Might not have been his intention, but the author has basically proven that MMOs, in terms of the game fee itself, are incredibly cheap entertainment.

He also demonstrates that stupid people will spend stupid amounts of money on MMO-related bits and pieces. That's not the cost of playing the game.

And surely paying the 1-month-at-a-time fee of $15 is fine when you're trying it out, but surely at some point in the 4 year 8 month saga you realise you're going to stick with it for a while, and take one of the cheaper/longer sub options. Even if he takes 8 months of "eval" to arrive at that conclusion, using 6 month subs saves him $100 over the next 4 years.

I was in my last "real job" for 7 years, and spent the last 3 negotiating an equity position. They offered 10% for "effort to date" and our only point of debate was how to develop a schedule to grow that 10% to the upper limit they were comfortable with (20%) over the next 3-5 years. They would get the certainty they needed, and I would get the increasing reward (and commitment) that I needed.

We never reached an agreement, so I eventually resigned and never got the original 10% - it wasn't worth the legal effort to fight for. But throughout the last 2 years, because the negotiation had dragged out so badly, I had accepted a revenue-share of 5% (on gross, not profit). Obviously it was never intended for this 5% to actually leave the business as cash, it was meant to be "converted" as we travelled from 10 to 20% equity. But as we never resolved the issue, I took it monthly as cash. This certainly made it worthwhile (overall) for me to hang around, but it can only have hurt their own position.

Fast-forward 2 years and they were bought by a public company in a 50% cash, 50% shares deal. I thought the price (based on our revenue at the time) was crazy, and could only be motivated by confidence the parent company's shares were on their way up, and/or the opportunity to leverage themselves into well-paid upper management slots in the parent company.

Sure enough, the shares of the parent gradually headed to zero over the next year or so, making them next to worthless.

In the wash-up, the 10% I "lost" by walking away ended up being worth very little. Obviously I'm somewhat relieved they didn't end up selling for a squillion dollars in any real currency.

There's also the problem of whether or not Mr 10% would actually get what he's owed, in a private company, when Mr 90% sells up.

I've been gainfully self-employed for the 6 years since. I can't recommend 100% equity highly enough, but will certainly tackle this equity problem as I grow my own business and take other people onboard. Revenue-sharing deals will definitely be based on profit though, not gross.

And whether such a problem is related to malware or not, what steps would you take next?

In some fantasy/virtual reality utopia where we are afforded the time to "scratch" our technical itches by delving deep enough to find the actual cause of the problem, there are lots of options for where to look next, and most of them are already in this thread.

But in the real world where our time comes at an hourly rate, your best course of option is simple: spend the 3 hours it takes to re-install your OS, patch it up, re-install your apps, patch them up, configure your apps, restore your data, and away you go.

Because that's the real world.

Yes, you've caught something (which you may or may not find if you go looking), or something else has gone wrong/become corrupt. Just re-install and move on.

And there are two bonuses:

1. your system will magically improve in performance to the level it was at the first day you turned it on, before you started down the inevitable path of bloat/crapware and steadily degrading performance.

2. you'll learn a few things along the way/make better choices about what to install and what not to install, ending up with a leaner, faster, more reliable system.

Bestbuy sucks, compusa sucks, circuit city sucks.. all of them suck. They are staffed with minimum wage idiots that misinform more than they inform and their store policies treat you like you are more trouble than you are worth.

All true. But Darwin's theory of natural selection applies to these corporate giants just as it does to biology. We (the consumer) get the level of service we're willing to pay for. Trashy electronics retailers prosper because we buy what they're selling. Saving a dollar wins over customer service every time. So who's to blame? That would be us.