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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!"
Hmmmm. That's amazing. I wonder how many billions of Solitaires go into a single Slashdot?
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
There has been a lot of research done that shows that playing games not only improves critical thinking skills (like with games like Myst, etc), but also can improve hand-eye coordination with the fast paced shooter type games. (Quake3, etc).
And they said zombies weren't real!
I can't think about the implications of this right now, I'm supposed to be re-engineering software systems but I'm just about to win my Solitaire game.
--Charlie
Come on, we need to make a concerted effort to get Minesweeper up to number 1! I mean, it's available on many different platforms (Minus the Microsoft copyright, at least) so there's got to be more than 21 million users of Minesweeper!
Minesweeper forever!!!
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
Solitaire? No I've spent many a man hour on minesweeper, I swear if that site that lets you play minesweeper for money online would allow florida based credit cards, I'd be rackig in the dough :)
Ever stop to think how much *MORE* time Americans spend watching TV than playing solitaire (etc).?
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.
The difference here is that most skyscrapers and canals require _actual physical labor_, not just moving a mouse. Plus, most people play Solitaire as a break, so their potential productivity during Solitaire-playing hours is low.
-- Nerds on toast in the new millenium
It is truly inspiring that one of the tallest buildings in the world, the Empire State Building, was built in under a year. I was just there last weekend and visited the tower for the first time.
It was both a humbling experience and encouraging. People can do both great and horrible things when working in concert. We just need good ideas to rally around, rather than sitting idly by or doing repetitive tasks.
Anyone want to help me with my spaceship?
Consider the man hours needed to produce Hoyle's Poker vs. Quake3. Its glamorous to do the latter, but I bet the former makes a lot more profit.
I've always avoided game programming simply because I know it would require me to give up virtually everything else I enjoy doing with computers(databases, web programming, sysadminning). You have to be pretty dedicated to be any good at it. However, if I was to start a game company, it would definitely start out producing simpler games for older customers, then perhaps move to making bigger 3D action games once I made enough to hire more people.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
Those people should be playing Freecell.
-- "Never call your girlfriend 'Butterball'. Not even once."
Ask yourself this: do you really want the type of person who finds fulfillment playing Solitaire and Minesweeper to divert his/her attention to building the next skyscraper or hydroelectric project? Please, no!
I thought about, and it it hurts, but it points to an interesting thought, is solitare a good game on the PC.
It just isn't but for some stupid reason I keep playing it.
The interesting thing about the article is that it shows more than ever that graphics and speed are unimportant to the quality of the game. Right after the bundled games were and I quote
October 2001were (Electronic Arts) Maxis' The Sims, with 1.6 million users; Microsoft's Age of Empires, with 805,000 users; (Vivendi Universal) Blizzard's Diablo II with 624,000 users; and (Electronic Arts) Westwood's Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun with 563,000 users.
none of these are visualy very impressive, but they all share one common theme anyone can play them with ease.
conclusion gameplay over style every time
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
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.
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
But not that amazing. It just means that if 23 million people each spend one hour digging, the Panama canal could have been finished in less then a month. There would be some elbowing ofcourse, and maybe Panama would have sunk by itself with al those people standing in spot...
The point is, if you choose the statistics that you compare to carefully, you can make anything seem amazing. Compare hours spent playing solitaire to hours spent while brushing teeth, and suddenly he numbers don't seem so amazing anymore.
karma capped
If you assume a lifespan of 76 years than that programmer has robbed the world of the equivalent of 36 lives. Worse than Jeffery Dahmer.
personal attacks hurt, especially when deserved
You gotta figure there's millions of hours spent by young smart programmer's minds reading this stuff instead of writing code. Think of all the great improvements that could have been made to the world's software if we hadn't been wasting time on this website!?
I guess you don't program... Cause from where I'm sitting, if I didn't take a few minutes every hour to do something other than programming, there would be a ten fold increase in the amount of crap code I write... Programmers aren't machines, we need a mental break too...
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Here's the one I can't believe:
#30 Deer Hunter 364,000 unique users.
I'm going to give away the secret to winning right here:
1) Be sure to get at least three six-packs on the way to the stand. You can't win without them.
2) Make sure Bubba drinks more of them than you.
3) Piss into Bubba's box of ammo to prevent him from getting a deer.
4) Tell Bubba you're headed into town for more beer.
5) Drive on Rt. 17
6) Hit the deer that jumps out near mile marker 248.
7) Put the deer in the back of the truck.
8) Return home, leaving Bubba on the stand.
9) Victory!! You bagged more deer than Bubba!
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
I've found Solitare a great way to introduce the idea of double click, single click, and drag for those who really don't know beans about this computer thing. That app was the moment of zen for my Mom, and I hear others with similar stories.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
It runs on more platforms than minesweeper, there are even forms of solitaire which run without an computer or any electric power !
Why should we even consider playing minesweeper ?
It's obviously much worse.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
Now do the math for television. I imagine the average in the US is at least an hour a day of television viewing. Truly a waste.
-josh
Give me an NT server w/ 3D pinball in the backoffice anyday. That's the reason they put video drivers in kernel space you know.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
You don't need the Apollo project. Why, you can get five or six kick-ass spaceships from Galaga alone!
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Perhaps there is a question to ask: What was it people were doing that they had that kind of time to play solitary?
Cumulative hours waited for internet to download this year
I was just using mapquest and it seems that IE wants to download everything, even what you have already downloaded once.
Geee, I suppose I do have time to play solitary.
If mind-numbing games like Solitaire, FreeCell, and Minesweeper are all that's keeping Linux off the desktop of millions of users, why doesn't KDE and Gnome just start including a quick link to Entertainment -> FreeCell, Minesweeper, Solitaire, and Pinball on thier desktop systems too?! Forget about office productivity suites, set us up the minesweeper! ;)
Just how much does it cost to 'play' Empire State Building or Panama Canal?
Last time I checked, the "players" of those two "games" were paid to play--not the other way around. Of course, the same could probably be said for most of the Solitaire players out there as well...
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
I mean, seriously. A Beowulf cluster of solitaire players is not going to build the next Big Blue.
OTOH, maybe they'll give us the Ultimate Question...
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
It's kinda ironic that the subject of the post is "All work and no play...". If anyone remembers the end of that saying, its "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy". In other words, people need some time to play, or else they become dull. The funny thing is, the poster rambles on about how much more could have been done for the world if people didn't play. But would the world be worth living in if everyone was dull?
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.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
* watching TV
* masturbating
* sitting around thinking of ways to avoid doing something
* bowling
* watching bowling on TV
* reading Danielle Steel novels
ad nauseum...
People will "waste time" because humans can't work 24/7. We're primates, for Chrissakes.. have you ever seen primates in a zoo? "Wasting time" is all they do!
Video games are just a way of wasting the same amount of time in a different way.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Meanwhile, we're posting comments on /.
Oops.
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
Now what we need is some game that provides a playable veneer over an actual problem that benefits from human judgement. Kind of like Seti@Home benefits from all the idle computer power out there. Humans are capable of inuition and pattern discrimination that computers are not, and a game would be an excellent way to apply massive amounts of distributed human analysis to an appropriate problem.
Has anyone got an appropriate problem? I'm thinking that somewhere in the vast field of genetics there's got to be some problem that humans can work on better than computers, next step is to turn it into a game and getting it bundled with your favorite (or least favorite ;>) operating system...
That's why humanity won't build no more major wonders anymore. We'll spend our lives playing games.
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
No disrespect to your Grandfather ...
... but men have died playing solataire as well.
gus
.. if only.
While its not pre-installed, for years it was the first shareware Mac users would come in contact with - Klondike! The mac equivilant of solitare for windows. I believe MS may have even copied Klondike, as it was originally created on a Mac Lisa in 1984.
Anyways, this past week I discovered that not only has Klondike been ported to Mac OS X, but that it still runs on a Mac Plus with System 6! Thats right, the same binary can be run on a Motorola 68000 processor running an operating system without multitasking (unless you count MultiFinder) AND run on a machine with a total of 1.6 gigaherts with a fuly modern operating system, including protected memory.
Perhaps some day my mom will be ready to switch to Mac OS X.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside a dog it's too dark to read. - Groucho Marx
for supporting one of the top Windows applications, and especially allowing me to minimize without the evidence showing up on the task window.
If we could apply something similar to the game of Solitaire, there could be millions to be made! After all, Solitaire is just a sorting problem.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
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.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
I agree that people should take responsibility for using their own time productively. However, let's not ignore the toxic organizational environment in some companies that actually discourages personal contribution or penalizes it (no good deed goes unpunished).
Maybe the "lazy overprivileged goof-offs" are the managers of these people, who can't seem to find them anything to do that's more interesting than Solitaire. Yes, in an ideal world each person would manage themselves. But since we live in THIS world, it falls upon the manager to motivate and develop the people who report to them, instead of frustrating them so much they escape into games instead of doing their work.
As noted time and time again by those opposed to game violence, just a casual glance reveals that the Most Popular games are also the Most Violent.
For example, just take a look at number 21 : HOYLE SOLITAIRE. HOYT SOLITAIRE has been comdemned by numerous game anti-violence activism groups, including The Lion and Lamb Project.
How many more children need to die before HOYT and other violent-game makers stand up and becomes accountable? How many more people will buy (and I'm getting ill at the thought of it) ... _Guns_, for 'self-protection' and 'hunting', before congress will take action against these code-writing purveyors of death?
As a bible-thumping christian, I am reviled by the thought of these violent games and guns, especially remembering the death of our savior, Jesus Christ, at the hands of Doom-playing gun-wielding members of the pharisees. Evil is no older than videogames and guns. Write to your congressman now! Stop the corruption of our children!
(and since I typically get mod'd down at least once before someone realizes my sarcasm, yes, this is sarcastic.)
Jack Valenti and the MPAA are to technology as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone
and IF I get nine women pregnant, I'll have a baby in a month!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Minesweeper as a game is great. The mathematical properties of it are intriguing.
I have a lot of fun with it on Linux as well...
Solitaire is a waste of time.
If someone is playing solitaire, they obviously aren't doing work or using the cpu heavily - so why not build-in a distributed computing client to perform work on a cure for cancer or some such in the background of these games?
http://www.chem.ox.ac.uk/curecancer.html
man is machine
Solitaire was number one, with 21.3 million users.
how do they know that?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
...when they put Internet enabled games on the Start menu? IIRC, those games connect you to the Zone, and IIRC the Zone now requires Passport.
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
Didn't say whether they spent more time at Solitaire or at rebooting after a BSOD, or reinstalling their software.
Maybe if the BSOD was made to resemble Solitaire, it'd be less threatening?
Myst does not improve critical thinking skills.
The only critical thought one needs when playing Myst is 'where is the off button?'
all good tweakers maybe ;)
though i have coded for 30 hours straight before, i would not recommend it.
Bzzt...NP means that it's nondeterministically solvable in polynomial time. This assumes that the nondeterminism is solved ideally, or that the correct guess is made every time it pops up. Each nondeterminism requires a guess to resolve. (At least that's more or less how I remember it was explained in automata.)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.