). My taskbar space is limited, and cluttering it up with multiple program instances wastes my time. Web browsers have had tabbed views for how long now? WordPerfect has had this feature for more than a decade. TextMaker has had it since version 2008, a mere 8 years after WordPerfect. Yet here we are with Word 2010 and the constantly-evolving LibreOffice -- the two leaders in proprietary and open source word processors -- and neither have it.

I think the source of the problem is, the people who design word processors don't actually use them for professional writing. Just like with XML editors, word processors always have the wrong default feature set. Not just for me, but pretty much for everyone who uses word processors on a regular or professional basis. You're always going to need to tune the feature set to fit your needs. For some reason, word processor developers think that you definitely want the most annoying features and probably don't want the most useful features. I don't understand why this is. I wish they'd quit guessing about my workflow and just fucking ask me what I want. On first use after installation, word processors should show me a sensibly-organized options screen where I can make my own decisions about things like tabbed views, "smart" text selection, drag-and-drop mouse actions, overtype with the insert key (who the fuck uses this option? Honestly!), automatic correction, reading comprehension level for the grammar checker, acceptable traditional spellings for some words in the American dialect, and the default file type and location to save to. Sure, there's an options screen I can visit on my own, but in every word processor I've seen, the options screens are badly organized, sometimes even to the point that they're split out into "options" and "preferences" and "customization" or other manner of settings balkanization.

Oh, and one more thing: NOBODY EVER WANTS A MEMORY-RESIDENT LAUNCHER. Do not load some shit at startup that controls mimetype file preferences, or pops up a helpful little window, or makes the word processor start faster. Fuck everything about memory-resident "launcher" applications. While my desktop machine may have enough RAM to solve world hunger, my netbook does not. Even if it did, I like having a clean interface that only shows options that I use, and when I want to launch your program, I will click its quicklaunch button or fish it out of the GNOME or Start menus. And by the way -- do not presume that I love your software so much that I want a quicklaunch icon for it. I decide who gets that precious screen-estate, not you.

There can be only one

With so many word processors to choose from (and in some cases, many installed and ready to use), it can be difficult to make a solid decision. I used to use LibreOffice for some things, Word 2007 for others, and LyX for book drafting. I now use Word 2010 for everything. Believe me when I say I'm more than a bit embarrassed about that -- I am not a Microsoft fan and I never will be. I hate the company, its fucked up business practices, its asshole executives, and its history of ruining software companies that have products I like. Lately Microsoft hasn't been as bad, and has begun vigorously competing on features and stability -- technical superiority in general -- rather than brute-force market dominance tactics. It's got a long way to go, and it may not get there in some of the more competitive markets, but the Microsoft of today is quite far from the company it was at the turn of the millennium.

So I guess it's not such a bad thing to say I love Word 2010. It's got a superior feature set for professional writing. I just completed two book projects using Word 2007 and 2010 (upgraded halfway through), and it was truly a pleasure from a software perspective. It didn't start out so rosy, though...

Forget about TextMaker

I was a serious TextMaker fan for quite a while. I've bought several copies for FreeBSD, Linux, and Windows over the years. 10 years ago, TextMaker was how you got superior Word document compatibility on Linux and FreeBSD. OpenOffice.org sucked hard for fine-grained Word compatibility, and CrossOver Office had yet to reach an acceptable level of Microsoft compatibility with Word 2000.

I stuck with it. TextMaker 2008 was my go-to word processor on Linux for most of the past two years. I used it on Windows once, and it crashed while trying to save a document, and I lost about an hour's worth of work with no backup and no recovery file. I chalked it up to a Windows problem because, hey, when shit goes wrong on Windows I am used to Windows being the core of the problem.

I upgraded to TextMaker 2010 about 6 months ago, and used it sporadically for a while. I liked it quite a bit. However, I thought I would use it exclusively for a recent Word-based book project. What a mistake! It crashed two times on me on Linux, one of them during a save operation (just like 2008 on Windows), causing yet another data loss disaster with no hope of recovery. TextMaker does not have an advanced recovery mechanism like Word does, so when it crashes, you're hosed. Especially when it crashes when you are saving a document -- probably the worst possible time a program can crash.

So I deleted it off of my systems. No more TextMaker. When I say I lost data, I mean I lost time and money. I'm not writing for the school newspaper or designing a flier for a garage sale; I am working on book manuscripts for money, and they must be completed on ridiculous deadlines. Unreliable software can't be part of my processes. So I completely removed it and upgraded my Microsoft Word instance from 2007 to 2010.

Word 2010: it's what Willis was talkin' 'bout

To be clear, I did not have a problem with Word 2007. I just wanted to see what 2010 had to offer. As it turns out, it's quite a bit of an improvement. It's like Microsoft actually asked working authors and editors what they needed in a word processor and designed a revised feature set based on those requirements.

The last nail in TextMaker's coffin (in my home office, anyway) was price. Microsoft dramatically dropped the price of its lowest tier of Office 2010. I bought it for $109, and I can "legally" install it on up to three computers. This is a far cry from the old days when Office was hundreds of dollars and everyone pirated it, or pirated an old copy of it and then bought the much cheaper upgrade edition (technically that isn't "legal," but no one cared), or bought a new PC with the ultra-cheap OEM edition. With 2010, Microsoft killed the upgrade and OEM editions and designed a much more affordable and sensible pricing structure. It is, of course, aimed at screwing the everliving fuck out of anyone who has money (such people/businesses are called "enterprise" in the IT industry; they are defined by their need for Outlook, PowerPoint, and per-seat licensing) while encouraging people to spend $100 for a "legal" and supported version that doesn't need an activation crack and a fake serial number from some shady torrent site.

So with Microsoft Office Home And Student with a 3-system license at $109 (more or less; the price on Amazon varies; you might have to get it from another seller, or put it in your cart and wait for the price to go down), why would I get SoftMaker Office 2010 for $80? The only advantage is that it works on Linux, but the supreme disadvantage is that it will occasionally lose my work (and it didn't just happen with 2008 and 2010 -- I've had occasional work-losing crashes in previous versions as well). Maybe back when MS Office was $300 or more, it made sense... today, with a price difference of $30, it would be ridiculous.

CrossOver

The downside to Word 2010 is, it doesn't work on Linux natively. I think Microsoft will finally complete the transition from evil market-destroying corporation to innovative technology company when it starts making software for Linux. When I can get the same Word for Linux that I can for Windows, I will unabashedly call myself a Microsoft fan. Until that time, I have to pay extra for CrossOver.

CrossOver what? It used to be CrossOver Office, but then CodeWeavers changed its product name to CrossOver Linux because it started to offer a Mac-based product as well. I can't really understand why, because most of the software you would need to run on non-Windows platforms is already natively available for OS X. Perhaps CodeWeavers execs decided to tap into the vast profit potential among Apple users; specifically, that they are unafraid to spend lots of money on unnecessary things.

Anyway, then there was a further rebranding earlier this year, from CrossOver Linux/Mac to CrossOver Impersonator. How clever. So the bottom line is, you need CrossOver Whatever to run Microsoft Word on Linux, and the bad news is the current release (as of this writing) only has a minimal level of compatibility. Once again I am restricted to Windows if I want seamless compatibility and stability. Unfortunately, my preferred text editor and HTML editor only work on Linux, and my vast OGG/Vorbis music collection doesn't play very well on the shitty music players available for Windows Vista (yeah, I should upgrade, but I'm waiting to get a new computer rather than upgrading the OS on an old one).

It's always something

There's just no perfect technical solution. Microsoft is still too competitive in too many markets to make its office software available on competing operating systems, and CodeWeavers is too poor to accelerate development on the WINE project to get Word 2010 working perfectly. I could switch to Mac, but how would I ever tell my parents I'm gay? Besides, I hate turtleneck shirts. And my preferred applications still wouldn't all work to a reasonable degree.

It's always something, isn't it? There's always some hassle, some reason why things can't work out from a technical perspective. If there weren't, then nobody would ever be able to sell upgrades, would they?

In my career in technology journalism and documentation writing, I've discovered a few holes in the English language. Our spoken language is evolving faster than the written canon can keep up with, and technology is the driving force behind the speed of its evolution. However, the language is still controlled officially by the people who make dictionaries, who subjectively observe the use of the language in formal printed form (books, news stories) and debate internally over whether certain words should be included in the new edition. This means that if every writer always followed "the rules," our language would never evolve.

So let me help the dictionary people a little by suggesting some technology-related words that have been ignored because they don't show up in written form in "publications that count" often enough, even though they're part of the corporate vernacular:

Relog

Verb. To log out of an application or service, then log back in again. Typically an action taken to implement a change in user preferences.

Performant

Adjective. Describes a method, practice, or device that performs well in terms of resource usage and/or speed of operation. Can also mean the top-performing member of a list or group of items.

Spend

Noun. The money (capital) spent or invested in a product or service, usually with the expectation of a return.

(I hate marketingspeak -- really. But this word is so frequently used, even outside of marketing circles, that we've got to start seeing it as a noun as well as a verb.)

Filename

Noun. The name of a file.

(The reason why this must be a one-word noun instead of two words is, it's used in the context of technical instructions as a singular entity, not the property of an entity.)

Username

Noun. The login name of a user of a system or service.

Login

Noun. The user credentials (username and password) required for service authentication.

Verb. The act of authenticating to a service.

(I do not approve of the verb usage here because it gets confusing when you say "login to a service" -- it doesn't work well in that context. It would make more sense and be more readable to say "log into a service." However, a lot of people use this as a verb, and I think it has some validity.)

Bitness

Adjective. Explains whether a piece of computer hardware or software is 32-bit or 64-bit.

Sysadmin

Noun. Short name for a system administrator, usually on the BOFH level.

It bugs me when people talk about talent, particularly when they speak of "the gifted" or "the talented." Something inborn in American culture wants us to seek special status for ourselves while alternately worshipping it and hating it in others. I think that the desire to be exceptional is the single greatest contributor to self-imposed mental illness and general unhappiness in America today.

Talent doesn't exist. You aren't born with the ability to do anything well except breathe, suck, and attract attention through crying. Some people never move beyond this basic skill set. Those of us who do, only do so through interest and hard work. Notice how that's a two-part equation? Interest and hard work. It is impossible to sustain a level of hard work that leads to excellence if you do not also have a high level of interest. (Well, I suppose if you were forced through oppression, that might substitute for interest, but the rules are different in oppressive societies).

I've known several people who've insisted that they could do anything if they simply put their mind to it. I may have even been one of them at some point. "Yeah, I could be a doctor if I really wanted to, but I don't." This implies a choice, which puts you in control of the decision. Suddenly becoming a doctor is on the same level as folding laundry -- only reason it's not done at this moment is, I don't feel like it. All I have to do is flip that switch and magically the hard work will manifest based on my momentary compulsion to accomplish something. While this may be effective for laundry, it doesn't work when stretched out to years of medical school. If you don't have a very high level of interest for that accomplishment, there's no way you're going to stick with the long period of hard work required to achieve it.

Manufactured interest has a short life, and produces a minimal level of hard work. After it's exhausted, you start to question why you are working so hard for something that doesn't interest you, and you begin to think about the other more interesting things you could be doing with your time. The only sustainable interest comes from someplace inside. When the thing that interests you is all you can think about, when you can't get to sleep at night because you're still thinking about it, then you've got real passion.

Nowhere in this process is "talent." Everyone has a particular physical or emotional aptitude. Some people are very good with physical movement, some people are very good with emotional regulation, some are good with sight or sound or even taste. Someone with a sense of hearing that can distinguish small changes in tonality could be a great musician through hard work, but maybe he isn't all that interested in music as a career. If he chooses to pursue a career as a commercial pilot, this is not a waste of anything. His aptitude does not make him talented or special any more than his height or eye color or skin tone. Having said that, it would be very difficult for someone who is tone deaf to create appealing music. Still, Nickelback is a financially successful band.

Talent is a kind of magic; you can use the word "magic" in place of "talent" without too much trouble. To me, relegating something to the "magical" category is an intellectual defeat. Magic is what we think about when we're all out of logic and facts to fill in the gaps in our knowledge. Can't explain it? Must be magic! Talent is the magic of personal accomplishment. While magic describes the hidden workings and relationships of the Universe at large, talent describes the amazing things we don't know or see with regard to human accomplishment. So when we see someone who is really, amazingly good at something, we say they are "talented;" they are magical.

To make this admission, however, is to diminish the hard work that went into the accomplishment. To say that someone is talented is to say that they have some special gift. If it's a gift, then there's little or no hard work involved; it's no different than being very tall or very pretty. This little belief system that surrounds accomplishment is toxic to mental health. It teaches us that hard work is worthless, interest is not a requirement, and that we're born with every skill we'll ever need. On the other hand, I've met some really stellar -- dare I say talented? -- breathing, sucking, crying people in my time.

The most persistent (and consistently frustrating) debate in my social life is over the usefulness of a college degree. People fight tooth and nail to defend their useless degrees in conversation with me. I never went to college, so it's pretty clear which side of the issue I'm on. The people who argue with me typically have large student loan debts and few job prospects. I use this as evidence of the foolishness of higher education. An unemployed, unpublished, boorish English major told me at a mutual friend's party a few years ago that I couldn't be a great writer (like him, obviously) unless I had at least his level of education. I told him to get back to me when he'd made his first dollar as a professional writer.

Certainly there are useful degrees that have jobs on the other end of them. Anything in engineering, medicine, law, or science (academia/research or in a field that has a specific business application), for instance. If you go to medical school and pass all of your exams and go through your internships, you will become a doctor and there will be a job for you someplace in the world. Even if you fail to become a doctor somehow, you can still work in a variety of different jobs in the medical field. If you go to law school and pass the bar exam, you will become a lawyer and there will be jobs in legal services and politics for you -- again, though, even if you fail the bar, there is work for you in the legal industry. Engineering is a little different, but if you have a degree in some engineering field and can demonstrate some talent, you'll have many job opportunities available to you.

The majority of degree programs, though, are a waste of time. Robert Rodriguez famously tells aspiring filmmakers to avoid film school. "Spend that money on a good camera instead." The reasoning is that all you need to know about being a great filmmaker comes from time spent behind a camera and organizing your own film projects. School may provide you with the equipment and access to people who can help in some way, but that is a false production environment. In "the real world," no analogue exists for this environment of boundless resources, and going to school to get a certain degree doesn't mean you'll get a job in that field.

English is another prime example of a worthless degree. Not only does it not qualify you for any specific job, but the classroom time offers little or no experience or training that you can't get on your own by reading the same textbooks and initiating your own writing and literary analysis projects. You don't need to pay $30k or more per year to form an opinion about Proust, or write a series of short stories, or learn to write news articles. The exceptions are: If you want to stay in academia (become an English teacher), or if you want to become a management-level editor or publishing executive.

Philosophy is perhaps the most egregious waste of money. Philosophy students and degree-holders passionately argue against my opinion on this; I think that's because the only thing they learned to do in their college classes was defend theories and attack opinions. They insist that a philosophy education is extremely important, yet I have never met one that is admirably employed. I've also never seen a job listing for a philosopher, though I do recall reading that some rich northern European government has a full-time philosopher to help guide policy.

Humanities, women's studies, liberal arts -- all worthless in terms of finding a worthwhile career. You can study these subjects on your own for little or no cost and get an education comparable to what you'd learn in a classroom. So why do people go to college and enter worthless degree programs? Why do they put themselves deeply into debt without having a clearly defined plan for a career afterward?

Do you even need to pay to sit in a classroom? I've discovered that the answer to this question is frequently "no." Many universities allow anyone to audit a class without any hassle; you just sit in the lecture hall and don't cause trouble and you're left alone. MIT has even gone so far as to offer most of its course material for free on the Web. It couldn't be more clear that what you pay for at MIT is the degree, not the education. It's the credential that matters, not the knowledge.

Even some of the sciences are a fantastic waste of resources. Anthropology, history, archaeology are all interesting subjects, but the jobs they lead to are either trapped forever in the bubble of academia, or are very few and require excellent connections and timing to achieve. Your most valuable job skills in these fields will most likely be related to grant writing. You'll be a scientific whore, begging grants off of governments, universities, foundations, and rich benefactors.

Of course there's always the argument that the experience of college is part of its value. Making connections, working with some of the top thinkers in the field, living a life of debauchery in fraternities and sororities, playing sports, joining campus clubs, participating in ineffectual but self-satisfying activism, binge drinking at parties, having mediocre regrettable sex with people you don't care about. Lots of people meet their future spouse in college. Business relationships are formed there. If you so choose, you'll move to a new place and experience a different way of life. And, just like with the degree program content, you can get most of this all on your own without paying huge sums of non-refundable money.

But maybe you don't have to pay for college. Someone said to me recently, "If you're paying for grad school, you're doing it wrong." There are, of course, many scholarships and stipends for people who meet certain requirements. College advisers at decent high schools are often very good at finding hidden scholarships and grants.

There are a lot of low-paying jobs at big corporations that entitle you to a free post-secondary and post-graduate education in a variety of useful fields. A friend of mine recently discovered this, and is finally getting a useful 4-year degree (after two useless associate's degrees in fields he doesn't currently work in) for free from a good engineering school. This degree will enable him to work in a challenging technical field that has a steadily growing demand and a high salary. While this is in progress, he has a decent job with the usual corporate benefits.

The military will also often pay for college if you sign up for the right programs and serve enough time. A military background is highly valued at a lot of companies, as well -- especially government contractors. On the other hand, you have to be a "do as you're told" sort of person, or you'll be completely miserable.

At any given time, there may be certain graduate degree programs at universities that are either free or low-cost due to some sort of government or industry demand. These may not be terribly compelling fields, but if you've got nothing better to do with your time or if you're very much a "work to live" sort of person, then why not take the free degree and see what becomes of it?

Even after all these years, I still haven't changed my mind about college. I have no regrets. Mark Twain's advice on becoming a professional writer was to write for free for a period of two years; if someone offers to pay you for your work within that timeframe, then you've got what it takes, and if nobody offers to pay you within those two years, then you should give up and do something else with your life. I did exactly this -- I wrote for my own sites until a newspaper offered to buy my articles. Then I wrote book reviews until a publisher offered to pay me to review books before they went to print. If you're motivated and you like to do good work, there's always money for you somewhere. It actually kind of offends me that some shithead thinks he can sit in a classroom for four years and be entitled to the same career that I've achieved through hard work. But that guy at the party that I met still isn't published and doesn't work in writing or publishing, last I checked.