Touch LCD display would be awesome. You could play online MMO style. A war strategy game like Road to Moscow online would be really cool. Tons of other games as well, but similar theme. It would be a real-time war (terrain and armies) command center. Were that the case, I's shell out $8,500 form one.

haha funny skit. Here's the full paragraph:

Life was a carnival! We entertained ourselves! We didn't need moooovin' pitchurrrres. In my day, there was only one show in town -- it was called "Stare at the sun!" ... That's right! You'd sit in the middle of an open field and stare up at the sun till your eyeballs burst into flames! And you thought, "Oh, no! Maybe I shouldn't've stared directly into the burning sun with my eyes wide open." But it was too late! Your head was on fire and people were roastin' chickens over it. ... And that's the way it was and we liked it!

Really depends on the type of contract work they are doing. Working for a company like CSC who manages contract and pays employee benefits, a W-2 contractor that works for what is basically a head-hunting company that provide no benefits or a 1099 contractor (essentially self-employed.) Having done all three I can say a skilled IT worker (W2 or 1099) in NYC should be getting no less than $60/hr. I realize the market has slowed down considerably since the heydays of the late 90's, but rates have rebounded the last few years. We had something similar happen at T Rowe Price where all the contractors were let go to save money. Most were charging over $100/hr.

So... what lessons have we all learned from playing World of Warcraft, etc.?

The finer points of ninja looting.

Agree completely. Was looking for her name in the list. Her Wiki Bio is a must read. Pretty spectacular career and life. Contributed so much to the IT field last century.

The only thing is when they are not raiding or questing they seen to like to chat a lot in pst. Also, a lot more verbal on vent than most males. I think it has more of a social aspect to female players. For the most part, they are good players so meh..

I'm thinking back to 1993-1994 when SGI had killer workstations that had some nifty innovative features with the best GUI for Unix workstations. Hell, the best GUI for all workstations at the time. We used to manage a few hundred of them along with Suns and Alphas. It's funny looking back that Sun survived and SGI and Alpha didn't. Alpha and SGI were like the BMWs and Mercedes of the workstations and servers, where Sun was like a used Ford. But SGI went to their WNT strategy and took a nosedive. Hard to compete with 2k workstations (at the time) with ones that cost over 10k.

That's the main issue I have with this as well. Who determines which browsers will be included? I'm sure someone will feel left out. To download other browsers you'll need a browser to begin with so the "no browser" option is out. Not a Microsoft fan here but think this is way over the top.