Lately I have gotten into several online games. One I have found is Second Life. It is very highly addictive. Second Life is free to play but they also offer a premium account where you can buy virtual land. You run you second life like your first. You can take on a job or buy your Linden (Second Life Currency) with real life money. There are shops and clubs on the game where you can take your avatar for entertainment. A lot of people play the game for an escape from real life and it does help. You can live out real life dreams and meet real life goals on a small level with this game. I, for example, have dreamed of being a broadcasting DJ since I was a kid. Now through the game I have met that goal. This is only a game so I warn you not to get your real feelings involved as many people do take on virtual relationship which become more than they can control. I have been on second life for a little more than a year now and still enjoy it although I don't get to play as much as I used to.

If you were to start searching for women that have made an impact within the computer world, where would you begin? While you may think that anything prior to the year 1990 would seem useless, you may be surprised to know that women have been working with computers since the early 1940s.

Although equality amongst the sexes is still something that women strive for today, were it not for unequal wages, women might not have been thrust head first into the computer world in the first place. Since more and more women were completing a higher level of education during the 1940s and 1950s, many women were highly qualified to work with some of the earliest computer systems. Of course, there were just as many men that would take the job, but women gladly accepted a lesser wage in order to gain employment. During World War II, those women that had math skills were highly sought after in order to replace the men that had gone to war, and many of these women maintained their positions far after the war had ended as well.

When the late 1950s rolled around, many women more than knew their way around computers, which meant that certain engineering colleges had to open their doors to women (previously, they were only accepting men). Thanks to this break through regarding women’s rights, women were suddenly seen as indispensable personnel, and many great engineers were born as a result. Today, hundreds of women can be found working within the computer industry, and many different companies would be nowhere today if it were not for the women that ran their cyber worlds.