The mainstream is missing here. That is clearly part of odd atmosphere at web conferences as vendors hawk their wares from fancy show booths . . . and to whom? To enterprise, stupid!

Individual sales for those companies offering small business solutions means income of less than $100 monthly, or licensing fees of between $500 and $2000 for those vendors and not multimillion dollar deals that you read about in Wall Street Journal. This means that those vendors that do offer small business solutions most often don't attend trade shows because they can't reach their audience there. Unless they can also sell their tools to enterprise level Dilbert-like drones, there is little reason to hawk their wares at trade shows.

Are there any folks out there (other than Mac users) who just have a middle level interest, run a small business online and don't sound like they are spelling everything when discussing business applications? CRM, ROI, ERP, J2EE, XML and even SOAP are on tongues of corporate suits. Are rest of us lost and wandering aimlessly through InternetWorld, sponsored by AOL? Even MacWorld conference seems to be overflowing in stuff only giant corporate Goliaths can possibly afford for their business.

I hope that adoption of UNIX platform for OS X makes Apple more successful, but I'd sure hate to see ENTERPRISE software and business users make Apple move to that lucrative market and forget what made them a success in first place, lack of jargon, intuitive commands and pleasing, even fun to use computers. Maybe Apple could develop a GUI for corporate use that reminds Dilbert-like drones that they are WORKING after all! Don't enjoy your time on clock, by golly! The screen is gray and lifeless and commands are full of jargon.

I'd like to propose to Steve Jobs that he attempt another launch of NEXT, which is essentially his basis for OS X. That way, if Big Business adopts NEXT with enthusiasm, we won't lose entertaining sound effects, understandable language and attractive graphics that make Apple delicious.

Others regard these diversions as colossal - though inadvertent - social experiments. If so, they bode ill - they are all infested with virtual crime, counterfeiting, hoarding, xenophobia, racism, and all manner of perversions.

Subscriptions are not only mode of payment. Early multi-user dungeons (MUD) - another type of MMORPG - used to charge by hour. Some users were said to run bills of hundreds of dollars a month.

MMORPG's require massive upfront investments - so hitherto, they constitute a tiny fraction of booming video and PC gaming businesses. With combined annual revenues of c. $9 billion, these trades are 10 percent bigger than film industry - and half as lucrative as home video market. They are fast closing on music retail sales.

As games become graphically-lavish and more interactive, their popularity will increase. Offline and online single-player and multi-player video gaming may be converging. Both Sony and Microsoft intend to Internet-enable their game consoles later this year. The currently clandestine universe of geeks and eccentrics - online, multi-player, games - may yet become a mass phenomena.

Moreover, MMORPG can be greatly enhanced - and expensive downtime greatly reduced - with distributed computing - sharing of idle resources worldwide to perform calculations within ad hoc self-assembling computer networks. Such collaboration forms core of, arguably, new architecture of Internet known as "The Grid". Companies such as IBM and Butterfly are already developing requisite technologies.

According to an IBM-Butterfly press release:

"The Butterfly Grid T could enable online video game providers to support a massive number of players (a few millions) (simultaneously) within same game by allocating computing resources to most populated areas and most popular games."

The differences between video games and other forms of entertainment may be eroding. Hollywood films are actually a form of MMORPG's - simultaneously watched by thousands worldwide. Video games are interactive - while movies are passive but even this distinction may fall prey to Web films and interactive TV.

As real-life actors and pop idols are - ever so gradually - replaced by electronic avatars, video games will come to occupy driver seat in a host of hitherto disparate industries. Movies may first be released as video games - rather than conversely. Original music written for games will be published as "sound tracks".

Gamers will move seamlessly from their PDA to their PC, to their home cinema system, and back to their Interactive TV. Game consoles - already computational marvels - may finally succeed where PC's failed: to transform face of entertainment.

Jeff Harrow aptly concludes:

" ... History teaches me that games tend to drive mass adoption of technologies that then become commonplace and find their way into "business." Examples include color monitors, higher-resolution and hardware-accelerated graphics, sound cards, and more. And in case of these MMORPG games, I believe that they will eventually morph into effective virtual business venues for meetings, trade shows, and more. Don't ignore what's behind (and ahead for) these "games," just because they're games..."