All Work And No Play ...

Clifton Forlines writes: "Jupiter Media Metrix released a report on Monday about PC gaming - here's one of the more interesting tidbits: 'Similar to past years, Microsoft Windows-bundled games dominated the top rankings in October 2001: Solitaire was number one, with 21.3 million users.' A little math tells us that americans spent about 24 million man-hours in October on Solitarie (estimating that each user spent a little more than an hour over the whole month) That corresponds to about 1 million man-days, or around 2740 man-years! For comparison, I looked up these numbers... Empire State Building: 7 million man-hours (a mere 9 days of Solitaire), Panama Canal: 20 million man-hours (a mere 26 days of Solitaire), Apollo project: 15.5 billion man-hours (or a mere 52 years of Solitaire) Think about it!"

Comments

Pot, Kettle, Black

[PD]

Hmmmm. That's amazing. I wonder how many billions of Solitaires go into a single Slashdot?

Re:Pot, Kettle, Black

[Skirwan]

That's amazing. I wonder how many billions of Solitaires go into a single Slashdot?

The difference, of course, is that one is generally used as a mindless diversion while one should be doing real work, and the other is a card game.

--
Humour through misdirection: I could write for Angel!

Think of the man-hours wasted on sex

[typical geek]

If we could just convince all the women that they really don't need orgasms, we could cut down the hours needed for sex to about 5 minutes each time.

Re:Think of the man-hours wasted on sex

[Glove d'OJ]

As a man, I would like to be on record as considering the WOMAN-hours wasted...

What a waste...

[Mike Schiraldi]

This is a disgrace, the way people waste their time at work. It's cheating their employer, too.

I'd write more, but i don't want my boss to see me on Slashdot.

Cool!

[sterno]

So if everybody gave up the time that they spent showering, that could easily be like... well let's see:

Let's assume roughly 170 million people in the US who aren't too old or too young to be useful. Then let's assume they each shower for roughly 15 minutes a day on average. That is 42.5 million man hours per day spent showering. At that rate:

Emprie State Building: Under 4 hours
Panama Canal: Half a day
Apollo project: 36 days

So the empire state building and panama canal are easy. The apollo project is doable, but I doubt anybody would want to fly on it. Man would that thing smell bad.

Re:People spent too much time playing games

[daeley]

IF people could be just ALITTLE more serious, perhaps we wouldnt be having economy trouble, terrorist attacks, problems with virii, hackers, worms.
Instead of using your computer to play stupid games, use your computer to do stuff thats important and play a game no more than a half hour to an hour per week.

You know, most economists and terrorists (meatspace and cyber) I know of are severely serious people. If they had a fscking modicum of playfulness in their bodies, much less a sense of humor, we would probably have a lot fewer recessions and suicide bombers.

Now that we've put economists and terrorists in the same boat, let's throw you in -- a /. flamebait-poster who really needs to get out more and have some fun. ;-)

Re:Funny numbers

[Glove d'OJ]

I agree totally... if we could similarly stack people like this, imagine what could get done...

6,480 women could have a baby in an hour!
388,800 women could have a baby in a miunte!
23,328,000 women could have a baby in a second!

Now, while I doubt I could handle all of those women, I would certainly be willing to try...

MYST!!!! Get some more improvement!

[MemeRot]

Myst does not improve critical thinking skills.

The only critical thought one needs when playing Myst is 'where is the off button?'