I'm the current sole author/maintainer of what I believe is the world's most popular World of Warcraft UI Mod, QuestHelper. About half a year ago I took it over from an abandoned/unmaintained and rapidly degrading state, and I've treated it like a full-time job since. I'm perhaps two or three weeks ago from releasing Version 1.0, which is a huge set of changes to dramatically reduce CPU and memory usage, as well as produce better output from the mod and be far, far easier to maintain and modify in the future.
I used to be fully donation-supported - that means my apartment in the Bay Area, food, gas, utilities, all of that, thanks to the generosity of users.
The funny thing about donations is that a lot of people will gladly donate, but you have to remind them. Depending on how you count it, adding a simple unobtrusive message on logon saying "hey we're donation-supported, if you really like QH please donate" increased income anywhere from five-fold to hundred-fold. That said, even with that message, my income was starting to drop below sustainability levels - I was hoping that v1.0 would fix that, as well as breaking some code in the Wowmatrix client that was actually disabling my donation request.
(Ironically, it seems like the message may not have been noticable enough, as a large number of people have told me that they never even saw it after using QH for months. So it goes.)
Now, I'm not donation-supported. I can't put that message up, and I know from experience that I won't get enough without it. I can keep up the donation box on the actual website, but the fact is that just won't provide enough for me to keep going - most people don't even look at the website. I should mention that I fully believe this is within Blizzard's rights to do - I don't have any grounds to sue or anything - but I do believe it sucks. So I'm going to be releasing version 1.0 (watch for it in 2 or 3 weeks, it'd be sooner but I'm going to GDC and that will eat a week), and then just putting it in a mothballed maintenance release, as the remaining donations I'll get anyway should be enough for that.
I think this is a mistake caused by Blizzard's overzealous legal team. I think, for some reason, Blizzard is terrified at the idea of anyone besides them making money on anything related to their game. I'm not sure why they're banning donation requests ingame but not out-of-game - I think they're just confused. However, they've killed off a good number of UI mods thanks to this, and I think ultimately this is going to hurt them quite a bit.
I'll field questions, as long as they're sanely-written.
If you'd like to donate, I'd love for a little bit extra to cover the 1.0 release - here's the link. Anything you can give is appreciated, of course, though not expected and not required.
Also, if there's any business managers out there who have a clever idea for how to still make a living off this, let me know. I'll pay you with a reasonable fraction of the results;)
Sennheiser leads suck. You're completely right. I used to go through one or two a year, $20 to replace it each time.
A while back I decided, what the hell, I would try one of those crazy custom wires. Hey, maybe they really did sound better! So I forked over $100 for a custom-built heavy wire, blah blah blah, oxygen-free copper whatever.
Guess what: sounded exactly the same. Welp.
Guess what else: the big heavy construction has lasted five years so far with no problems. I guess, technically, it's paid for itself by now.
Give it a try - find a heavier third-party "audiophile" wire. It'll sound the same, but there's a good chance it will be sturdier.
He's "giving the benefit of the doubt" in assuming that the poster is merely trying to mislead people, instead of being a total moron making claims about things he knows nothing about.
But how does that matter? Yes, of course relative living standards have declined. As our technology increases, the scale of what we can build increases along with it - even a Roman-era palace probably involved fewer resources to build than Google's main data center. I mean, in theory, I could be living in a space palace, surrounded by a terahertz Beowulf cluster. Obviously, though, that's not economically feasible for anyone.
I guess my question is, relative to what?
If your answer is "relative to the average person", then my response is "no, it hasn't declined, by definition".
If your answer is "relative to what we could theoretically have", then you're implying that humanity would be better off if we didn't research things (thus raising the "theoretical maximum".)
And yes, you are entirely right on your last point. I'd be saying exactly those things, and I'd be making the same point I am now - namely, that as technology increases, humans get more comfortable, more advanced, and have better, more interesting forms of leisure, as well as the time to spend on that leisure if they simply stop feeling obliged to buy the newest and shiniest toys.
Which has, barring a few short-term reversals, been true through all of history.
Um, the western lifestyle was more affordable before those products happened. It used to be, before free trade, that a single man could work 9-5 at a steel mill, support a stay at home, a bunch of kids, pay for medical expenses out of his pocket, own his house and have two new cars and a TV, and he could send his kids to college. When he retired, he got a company pension that lasted not only until he died, but until his wife died. Since the emergence of free trade, bit by bit, that standard of living has been eroded and that's what the Democrats are just screaming about while, foolishly, Republicans keep pushing the free trade button despite all the ruin that it caused. Yes, its good on paper, free trade is, but it just doesn't work.
Technically, you are correct.
However, the person staying at home had fewer luxuries. No large-screen TV. No XBox 360. No electronic picture frames. The food was probably not as varied - yes, the ingredients may have been higher quality, direct from the market (but of course you can do that today), but eating at a restaurant was more expensive.
Yes, they had two new cars. But those cars were unsafe, noisy, and slow compared to cars we have today.
The TV was half the size, a quarter of the resolution, and received an eighth of the stations.
And medical expenses . . . why yes, he could pay medical expenses right out of his pocket! Of course, if he got cancer, he was just dead. If his children got any number of unexpected diseases? Yeah, they're dead too. Get into a car accident in your giant steel car with no airbags? Dead, probably.
So, while technically you are correct . . . you're measuring the wrong things. Anyone who wants to live like someone from the 60's can do so easily, and they don't even need to work 9-5 at a steel mill.
But if Adobe went around telling everyone that the minimum requirements would be X, and asked people to put stickers on things saying it would run CS4, and then changed the requirements at the last minute . . . then, yeah, I think suing Adobe would be appropriate.
It's also worth pointing out the investment issue.
Let's say I have two choices: a $2000 low-efficiency TV or a $2500 high-efficiency TV. Over eight years, the low-efficiency TV will cost $500 more in electricity than the high-efficiency TV will. So in eight years we break even, right?
Well, not quite. Let's say that instead I buy the $2000 low-efficiency TV, then take that $500 and toss it in an investment account. Let's say that I make a somewhat-frugal 7% yearly return. Well, it turns out that this after our first year, we've gotten $35 back. We pay our $62.50 electricity bill out of that, and withdraw a little from the account to cover costs, and keep going.
Year 2: $443.08 left Year 3: $411.60 left Year 4: $341.85 left Year 5: $303.28 left Year 6: $262.01 left Year 7: $217.86 left Year 8: $170.61 left Year 9: $120.05 left Year 10: $65.95 left Year 11: $8.07 left
And finally, in the beginning of Year 12, the "thoughtless" people who bought the low-efficiency TV finally wish they'd bought a fancier one.
Of course, with just a little tweaking of the numbers, that can increase - or even invert. If we pay $50/yr in electricity difference, and we can get 10% returns, the expensive TV never breaks even. If we get 11% returns, it's just a blatantly bad idea.
Sometimes, spending less now and more later makes a hell of a lot of sense.
. . . that you found out. So very, very sorry. Luckily, we've stopped doing it now! So you can stop looking. There's nothing else to find."
"Goddammit, I told you to stop! I'm sorry you found out about this one also!"
Yeah, I'm sorry too, Belkin. After the whole spam router thing I stopped using your products for a few years, but then thought, hey, sometimes people screw up. Mistakes were made, I haven't heard anything bad about them for a while. Why not?
Well, now I know why not. One time is a mistake, two times is a failure to learn, three times is waiting for you to let your guard down to sneak a fast one past again. Won't make that mistake again!
Which isn't even necessarily true. Google just laid off a bunch of people who presumably were not performing up to spec, but if an all-star programmer applied, they'd be foolish not to hire them.
Admittedly, I've felt Google hiring has been kind of foolish for a while, though:)
Having a meeting across multiple jets is much more difficult, especially if there's a storm of EM radiation thanks to the nuclear war going on underneath you.
History books will refer to late 2008 as The Year God Decided He Really Hated America.
(This is only true if the volcano blows within the next 5 hours, and I have to say - if it's going to blow, it should do it then, just for the humor value.)
It means people who raped others, or abused others.
It means people who were accused of rape or abuse and couldn't defend themselves.
It means 23-year-olds who were caught sleeping with their 17-year-old boyfriend or girlfriend.
It means 18-year-olds who were caught sleeping with their 17-year-old boyfriend or girlfriend.
It means 17-year-olds who took photographs of themselves naked, to send to their 17-year-old boyfriend or girlfriend.
It means 17-year-olds whose 17-year-old boyfriend or girlfriend, unasked, took pictures of themselves naked and sent them.
It means people who were driving cross-country late at night, couldn't find a public bathroom, stopped off behind a bush at 3am in the morning, and were arrested for "public indecency".
Fall into any of the above categories? You're already shunned for life, and now, you'll have to turn over all the keys to your privacy to a bunch of government workers. But don't worry, I'm sure the well-paid honorable government employees wouldn't dream of breaching the privacy of a bunch of sex offenders.
Seven years is also enough time to get a part-time job, buy a copy of Microsoft Office, and then not have to make macros for every little minor thing that Office includes by default and OO.o doesn't.
I don't use Office myself, but I also don't wordprocess frequently. If OO.o is meant to be used by people, it has to be more worthwhile than Office is.
What, you think it's a good thing that UV-radiated wildly-mutated bacteria are being used to produce "natural" flavors, while carefully-engineered processes to produce only known chemicals are shunned as artificial?
Because if you do, I don't know what to say to you, and if you don't, then you might want to go read his post again.
Also, you should read the post again anyway - the first chunk of "insane regulations" he mentions are actually the [i]lack of regulations[/i]. So being glad that someone could, with $5k, produce enough botulism to kill his entire university . . .
. . . well, you really need to read that over, carefully, and this time with your brain engaged.
When I got my Wii early on, I ordered the new straps. They arrived, I dutifully installed them, and in the spirit of scientific inquiry, I set about trying to break the old strap.
You know what? Those things are tough. I tried a bunch of different ways to snap it and failed. (I did not resort to scissors.) Anyone who's breaking that accidentally is doing something very, very wrong.
When the padded sleeves were released I got two of those as well, dutifully put them on, and after about half an hour of gaming remembered that I was allergic to silicone. Sleeve is removed now. I wonder if I could sue Nintendo for it.
I seem to recall that the GMs have stated that the items do in fact exist in the world, it's just that nobody has discovered where yet.
Of course, they could be wrong/lying, but they also might not be. I do remember hearing a Blizzard employee comment that there were a few quests in the world that no player had ever found.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll chime in here.
I'm the current sole author/maintainer of what I believe is the world's most popular World of Warcraft UI Mod, QuestHelper. About half a year ago I took it over from an abandoned/unmaintained and rapidly degrading state, and I've treated it like a full-time job since. I'm perhaps two or three weeks ago from releasing Version 1.0, which is a huge set of changes to dramatically reduce CPU and memory usage, as well as produce better output from the mod and be far, far easier to maintain and modify in the future.
I used to be fully donation-supported - that means my apartment in the Bay Area, food, gas, utilities, all of that, thanks to the generosity of users.
The funny thing about donations is that a lot of people will gladly donate, but you have to remind them. Depending on how you count it, adding a simple unobtrusive message on logon saying "hey we're donation-supported, if you really like QH please donate" increased income anywhere from five-fold to hundred-fold. That said, even with that message, my income was starting to drop below sustainability levels - I was hoping that v1.0 would fix that, as well as breaking some code in the Wowmatrix client that was actually disabling my donation request.
(Ironically, it seems like the message may not have been noticable enough, as a large number of people have told me that they never even saw it after using QH for months. So it goes.)
Now, I'm not donation-supported. I can't put that message up, and I know from experience that I won't get enough without it. I can keep up the donation box on the actual website, but the fact is that just won't provide enough for me to keep going - most people don't even look at the website. I should mention that I fully believe this is within Blizzard's rights to do - I don't have any grounds to sue or anything - but I do believe it sucks. So I'm going to be releasing version 1.0 (watch for it in 2 or 3 weeks, it'd be sooner but I'm going to GDC and that will eat a week), and then just putting it in a mothballed maintenance release, as the remaining donations I'll get anyway should be enough for that.
I think this is a mistake caused by Blizzard's overzealous legal team. I think, for some reason, Blizzard is terrified at the idea of anyone besides them making money on anything related to their game. I'm not sure why they're banning donation requests ingame but not out-of-game - I think they're just confused. However, they've killed off a good number of UI mods thanks to this, and I think ultimately this is going to hurt them quite a bit.
I'll field questions, as long as they're sanely-written.
If you'd like to donate, I'd love for a little bit extra to cover the 1.0 release - here's the link. Anything you can give is appreciated, of course, though not expected and not required.
Also, if there's any business managers out there who have a clever idea for how to still make a living off this, let me know. I'll pay you with a reasonable fraction of the results ;)
Sennheiser leads suck. You're completely right. I used to go through one or two a year, $20 to replace it each time.
A while back I decided, what the hell, I would try one of those crazy custom wires. Hey, maybe they really did sound better! So I forked over $100 for a custom-built heavy wire, blah blah blah, oxygen-free copper whatever.
Guess what: sounded exactly the same. Welp.
Guess what else: the big heavy construction has lasted five years so far with no problems. I guess, technically, it's paid for itself by now.
Give it a try - find a heavier third-party "audiophile" wire. It'll sound the same, but there's a good chance it will be sturdier.
He's "giving the benefit of the doubt" in assuming that the poster is merely trying to mislead people, instead of being a total moron making claims about things he knows nothing about.
But how does that matter? Yes, of course relative living standards have declined. As our technology increases, the scale of what we can build increases along with it - even a Roman-era palace probably involved fewer resources to build than Google's main data center. I mean, in theory, I could be living in a space palace, surrounded by a terahertz Beowulf cluster. Obviously, though, that's not economically feasible for anyone.
I guess my question is, relative to what?
If your answer is "relative to the average person", then my response is "no, it hasn't declined, by definition".
If your answer is "relative to what we could theoretically have", then you're implying that humanity would be better off if we didn't research things (thus raising the "theoretical maximum".)
And yes, you are entirely right on your last point. I'd be saying exactly those things, and I'd be making the same point I am now - namely, that as technology increases, humans get more comfortable, more advanced, and have better, more interesting forms of leisure, as well as the time to spend on that leisure if they simply stop feeling obliged to buy the newest and shiniest toys.
Which has, barring a few short-term reversals, been true through all of history.
Um, the western lifestyle was more affordable before those products happened. It used to be, before free trade, that a single man could work 9-5 at a steel mill, support a stay at home, a bunch of kids, pay for medical expenses out of his pocket, own his house and have two new cars and a TV, and he could send his kids to college. When he retired, he got a company pension that lasted not only until he died, but until his wife died. Since the emergence of free trade, bit by bit, that standard of living has been eroded and that's what the Democrats are just screaming about while, foolishly, Republicans keep pushing the free trade button despite all the ruin that it caused. Yes, its good on paper, free trade is, but it just doesn't work.
Technically, you are correct.
However, the person staying at home had fewer luxuries. No large-screen TV. No XBox 360. No electronic picture frames. The food was probably not as varied - yes, the ingredients may have been higher quality, direct from the market (but of course you can do that today), but eating at a restaurant was more expensive.
Yes, they had two new cars. But those cars were unsafe, noisy, and slow compared to cars we have today.
The TV was half the size, a quarter of the resolution, and received an eighth of the stations.
And medical expenses . . . why yes, he could pay medical expenses right out of his pocket! Of course, if he got cancer, he was just dead. If his children got any number of unexpected diseases? Yeah, they're dead too. Get into a car accident in your giant steel car with no airbags? Dead, probably.
So, while technically you are correct . . . you're measuring the wrong things. Anyone who wants to live like someone from the 60's can do so easily, and they don't even need to work 9-5 at a steel mill.
"September" and "November" are two different months.
We could call it a "cartridge", and we could call the device it plugs into a "game console".
What a novel idea.
But if Adobe went around telling everyone that the minimum requirements would be X, and asked people to put stickers on things saying it would run CS4, and then changed the requirements at the last minute . . . then, yeah, I think suing Adobe would be appropriate.
Microsoft in its response argued that giving litigants 'a free upgrade to Premium-ready PCs would provide a windfall to millions.'
I guess you shouldn't have lied, then. Let this be a lesson to you.
It's also worth pointing out the investment issue.
Let's say I have two choices: a $2000 low-efficiency TV or a $2500 high-efficiency TV. Over eight years, the low-efficiency TV will cost $500 more in electricity than the high-efficiency TV will. So in eight years we break even, right?
Well, not quite. Let's say that instead I buy the $2000 low-efficiency TV, then take that $500 and toss it in an investment account. Let's say that I make a somewhat-frugal 7% yearly return. Well, it turns out that this after our first year, we've gotten $35 back. We pay our $62.50 electricity bill out of that, and withdraw a little from the account to cover costs, and keep going.
Year 2: $443.08 left
Year 3: $411.60 left
Year 4: $341.85 left
Year 5: $303.28 left
Year 6: $262.01 left
Year 7: $217.86 left
Year 8: $170.61 left
Year 9: $120.05 left
Year 10: $65.95 left
Year 11: $8.07 left
And finally, in the beginning of Year 12, the "thoughtless" people who bought the low-efficiency TV finally wish they'd bought a fancier one.
Of course, with just a little tweaking of the numbers, that can increase - or even invert. If we pay $50/yr in electricity difference, and we can get 10% returns, the expensive TV never breaks even. If we get 11% returns, it's just a blatantly bad idea.
Sometimes, spending less now and more later makes a hell of a lot of sense.
. . . that you found out. So very, very sorry. Luckily, we've stopped doing it now! So you can stop looking. There's nothing else to find."
"Goddammit, I told you to stop! I'm sorry you found out about this one also!"
Yeah, I'm sorry too, Belkin. After the whole spam router thing I stopped using your products for a few years, but then thought, hey, sometimes people screw up. Mistakes were made, I haven't heard anything bad about them for a while. Why not?
Well, now I know why not. One time is a mistake, two times is a failure to learn, three times is waiting for you to let your guard down to sneak a fast one past again. Won't make that mistake again!
Which isn't even necessarily true. Google just laid off a bunch of people who presumably were not performing up to spec, but if an all-star programmer applied, they'd be foolish not to hire them.
Admittedly, I've felt Google hiring has been kind of foolish for a while, though :)
Or the Holodeck is just broken.
Again.
Creative Labs.
Have they released a good product in this millenium?
I've always felt that the US release of Final Fantasy III was possibly the most misnamed game in existence.
* It's not final.
* It's not actually fantasy.
* Technically, it's not really #3 either.
Having a meeting across multiple jets is much more difficult, especially if there's a storm of EM radiation thanks to the nuclear war going on underneath you.
That's why he said "modified hardware driver", presumably one that feeds that raw data back across the bus without digital-izing it.
History books will refer to late 2008 as The Year God Decided He Really Hated America.
(This is only true if the volcano blows within the next 5 hours, and I have to say - if it's going to blow, it should do it then, just for the humor value.)
Remember what "Sex Offenders" means.
It means people who raped others, or abused others.
It means people who were accused of rape or abuse and couldn't defend themselves.
It means 23-year-olds who were caught sleeping with their 17-year-old boyfriend or girlfriend.
It means 18-year-olds who were caught sleeping with their 17-year-old boyfriend or girlfriend.
It means 17-year-olds who took photographs of themselves naked, to send to their 17-year-old boyfriend or girlfriend.
It means 17-year-olds whose 17-year-old boyfriend or girlfriend, unasked, took pictures of themselves naked and sent them.
It means people who were driving cross-country late at night, couldn't find a public bathroom, stopped off behind a bush at 3am in the morning, and were arrested for "public indecency".
Fall into any of the above categories? You're already shunned for life, and now, you'll have to turn over all the keys to your privacy to a bunch of government workers. But don't worry, I'm sure the well-paid honorable government employees wouldn't dream of breaching the privacy of a bunch of sex offenders.
That could never happen.
Seven years is also enough time to get a part-time job, buy a copy of Microsoft Office, and then not have to make macros for every little minor thing that Office includes by default and OO.o doesn't.
I don't use Office myself, but I also don't wordprocess frequently. If OO.o is meant to be used by people, it has to be more worthwhile than Office is.
What, you think it's a good thing that UV-radiated wildly-mutated bacteria are being used to produce "natural" flavors, while carefully-engineered processes to produce only known chemicals are shunned as artificial?
Because if you do, I don't know what to say to you, and if you don't, then you might want to go read his post again.
Also, you should read the post again anyway - the first chunk of "insane regulations" he mentions are actually the [i]lack of regulations[/i]. So being glad that someone could, with $5k, produce enough botulism to kill his entire university . . .
. . . well, you really need to read that over, carefully, and this time with your brain engaged.
Meanwhile, World War 2 casualties are estimated at 72 million.
Real nerds are aware that VMWare Server is free. ;)
When I got my Wii early on, I ordered the new straps. They arrived, I dutifully installed them, and in the spirit of scientific inquiry, I set about trying to break the old strap.
You know what? Those things are tough. I tried a bunch of different ways to snap it and failed. (I did not resort to scissors.) Anyone who's breaking that accidentally is doing something very, very wrong.
When the padded sleeves were released I got two of those as well, dutifully put them on, and after about half an hour of gaming remembered that I was allergic to silicone. Sleeve is removed now. I wonder if I could sue Nintendo for it.
I seem to recall that the GMs have stated that the items do in fact exist in the world, it's just that nobody has discovered where yet.
Of course, they could be wrong/lying, but they also might not be. I do remember hearing a Blizzard employee comment that there were a few quests in the world that no player had ever found.