They own the internet connection. If they want to monitor you, they can monitor you there without you ever knowing about it or being able to stop it. This way, at least you can get Internet access without them being able to monitor anything besides your internet.
Well, yes, you would, which is exactly the point. You shouldn't be able to. The UI should look like part of the OS - it should conform to the OS standards, behave in the same way as every other program on the OS, etc etc etc.
Most toolkits don't manage this. Some fail stunningly (see Java/Swing), some are relatively close (QT), none, to my knowledge, are perfect.
So, in answer to your question: yes, "just fine" equates to "indistinguishable from whatever Apple uses". Apple uses the OSX native API, and your app should, in all respects, look like it was built directly with the OSX native API.
Unless it's on Windows, in which case it should be the Win32 API.
I just thought I'd quickly mention that they seem to have gotten far better about this - I bought a cheap laptop from them with Vista, which I promptly wiped and put XP on. Later I ran into a weird software problem and, just for fun, decided to call tech support. "Yeah, I bought your computer, I wiped Vista, I installed my own OS. Can you help me anyway?:D"
I'll be damned, the guy helped out, with some ideas I hadn't even thought of. 15 minutes later the thing worked perfectly, still running XP (it turned out to be an incompatibility with VMWare, at that, which is not exactly standard Dell service.)
The only other issue I've had was with my 30" monitor, and after 15 minutes of debugging, they shipped me a new one with packaging that I could toss the old one in to ship back.
I know Dell used to have terrible service, and I was really hesitant to buy from them, but . . . something happened, and they seem to have turned that around.
"i was using your addon and then it didn't work fix it now plz"
Thanks for the words (and the donation:) ) It's been very interesting watching the reactions - everyone who's remotely related to the tech world or programming seems to completely understand what's going on, and then there's a lot of people who think I should be working for free.
Really, the problem isn't hosting - I've already got that for free on curse.com - it's figuring out how to make money off it. I haven't come up with a good way to realistically make money with my own hosting yet. If I do, though, I'll keep this in mind.
I'm actually coming up with some ideas that may sort of fix the problem, so that might not be necessary, but thanks:) Note that QH would end up using a few terabytes per month, so I'd actually need a lot - it's well past the point where people would be easily donating bandwidth;)
2) This one is ridiculous. If you are voting for the Libertarian, you clearly dont want the republican in office, so how are you peeling a vote from the republican? If i dont want any of the people running in office, i dont vote for any of them. The lesser of two evils is still fucking evil.
I've gotta point out, this is a false dichotomy. In the last election there were several people I would have gladly elected. Unfortunately, I was only permitted to vote for one of them at a time. I chose the one that I felt would have the largest political impact and shock to the group that I didn't like, but I did, in the end, vote for my second or third choice.
It's possible to be willing to elect a set of people.
For the vast majority of people, this hasn't been true for months. For a small minority, it's still true, and there's absolutely nothing I can do about it - the Blizzard UI code doesn't provide any way for me to fix it, and it's not just a problem with QH, it's a problem with their addon framework in general. I've sent them suggested improvements to solve the issue, but so far they haven't.
Doublefine is really one of the very, very few companies that I'd actually go and work for as something *I* wanted to do, not just something that would pay the bills. I mean, work under Tim Schafer? I think the only other two people I'd joyfully apprentice with would be Jenova Chen and Jonathan Blow.
Unfortunately I doubt any of them have three-or-six-month apprenticeship deals;)
Oh, I'm pretty sure they can't touch me. I indeed doubt there's anything they can do *me*, besides ban my account. Of course, they could also ban the accounts of anyone who uses Questhelper.
It doesn't matter if I can write it or not - what matters is whether people are able to use it, and that, indeed, they have full control over.
I strongly suspect I could get a job there. I know my skills, I know my competency, I'm pretty sure I could walk into a job in virtually any place I wanted. I'm just not entirely sure I want to. It would be cool to work there, but I suspect after a few months I'd want to go work on my own stuff again.
Not really fair to them if I already know I'd be leaving, and it seems kind of silly to me as well.
Actually, all of those downloads occured after I took over development - curse.com did a major site redesign a month or two after I started things up, and as part of that, they reset the download count.
I'm rather proud to have broken 20 million. That's a lot of downloads.:)
Companies like Blizzard are very conscious of the "in-game experience" and want to control that as much as possible.
I agree with this, but keep in mind that UI mods are entirely voluntary - if someone doesn't like the donation nags, they can turn off QH. Also, fewer UI mods being available means, on average, a worse experience for players.
As for it "hurting them", unfortunately I think you over-estimate how many of their 12 million users even use plug-ins, never mind base their continued patronage on their availability. I would be willing to bet that if they turned off the add-on API tomorrow, they'd lose less than 1% of their player base. There would be some grumbling from another 1% - 2%, but in the end it really wouldn't matter much.
I estimate that Questhelper alone is used by 10-20% of the WoW player base. I think there would be more grumbling than you think.
As an added bonus, offer some sort of special add on to donation users only (IE, donate and you get access to a new addon). Or, have a beta version of your newest add-on available before the official release with the use of donations.
These specific things are not permitted - in general, I can't tie *anything* UI-mod-related to money, in any form.
I cannot offer any sort of in-game incentive to donation. I cannot offer beta versions, I cannot offer unlocked features, I can't even make a little sprite that says "THANKS FOR DONATING" that you can right-click to turn off.
As for a question...How fast do you think this change will be noticeable for the average player?
There will be a chunk at the beginning (QH, Carbonite, nUI, Mappy et al), but the bulk of the effect will be a largely-unnoticable reduction in the number of people who bother to write UI mods. I'm pretty sure it'll be impossible to actually calculate, and largely impossible to detect.
True. I don't think it will be enough, though if it turns out to be, I may re-evaluate things.
A lot of people seem to be misinterpreting what I'm saying here (I don't say you are, necessarily, I'm just pointing this out.) A lot of people think that I don't like Blizzard's new policy, and thus I'm taking my toys and going home. This isn't actually what's happening. I *don't* like the new policy, but that's not what the real problem is.
The problem is that the new policy makes it so I can't make a living off Questhelper. If I can't make a living off Questhelper, I'm not going to keep treating it like a full-time job.
If someone figures out how to make it work like a full-time job again, I'll go back to it, but I don't actually think it's possible.
I can't write it into the addon for several reasons (can't nag, can't communicate outside the WoW universe, for two of them.) I could, in theory, write my own updater, but I suspect few people would use it, and I'd have to pay for bandwidth myself, and overall I just don't think it's viable.
Yes, a possibility, but one that I think is an expensive long-shot.
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There are third-party proxies which can be installed.
They own the internet connection. If they want to monitor you, they can monitor you there without you ever knowing about it or being able to stop it. This way, at least you can get Internet access without them being able to monitor anything besides your internet.
And then you set up the internal VM as a proxy, and you proxy your main computer's internet through the VM. Bam, problem solved.
Seriously, think these things through.
Well, yes, you would, which is exactly the point. You shouldn't be able to. The UI should look like part of the OS - it should conform to the OS standards, behave in the same way as every other program on the OS, etc etc etc.
Most toolkits don't manage this. Some fail stunningly (see Java/Swing), some are relatively close (QT), none, to my knowledge, are perfect.
So, in answer to your question: yes, "just fine" equates to "indistinguishable from whatever Apple uses". Apple uses the OSX native API, and your app should, in all respects, look like it was built directly with the OSX native API.
Unless it's on Windows, in which case it should be the Win32 API.
I just thought I'd quickly mention that they seem to have gotten far better about this - I bought a cheap laptop from them with Vista, which I promptly wiped and put XP on. Later I ran into a weird software problem and, just for fun, decided to call tech support. "Yeah, I bought your computer, I wiped Vista, I installed my own OS. Can you help me anyway? :D"
I'll be damned, the guy helped out, with some ideas I hadn't even thought of. 15 minutes later the thing worked perfectly, still running XP (it turned out to be an incompatibility with VMWare, at that, which is not exactly standard Dell service.)
The only other issue I've had was with my 30" monitor, and after 15 minutes of debugging, they shipped me a new one with packaging that I could toss the old one in to ship back.
I know Dell used to have terrible service, and I was really hesitant to buy from them, but . . . something happened, and they seem to have turned that around.
"i was using your addon and then it didn't work fix it now plz"
Thanks for the words (and the donation :) ) It's been very interesting watching the reactions - everyone who's remotely related to the tech world or programming seems to completely understand what's going on, and then there's a lot of people who think I should be working for free.
It's good to have more of the former chiming in :)
Really, the problem isn't hosting - I've already got that for free on curse.com - it's figuring out how to make money off it. I haven't come up with a good way to realistically make money with my own hosting yet. If I do, though, I'll keep this in mind.
I'm actually coming up with some ideas that may sort of fix the problem, so that might not be necessary, but thanks :) Note that QH would end up using a few terabytes per month, so I'd actually need a lot - it's well past the point where people would be easily donating bandwidth ;)
I've gotta point out, this is a false dichotomy. In the last election there were several people I would have gladly elected. Unfortunately, I was only permitted to vote for one of them at a time. I chose the one that I felt would have the largest political impact and shock to the group that I didn't like, but I did, in the end, vote for my second or third choice.
It's possible to be willing to elect a set of people.
For the vast majority of people, this hasn't been true for months. For a small minority, it's still true, and there's absolutely nothing I can do about it - the Blizzard UI code doesn't provide any way for me to fix it, and it's not just a problem with QH, it's a problem with their addon framework in general. I've sent them suggested improvements to solve the issue, but so far they haven't.
Yes. Their response was basically "sucks to be you", although with more legalese.
I've made more than one release in the last half a year. In fact, I update new versions roughly weekly.
Last I heard, all they were doing was adding tooltip info. Have they added more?
Doublefine is really one of the very, very few companies that I'd actually go and work for as something *I* wanted to do, not just something that would pay the bills. I mean, work under Tim Schafer? I think the only other two people I'd joyfully apprentice with would be Jenova Chen and Jonathan Blow.
Unfortunately I doubt any of them have three-or-six-month apprenticeship deals ;)
Oh, I'm pretty sure they can't touch me. I indeed doubt there's anything they can do *me*, besides ban my account. Of course, they could also ban the accounts of anyone who uses Questhelper.
It doesn't matter if I can write it or not - what matters is whether people are able to use it, and that, indeed, they have full control over.
Oh, you're misunderstanding a little bit :)
I strongly suspect I could get a job there. I know my skills, I know my competency, I'm pretty sure I could walk into a job in virtually any place I wanted. I'm just not entirely sure I want to. It would be cool to work there, but I suspect after a few months I'd want to go work on my own stuff again.
Not really fair to them if I already know I'd be leaving, and it seems kind of silly to me as well.
Oh, they probably would, but if I were going to work for someone else's game company, I'd have companies much further up my list than Blizzard ;)
Doublefine, for example. Man, it's actually really tempting to try getting a job there. And I wouldn't even have to move! :D
Actually, all of those downloads occured after I took over development - curse.com did a major site redesign a month or two after I started things up, and as part of that, they reset the download count.
I'm rather proud to have broken 20 million. That's a lot of downloads. :)
Carbonite is far more dead than QH is. Very shortly, your option is going to be QH or nothing.
(That said, try it out again in v1.0. Most of the issues should be fixed then.)
I'm pretty sure I have more users than many entire MMORPGs :)
I agree with this, but keep in mind that UI mods are entirely voluntary - if someone doesn't like the donation nags, they can turn off QH. Also, fewer UI mods being available means, on average, a worse experience for players.
I estimate that Questhelper alone is used by 10-20% of the WoW player base. I think there would be more grumbling than you think.
Both of these ideas are explicitly disallowed by the new policy.
These specific things are not permitted - in general, I can't tie *anything* UI-mod-related to money, in any form.
I cannot offer any sort of in-game incentive to donation. I cannot offer beta versions, I cannot offer unlocked features, I can't even make a little sprite that says "THANKS FOR DONATING" that you can right-click to turn off.
There will be a chunk at the beginning (QH, Carbonite, nUI, Mappy et al), but the bulk of the effect will be a largely-unnoticable reduction in the number of people who bother to write UI mods. I'm pretty sure it'll be impossible to actually calculate, and largely impossible to detect.
True. I don't think it will be enough, though if it turns out to be, I may re-evaluate things.
A lot of people seem to be misinterpreting what I'm saying here (I don't say you are, necessarily, I'm just pointing this out.) A lot of people think that I don't like Blizzard's new policy, and thus I'm taking my toys and going home. This isn't actually what's happening. I *don't* like the new policy, but that's not what the real problem is.
The problem is that the new policy makes it so I can't make a living off Questhelper. If I can't make a living off Questhelper, I'm not going to keep treating it like a full-time job.
If someone figures out how to make it work like a full-time job again, I'll go back to it, but I don't actually think it's possible.
I can't write it into the addon for several reasons (can't nag, can't communicate outside the WoW universe, for two of them.) I could, in theory, write my own updater, but I suspect few people would use it, and I'd have to pay for bandwidth myself, and overall I just don't think it's viable.
Yes, a possibility, but one that I think is an expensive long-shot.