Network World recently posted some industry commentary by Frank Dzubeck which talks about how CIOs are starting to become more concerned with application performance and the inter-process latency - i.e., concerns over "chatty apps." When you consider additional need for real-time application - the most notable of which is VoIP, but which can reach to tele-imaging and telemedicine, interactive three-dimensional virtual conferen-

I'm sorry, can you give me a minute to collect my thoughts?

Right. Sorry.

Anyway, Dzubeck makes the point that with consolidated data centers, and less latency-sensitive operations moved to SAAS, latency between (virtual) servers is may now measured in microseconds, not milliseconds, but these data centers must be connected to users over high-latency WAN connections… and these users are almost always as scattered and far-flung as the Rod of Seven Parts--

Oh god. I'm sorry. Just give me a moment to compose myself.

*sniff*

*sniff*

I'm going to be okay, right? I can do this. Let me just shake this out here, take a couple of deep breaths. Whoo. Oh boy.

Alright. I'm ready. I'm a pro. I can do this.

Right. The point is that companies are relying on WAN link service providers for low latency connections, but carriers rarely advertise their latency and even requiring a service-level agreement commitment does not guarantee low latency, because the measures of latency used are often complex and don't give an accurate picture of actual latency - something Joel has talked about earlier - and the language of the SLA agreement is more complex than trying to find THAC0--

Oh god. I thought I could do this. I just can't. I'm sorry. It's just… too great a loss. I know that ultimately, Gary Gygax's creation will live on in all of us - every time we roll a d20 to decide what pizza toppings to order, every time we swap stories about former D&D characters in the lobbies of technical networking conventions like Interop, every time we try to engineer the lowest latency network configuration and are reminded of how we min-maxed our characters.

The guy changed the world for us geeks, you know. While other kids rebelled from their parents through punk music, drugs, or sex, we geeks rebelled by pretending we were mighty warriors - where our knowledge of mathematics and probability was far more powerful than any football playing jock… where we were kings, gods, and monsters.

The problem solving skills and imagination skills helped us when we went into our lives as the proud geeks we were. We took a lot of our geek culture from that one man and his game.

Gary Gygax is dead. And unlike one of his characters, we can't just bring him back with a spell. The world lost a good man.

Now the only thing we can do is mourn, grieve, remember the man as he was, and split up his gold and magic items amongst the rest of the party.