I put this on a thumb drive that my daughter boots to an old laptop of mine. She loves it.

Ah, so many anonymous trolls who login from cafe computers and show themselves to be belligerent jackwagons will be presumed to be the same guy, eh? lol

We took our old ones to the shooting range - 17 HMR, 45, 9mm, 223 from an AR-15...

I remember Delta Force's "one shot anywhere on the body kills you" model. But we played that game endlessly, even after more realistic games came out. Granted, I also liked the FPS games that actually let you get shot in the ankle and not die immediately, but for fun gameplay, we didn't mind games like DF not having full-on realism. I mean, what did we do when we played "Cowboys and Indians" outside? Or paintball, or Airsoft? You got hit, you were "dead." The lack of inherent realism let us bring our own imagination to it.
More to the point of the article, I can think of a few examples where games I play have recently added "realsim" in a frustrating manner.
1. Madden NFL/NCAA Football. I enjoy console football games, like NCAA and Madden. A few versions back, Madden added in this pre-season and other manager-type stuff, the idea of "you're a coach/manager, so do all the coachy/managerish stuff." It was irritating when I just wanted to set up a season and play (Tecmo Super Bowl?). IIRC, there was no easy way to skip all that stuff, so I just gave up on Madden (and didn't they later come out with "Coach" so you don't even have to play the game to play the game?). Even NCAA became irritating, with in-season suspensions (which seem more prevalent when your team is successful, perhaps as a way to gimp you), and a slew of irritating pre-season stuff. Heck, it could take a few hours to go from the end of one season to the beginning of the next with recruiting, etc. Granted, I can (and often do) skip many of those steps, but it just draws the game out.
Side note: does anyone else think the more realistic they try to make player movements, the weirder they look?
2. WoW. Was it 4.0 that brought us the big graphics changes? "The water will appear more realistic, terrain will be more lifelike." WTH? I expect it to be a game, not a movie in which my main is the star. So we can skip the very realistic graphics. I don't fly from Ironforge past Menethil and think, "Gee, what lovely looking water they've made now." Maybe some folks do, I dunno. It looked great before the graphics improvements. Granted, I don't want Atari 2600 or Intellivision graphics, but I don't really care for the changes.

I do appreciate that they can now take advantage of the ATI ZOMG or the Nvidia RAWKYERSAWKSOFF cards, but I'll opt for playing the game over focusing so much on "realism."

Aw, crap. There goes another good game development company.
I wonder if this will be as bad as when CA took over Cheyenne Backup, turning it into ARCserve and promptly damning it to hell.

"Sadly, many companies, even small ones, are willing to lose knowledge and talent rather than give a raise." Exactly what happened to me. I was in the position of being indispensable. But in the midst of cost-cutting, I was cost, so they decided it better to cut me loose and deal with the mess afterwards. Now, 18 months on, they are still dealing with the mess, but they're paying the firm with which they replaced me a lot less than they were paying me. In the end, they did me a favor and I've now got a better job doing more of what I really enjoy than I was doing as an IT manager. And they're probably better off, too.

"On Friday, new reports emerged in the local press that Iran also intends to roll out its own computer operating system in coming months to replace Microsoft Corp.'s Windows."

Iranix?

I work primarily with Linux, with networking being a second field. When I was put in the position of looking for a new job, having an RHCE was a door-opener and is part of why I have the great job I have. Today I still receive emails and phone calls because of that cert, even though I haven't been active on the headhunter sites in a while. As others have mentioned, a CCNA is also valuable. Of course, on the high end, a CCIE opens doors and pocketbooks. But it's much tougher to achieve. What you want to look for is a certification that is tough enough to get that many good people fail. In other words, you want it to be a true proof of your knowledge of that technical area. And yeah, people find all sorts of ways to pass tests without actually knowing the material well, but there are a few certs that are more respected in the IT world than others. And if you're serious about being certified in something, try first for something you're already good at and enjoy. If you're weak in networking, don't spend too much time trying for something like CCNA. On the other hand, if your passion is in networking, get that CCNA and don't stop there.