Out of Pod Experience

The DUST and Infrastructure presentations at FanFest already showed that they have DUST configured in a distributed setup for latency purposes. It would not be a stretch to have those sites each carry a few more servers that spread out a DR copy of Tranq, while giving each region some capacity to cache/proxy data (API, CREST) while not in DR mode. The main expense would be locating a site to keep a second copy of the database, and possibly setting up replication so they can keep it relatively up-to-date.

BTW, what do you mean by opex? Only thing that comes to mind is Op-Ex (Operational Expense, for those not familiar), but a search found something regarding an IBM grid paper (requiring a login ).

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As for an IPO, I will again state that it would be a bad idea for CCP, and for the same reasons I think Linden Lab should never IPO. One of the key things that drive a stock price today is 'good news' - and most articles about Eve are not. It's actually an interesting paradox - we have a company that actually thrives on 'bad' articles about it - but for the 'common' shareholder each news item will seem to act as a 'sell' signal. This could be mitigated somewhat by CCP spending more time with investors outside Iceland, explaining their model in better detail, so they (in turn) can calm down their clients when they come calling to sell.

Also, in current news, there is additional controversy and discussion within the markets themselves over its automation and related controls. A wonderful recent example would be the news about Knight Capital the last couple weeks (something that's a bit personal to me - used to have friends there), but the Facebook IPO and even the Flash Crash are good examples of this as well. Combined with a slow world economy, its causing a noticeable pullback in investment (again, something I happen to be watching with personal interest). Until this all settles out (I'd say 2015 at best), CCP needs to hold off on ideas for an IPO (at least in the US - which is what most people think about when doing an IPO right now).

IPO works great as long perception = reality.

Since computer games are usually either over hyped or continuously doomsayed that would be a bumpy ride.

The interesting thing would be to offset the decision making power of the stockholders by the CSM to ensure that neither side sucessfully manages to screw it up but i clearly see "epic fail" on the IPO horizon.

Also, back to topic