Honestly, AoC had a *remarkably* smooth launch on the "server stability" end of things. One of the smoothest I've ever seen. There is a lot of things which remain unfinished, but then again there have been a TON of things enhanced in WoW since launch.
My major complaints about AoC include: "Feats" i.e. wow talents descriptions are utterly useless, to the point that a person cannot make reasonable intelligent decisions about which ones to pick based on their descriptions. Not to mention there are numerous feats which simply don't work. Combat mechanics are very nearly a black box, again hampering decision making & optimizing effectiveness. Class balance is utterly broken- the "pure" tanks (guardians) do more damage than the "dps" tanks (conqueror) by nearly a 2:1 margin. Funcom chose to shorten the levelling grind, so it's a lot shorter to get to 80... but that also shortened their window to actually get an "endgame" together, so unless further development of an endgame shows up fast, a lot of folks will get to 80, and realize there's not much to do at 80. Those are pretty much the most egregarious problems I see. I'm putting AoC down and waiting 6 months to take another look, as it's clearly not ready yet.
I call BS on Opera's complaint. I just read Mozilla's security advisory, and it makes no mention of Opera. So sorry- Mozilla checked and saw Opera was vulnerable to the same exploit and shot them a heads up to let them know about it. Mozilla has ZERO obligation to the Opera folks, so that was being nice. If their advisory had mentioned Opera, there would be something to complain about. As it stands, all Opera's complaint accomplished was advertising to the world that their browser was vulnerable and unpatched. Smart people indeed.
The network neutrality that most have been pushing is no good for anyone. Back in the early days, the processors which were economical didn't have sufficient guts to do intelligent traffic shaping. That was the reason that packets were dropped randomly when routers got too busy- there wasn't the horsepower to do anything more intelligent.
Back in the early days, there was no standard for QoS. That's why there wasn't any offering of differing performance per-application.
Now, routers have CPUs which are powerful enough to make intelligent determinations and standards for managing those decisions.
I'm very interested in being able to purchase QoS-enabled service from my ISP. That would bring me a step closer to feasible high-quality telephony and video across the internet. All the "net-neutrality" proposals being pushed from the "net-neutrality" crowd would FORBID ISPs from offering those types of service.
I don't want Joe down the street from me clogging the bandwidth my ISP has to the point that my service is degraded. I want my ISP to be able to install controls to manage that. Once again, the proposals would forbid that.
What do I want in net neutrality? I DON'T want my ISP to use their traffic shaping to give them a "business" edge in internet services. I *don't* want them to lock out new internet services and businesses. I see how some of the incumbent players have managed their cell-phone networks and I don't trust them one bit not to do that. I *don't* want them to unilaterally degrade certain types of application service because they don't like it
Be very careful what you ask for. The BIG issue is making sure that ISPs don't use their traffic shaping for anti competitive purposes. Beyond that, the things being asked for would be as stifling to innovation and progress as the DRM that media companies are pushing on us.
I'm an IT guy, and to hell with putting IE7 on all user desktops, I wont put that POS on anything. I find more websites which work with Firefox than work with IE7. IE6 is the *only* browser which works with every site I can find.
It's shameful, but that's the true situation. I'm *not* going to replace a web browser which works with 100% of the sites with one that works with 90% of the sites- that's insanity. The number of support calls our IT helpdesk would get would bury them.
Keep in mind that I loathe IE. I personally use firefox as my primary browser, and push all my users to do that as well. But if a website doesn't work in firefox, it will work in IE6, unless it's completely broken.
I really do hope that the EU decides to force MSFT to comply with the standards (or pay millions/day in fines)- that would be the best thing which could happen to the web. If everyone knows that the standards work, you write your code once, and you forget it. A lot of stuff would break until everyone updated, but long term it would be wonderful. Their OS monopoly is giving them the power to break the standards so that competitors aren't on an even playing field, even after you get past "which browser comes pre-loaded".
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Honestly, AoC had a *remarkably* smooth launch on the "server stability" end of things. One of the smoothest I've ever seen. There is a lot of things which remain unfinished, but then again there have been a TON of things enhanced in WoW since launch. My major complaints about AoC include: "Feats" i.e. wow talents descriptions are utterly useless, to the point that a person cannot make reasonable intelligent decisions about which ones to pick based on their descriptions. Not to mention there are numerous feats which simply don't work. Combat mechanics are very nearly a black box, again hampering decision making & optimizing effectiveness. Class balance is utterly broken- the "pure" tanks (guardians) do more damage than the "dps" tanks (conqueror) by nearly a 2:1 margin. Funcom chose to shorten the levelling grind, so it's a lot shorter to get to 80... but that also shortened their window to actually get an "endgame" together, so unless further development of an endgame shows up fast, a lot of folks will get to 80, and realize there's not much to do at 80. Those are pretty much the most egregarious problems I see. I'm putting AoC down and waiting 6 months to take another look, as it's clearly not ready yet.
I call BS on Opera's complaint. I just read Mozilla's security advisory, and it makes no mention of Opera. So sorry- Mozilla checked and saw Opera was vulnerable to the same exploit and shot them a heads up to let them know about it. Mozilla has ZERO obligation to the Opera folks, so that was being nice. If their advisory had mentioned Opera, there would be something to complain about. As it stands, all Opera's complaint accomplished was advertising to the world that their browser was vulnerable and unpatched. Smart people indeed.
Back in the early days, there was no standard for QoS. That's why there wasn't any offering of differing performance per-application.
Now, routers have CPUs which are powerful enough to make intelligent determinations and standards for managing those decisions.
I'm very interested in being able to purchase QoS-enabled service from my ISP. That would bring me a step closer to feasible high-quality telephony and video across the internet. All the "net-neutrality" proposals being pushed from the "net-neutrality" crowd would FORBID ISPs from offering those types of service.
I don't want Joe down the street from me clogging the bandwidth my ISP has to the point that my service is degraded. I want my ISP to be able to install controls to manage that. Once again, the proposals would forbid that.
What do I want in net neutrality? I DON'T want my ISP to use their traffic shaping to give them a "business" edge in internet services. I *don't* want them to lock out new internet services and businesses. I see how some of the incumbent players have managed their cell-phone networks and I don't trust them one bit not to do that. I *don't* want them to unilaterally degrade certain types of application service because they don't like it
Be very careful what you ask for. The BIG issue is making sure that ISPs don't use their traffic shaping for anti competitive purposes. Beyond that, the things being asked for would be as stifling to innovation and progress as the DRM that media companies are pushing on us.
I'm an IT guy, and to hell with putting IE7 on all user desktops, I wont put that POS on anything. I find more websites which work with Firefox than work with IE7. IE6 is the *only* browser which works with every site I can find. It's shameful, but that's the true situation. I'm *not* going to replace a web browser which works with 100% of the sites with one that works with 90% of the sites- that's insanity. The number of support calls our IT helpdesk would get would bury them. Keep in mind that I loathe IE. I personally use firefox as my primary browser, and push all my users to do that as well. But if a website doesn't work in firefox, it will work in IE6, unless it's completely broken. I really do hope that the EU decides to force MSFT to comply with the standards (or pay millions/day in fines)- that would be the best thing which could happen to the web. If everyone knows that the standards work, you write your code once, and you forget it. A lot of stuff would break until everyone updated, but long term it would be wonderful. Their OS monopoly is giving them the power to break the standards so that competitors aren't on an even playing field, even after you get past "which browser comes pre-loaded".