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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guest 6801328" data-source="post: 6864413">Ok, I listened to your whole video.  I can't say it's very persuasive.  It really is just a "rant" and not really a compelling case.  Dramatic emphasis (e.g. "SIXTEEN years..." ) doesn't really qualify as evidence or argument.  (Ever notice that NPR reporters do this whenever a dollar amount gets mentioned?  "...and used SEVENTEEN dollars of taxpayer money...")Yes, it's easy to crank out partially complete, low-feature apps that you don't have to support, that don't get much traffic, and doesn't require payments.  Heck, I could whip out a nifty js/css based character sheet by tomorrow morning.  By evening it would auto-populate with sub-class info, spells, skill and attack bonuses, etc.  Easy and fun project.Check out my spell index that I whipped up about 15 months ago: <a href="http://salty-ridge-7989.herokuapp.com/" target="_blank">http://salty-ridge-7989.herokuapp.com/</a>Took under 3 hours, largely because somebody else had already typed everything into a spreadsheet.  But it's a vastly different proposition to roll out a commercial product that has to keep lots of customers happy, bill them securely, and be maintained.  Let's say they build this amazing character database and...oops!  Sorry, little unexpected glitch...all your characters got corrupted.  Independent and free "fan" projects don't really have to worry about this.  Caveat emptor and all.  Wizards would very, very much have to worry about this.  And staying on top of everything that can go wrong gets expensive.  I know, I know...there are lots of gamers on this site who code.  And I wish when hiring engineers I could know which of them post things on gaming forums like "this would be cheap and easy to build and maintain" because I'd know which ones to never hire.  Honestly I think your insistence on pretending to know exactly what decisions constitutes "responsible" business practices, in a business to which you are not privy to any actual data, is more than a little naive.I'd love to have something like the digital tools we were promised, too.  Guess what?  Technology projects go off the rails a lot.  MM and JC aren't idiots.  And Wizards isn't a technology company.</blockquote>

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