Carcassonne and Qwirkle. Both are most fun with just 2 players and have fairly simple basic rules, but each game is very different and it takes a while to really master them. Probably more suitable for people who enjoy analytical thinking (I assume this is quite common among codeproject members). Since I rarely have suitable human opponents, I mostly play them as computer games.

I think this is more of a philosophical question. There isn't the one true answer on that. It depends on many factors - where you come from, where you want to go, your working situation (all from an IT perspective). If you're young and think that serious programming will be a significant part of your future (business) life and you like to solve sophisticated coding problems, then starting with C++ might be an option. C(++) is still the one and only no-limits programming language (besides assembly of course :)) and when you are able to master C(++), learning other higher-level languages will look very easy to you. From my experience it is useful to have knowledge in programming on C-level even if you actually code in higher-level languages, because it helps to understand what happens under the hood and why some things behave the way they do – and when speed and small footprint really count, there is no alternative anyway. If your goal is just to get into business and to be productive soon, then C++ may not be the right choice, since it has a slow learning curve and many potential traps which will cost you days (and sometimes even nights or weekends) to fight through. C(++) is still alive and may survive some of the trendy higher level languages, but it is bare bones coding and definitely not always the right tool of choice. Gerd -- modified at 7:23 Friday 3rd August, 2007

I agree with the statement of the article, but I believe the basic concept of UAC (do your daily work as a user, just elevate when needed) is not the main problem - nobody who calls himself an IT Pro can seriously disagree with this concept. I think it's more a problem with current implementation details of UAC that makes people hate it (e.g. not being able to share network connections and substs between user session and elevated session, confirm requests if applications are explicitly started with 'run as admin', always elevated start of some applications like regedit, ...) Gerd