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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.
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
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?
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!
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
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
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); }
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.
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?
* 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
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...
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.
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
Given that Minesweeper is NP-complete, are you so sure of that assertion? In a sufficiently-crowded field, you almost always get to some point where you can't deduce from the surrounding squares whether or not there's a mine in a space. You end up guessing and hoping for the best when this happens. I suspect that the Minesweeper where you never have to guess isn't the true Minesweeper.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
IF people could be just ALITTLE more serious, perhaps we wouldnt be having economy trouble, terrorist attacks, problems with virii, hackers, worms.
/. flamebait-poster who really needs to get out more and have some fun. ;-)
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
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
Myst does not improve critical thinking skills.
The only critical thought one needs when playing Myst is 'where is the off button?'