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State-Sponsored Solitaire?
jefu writes "According to this story the state of North Carolina may be considering banning solitaire on state owned machines. It seems that state workers are now perceived as having replaced leaning on brooms with playing solitaire or minesweeper. The story provides coverage of both sides of the issue, noting that playing solitaire (or other games) may provide workers with a way to burn off some stress, but that this kind of activity is likely to be perceived as time wasting. My favorite bit (especially as April 15th draws ever closer) is where the author notes that fifty percent of the time an IRS employee is on the computer they are playing games, shopping online or gambling."
It sounds to me like the real problem is that government workers aren't able to hit Alt-Tab fast enough. Once we address that, then the problem will be neatly swept under the rug.
I'm a big tall mofo.
What does April 15th have to do with anything?
It's only a matter of time before they ban Slashdot.
... and with this regulation fell the last obstacle to Linux acceptance in North Carolina.
I admit it. I have had to delete Gnome Games and Windows Solitaire/Minesweeper/Freecell/Hearts from my machines at work. I just couldn't get any work done before.
At places I've worked at, Solitare and Minesweeper have never been installed by default. On the other hand, access to Slashdot is still wiiiide open, so there's no need to resort to brooms yet.
where the author notes that fifty percent of the time an IRS employee is on the computer they are playing games, shopping online or gambling
Would that mean the IRS employs 50% too many workers?
All I can say is that it's a good thing Windows doesn't come with Tetris.
I assume that there are dozens of online solitaire games avaiable. Unless they take the extra step of blocking all game related websites, the whole thing is pointless.
I'd love to write a reply to this, but y'know... my solitare window is calling.
I can honestly say that I only gamble on my own computer :-p
Now, I did some shopping on my work computer, but that was strictly for business supplies. Well, mostly..
Twenties Retirement
... work there?
As soon as I worked out the cheat that shows a colour changing pixel in the top corner of the screen I lost all interest in Minesweeper. Most my friends now believe I am psychic because I can 'sense' whether a square has a mine under it or not :)
http://www.sandstorming.com
Isn't that what Government workers are supposed to do? ;)
I can see it now: employees sneaking in 52-card decks into the office and playing solitaire on their desk. Boss walks buy, they quickly throw their keyboard on top of it and get back to work. Gotta "burn off stress" somehow.
I just hope Minesweeper addicts don't resort to planting landmines in the office to get their fix.
fifty percent of the time an IRS employee is on the computer they are playing games, shopping online or gambling.
So, if we ban Solitaire, the IRS employees will probably spend more time gambling. Whose wise idea was that, I wonder?
I had to delete slashdot off of my computer at work.
Sorry everybody!
Slightly OT but... Where I attend they have locked down the Windows machines to the point where you can't do much of anything. Only professors/administrators can use the floppy drive. Mspaint, Solitaire, and Firefox are amoung the banned software (they claim this software is abused). Thankfully, the admin has is using less restriction on my account because he realizes mspaint and firefox can be useful, and not just for abuse circumventing the porn-blocker. I realize there is not likely anything productive to do with Solitaire, but banning of software in general is extremely irritating when you don't have your laptop with you.
Powered by caffeine and sugar; BSD
... this will no longer be a problem.
lock down the machine: ban games, and any other apps which are not "approved".
oh, darn. it's a windows-related article. *thinks*... let's start again.
Subject: when SE/Linux takes over the wooorld...
this will no longer be a problem...
Man I was playing Solitare and Minesweeper back in tha day! Day meaning 1995 or so, but the point is, its time for those of us /.ers to acend and transcend. Theres plenty of flash games on the internet that provides way more fun, not to mention it can be easily concealed by clicking on your toolbar to show your fileing those TPS reports.
"But research done by the IRS has shown that over 50 percent of the time an IRS employee goes on a computer, he or she also hooks up to the Internet to shop, gamble or play games."
Anyone else wondering where this "research" was published?
If you are at work, then you must surely agree that the comment about people wasting fifty percent of their time doing non-productive things is correct - or even low!
We all know Linux gaming sucks, so why not take a shot? :)
Better yet, IRS did you see Mac's D3 benchmarks? I say give it a shot.
...for them not to notice that 50% of my 1099 forms accidentally fell into the shredder this year.
On my previous project, the scheduler used to play solitaire openly - no alt tabbing or anything. Even when the boss walked past. He used to be the butt of many a joke... Well he was a contractor, and was given the boot pronto. :D
The friendliest digital photography forums on the net!
And geeks are on Slashdot 50% of the time that they are in front of a computer.
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What terrible new form of loafing will arise to take its place?
Leaning on brooms could perhaps hurt one person if they fell off their broom. Hanging out by the watercooler could injure half a dozen in a freak watercooler accident. Slashdot slashdots whole websites that companies depend on to get their message out, taking down the original source of information and replacing it with reams of discussion.
what next? What next!? will someone please think of the children?
This is assuming of course that the employees won't find something else to substitute the solitaire game Cell phone Tetris anyone? :)
Then again this is the same flawed logic that leads software manufacturers and the RIAA to claim that they are losing billions every year. Assuming that the people downloading the software and music would have bought those things to begin with. Politics as usual I guess.
Leaving aside the snobbery and bigotry of that "leaning on brooms" comment, this proposal is seeing some discussion here in North Carolina. Most that I've heard and read correctly points to this as a management issue, not something that merits legislation.
:-)
That is, if an employee is not meeting expectations because he is spending too much time trolling the net, that's his fault, not the Internet's. The same problem would exist if he spent too much time doing crossword puzzles are talking to his girlfriend on the phone. The core problem is the employee not meeting expectations, not what he's doing to divert his attention.
As for Solitaire, don't install it, OK? And if a manager thinks someone is spending too much time playing online games or whatever, ask the IT guys to verify it and then do a bit of "counseling".
Now, if this guy really wanted to enhance productivity, he'd propose outlawing watching NCAA basketball playoffs at work. Heh.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Wait, I think they stole the idea of deleting solitaire off computers from watching You've Got Mail too many times...
this
Here's an editorial from today on this very subject.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/Heckler/Lies-damn-lies- and-statistics/2005/03/20/1111253883481.html?
I call every statistic a lie until I see the raw sample figures and how they were gathered. There should be an international standard on how stats are gathered and quoted. I'm sick to fucking death of statistic manipulation. Although in this particular case I don't really care and would not at all be surprised if it was true.
this is a simple problem. give them more work. they don't do the work fire them. See, when I have a shitload to do, there is no time for solitare, slashdot, etc. More work will equal less screwing off.
We have a cartoon on the door of the IT room that shows some users playing solitaire on their desks with actual decks of cards. The caption reads "Our systems are down, we have to do everything manually."
Other states have had the same regulation on preinstalled games for a while. For example, Virginia has had a law stating that all games installed with the operating system have to be removed before the end user gets the computer. Which makes things interesting when solitare is protected by Windows File Protection... :-/
I remember there was a study done in London on how IT can make work more or less stressful, one part of the study was for 1 month they put solitaire on the computers & for 1 month they took solitaire off & made the network more controlled. Employee stress went up & office productivity actually decreased as users were forced to spend too much time at their desks infront of a computer with nothing to keep them mentally stimulated. They found that solitare was not actually a time wasting device & most users would use it for a couple of minutes at a time to refresh themselves & keep them focused on their work.
at sourceforge will be popular =)
I assume that there are dozens of online solitaire games avaiable. Unless they take the extra step of blocking all game related websites, the whole thing is pointless.
You are overanalyzing the problem. All you have to do is have the official poilicy of "no games" and then you are free to fire someone playing at work. OK, maybe they have to get a warning first.
The "no games" policy should be accompanied with a "no unauthorized installs" policy.
that they could still play online via internet explorer
thus is todays state of microsoft computing....plainly obvious yet oblivious
Forgive me for asking, but why on earth does the article make reference to Marxian thought? His economic theories have been largely disproved, much less should they be relied on as a source of authority in a capitalistic society. Even if you are a socialist, there are far more authoritative and modern socialist thinkers which can be quoted. Besides, Marx argued for the voilent overthrow of capitalism. I had trouble digesting the argument that by not allowing people to play video games, they might lose their identity.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
I have worked at a lot of companies, and one common theme among them is almost always, "Let's get rid of the games." As a sysadmin, I've actually been the one tasked with implementing it. However...
I think these policies are, in a word, stupid. If someone is going to waste time, they're going to waste time. If it's not on a game of Solitaire, it will be on some other non-work activity. The fact is that you cannot command a person to work for eight (if they're lucky) solid hours. Or as Scott Kirwin put it in the article, "Managers [have] lost sight that workers are real people, not robots."
Every time I've been asked to delete the games off of machines, I've expressed extreme disapproval. I've tried to explain until I'm blue in the face that it will not increase productivity. I've tried to explain that if you treat employees like they're four years old by taking away their toys, it will only cause resentment and a resulting LOSS of productivity. I've tried to point out that small Solitaire breaks (or any other mindless activity) actually help a lot of people get back into a more productive mindset going forward. I've also tried to point out that games such as Solitaire help people new to computers learn their way around. For example, it taught my mother, who had only used DOS-based accounting software, how to use a mouse. Sure, it sounds simple to you, but keep in mind that she had no idea what left-clicking, dragging-and-dropping, minimizing and maximizing, etc. were, but she was up to speed within a few minutes thanks to Solitaire.
But in general, all that stuff makes no difference to management. Since companies have layed off and outsourced to the point where they can't function any more, all that matters is that we have to be productive 24x7. Barring that, all that matters is that we have to LOOK productive 24x7.
So stupid...
need internet access ? and why do they need it now but they didnt need it 10years ago ?
imagine how many keyloggers,trojans,spyware etc are floating round gov machines because of those employees, now imagine what you can do with an IRS machine
Someone needs to write a Firefox Solitaire extension that has a boss-key that quickly makes it look like a pre-defined webpage (ie your company website).
CN, anti-smoking crusader
filmcritic.com - Movie reviews on Internet time
Oh come on! This is the government we are talking about. In order for each orginization to get more funding, they need a reason to spend it. Either hiring more unnessary employees, or increasing the hourly wage (not going to happen as it raises a red flag).
I've had friends work for the US gov in IT. From what they've told me, it basically a Union. Once your in the game, you actually have to TRY and get fired. It's totally the opposite of the corporate word.
And did I mention, your tax dollars are paying for these scams?
Life is not for the lazy.
Give em a break -- post links to sol.exe here
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
...society will collectively struggle to find something to do with the leftover time. Ideally we'd have somem kind of utopia where everybody is free to meet their best potential. Socialism aspires to do this, but human nature causes it to fail. Look on the bright side though--would you rather your tax dollars go to more weapons, or towards people figuring out how to hide games from their bosses? And if the whole tax dollar thing pisses you off, just remembe there is a pretty good chance that you are "earning your money" the same way.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
... playing solitaire (or other games) may provide workers with a way to burn off some stress ...
Relieving stress? That's what breaks, lunch, workday evenings, weekends, holidays, and vacations are for.
- Write computer game.
- Game is popular, many people kill lots of valuable time.
- Profit!
Something is wrong with this picture.Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
"In all large corporations, there is a pervasive fear that someone, somewhere is having fun with a computer on company time. Networks help alleviate that fear."
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
Are some/most workers paid to be bored these days?
I’m old enough to remember 16K of memory being described as “whopping”
fifty percent of the time an IRS employee is on the computer they are playing games, shopping online or gambling."
Are these IRS employees paying the full amount of the tax due on their gambling winnings? It is considered income, after all.
Hear recorded Slashdot headlines on your phone! New service beta testing. Just call (248) 434-5508
More hours =? more productivity?
I know that it's bad to lose work time into games, but... really, what's worse? A worker who clears up his mind by playing sol 5 minutes, or a bored and tired worker who PRETENDS to be working but his productivity is actually half what it should be?
Bureaucracy...
I once had a classmate in gradschool who had worked for the IRS for 10 years. He was the least competent individual in the class by far, and had the attitude of a real prick too, but for some reason we became friends (as he constantly needed help with his work, for one thing) and hung out until the end of the program.
In class, the subject of people surfing the net at work, etc. came in class, and a scalding study naming the IRS as a huge offender was cited.
This fellow vehemently denied that this type of activity took place, claiming that (in addition to being overworked) a large number of IRS employees were unable to use computers, let alone surf the net... Imagine that, a government agency with computer illiterate employees! Anyways, he went on to contradict himself by claiming that there was a real productivity problem, but instead of surfing the net, they were having wild sex in the boiler rooms.
From watching him fight with his PC in class and go after really ugly women when we went for beers, it dawned on me that he might be telling the truth.
To be honest, I'm not sure which bothers me more. If they were a competent organization full of digitally inclined workers, we'd probably all be suffering a lot more come tax time than we do when they're fucking away our tax dollars.
So whats the moral of my story? You can't pay your taxes and expect the feds to do anything useful with them. Thank you and goodnight.
I'm not playing Solataire... I'm studying the Terrorism Deck of Cards...
Looking for:
M'Balz Es-Hari
Graabir Boubi, and
Haid D'Salaami
Hous Bin Pharteen, his cousin I-Bin Pharteen, and their close companion I-Zheet M'Drurz
Shaif Hirboush.. Al-Suq Akweer.. Mustaf Herod Apyur Poupr. I hope I got that right! Awan Afuqya.. Yul Strokheet Al-Wauch.. Apul Madeek - who we believe will be targeting adult bookstores sometime in the near future. And this man, the notorious Yuliqa M'Diq, A.K.A. Uwana M'Diq, A.K.A. Usuqa M'Diq. Uh.. thank you, that is all... [SNL]
You forgot to mention, it's like, a communistical Union, not just one of those normal ones, the government ones are much worse.
I agree with you on government man, it's such a whacked idea, I mean, who needs this damn telephone system, or an army, or the internet. They're such scums, always profligating our tax dollars, and what do we get in return? Word.
I'd be much happier if we all worked for an efficient corporation too, like Kellogg Brown & Root, one with our best interests at heart. Damn communists that run our government won't let it happen though.
that Solitare and Minesweeper are intergrated with the OS, and removing them can cripple the OS. This is the type of thing that happens at Microsoft, apparently. Microsoft says it would not be possible to make a version of Windows without the Solitare and Minesweeper applications.
;)
Ah well, if Solitare and Minesweeper are removed, what will stop government employees from installing other games?
You boss, just wants to challenge you to a Doom 3 Deathmatch anyway.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
These are IRS employees. Almost none of them are ever doing anything you want them to be doing, except occasionally the people who change the ink cartridges on the refund-check-printing machines. The more time they spend playing solitaire, the better.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Ahh, memories...
1995, I was a contractor at an unnamed nuclear powerplant in Maryland. Windows 3.1 and all the BSD's we could stand. Solitaire was all the rage, and Management caught on.
One day the Solitaire shortcut doesn't work anymore, and a memo is circulated that "Game playing is bad...waste of resources...disciplinary action..." Stopepd us in our tracks? No (I mean, we are engineers for Chrissake)
Look for Sol.exe on machine...gone.
Search for "Solitaire" in shared drive...hmmm...that looks like some kind of script file in the root of the Network G: drive. Open it up - so it is: it checks user's machine at login and erases sol.exe. There is also a log in the directory: every instance of Solitaire being played on machines connected to that network for the last couple of months.
Solution to problem #1: reinstall Sol.exe, rename sol1.exe. No more logging.
Fun with the existing log:
"Hey Frank! (da boss)"
"What"
"You were playing Solitaire at exactly 1425 on March 3."
"Uh, how would you know that?"
"Big Brother is watching, Frank."
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Are you from outside the USA?
Here in the US, you don't need any official policy.
The law allows employers to fire someone for any non-illegal reason or for no reason at all. It is called "at will".
Only illegal reasons are discrimination against people in legally recognized "protected classes", or "whistle blowing" for gov't employees.
Even illegal reasons won't cause a boss to get in trouble unless one can prove the illegal reason was why one was fired.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
For some people, it's more critical - my department used to have a secretary who played solitaire a lot. Her most important jobs were to keep track of the managers' appointments and answer their phones, and when she'd done any available paperwork, "answering their phones" meant "sitting around being bored", occasionally interrupted by people calling.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Let the IRS play all the games they want. The more games they play the less time they have to audit me.
That's really not the purpose of online gambling websites. In real casinos, you need to have some people winning to generate enough excitement to keep the other suckers busy losing, but in online casinos, that doesn't happen, so you only need to let the suckers win often enough to keep them steadily losing money while they hope for the next big win. And gambling losses are only deductable up to the amount of your winnings.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I can safely say that I don't think this would fix anything. People are creative. If it's not solitaire, it -will- be something else. I read one comment that said something along the lines of 'once you're in [state gov't], you actually have to TRY and get fired'. I believe that too. I know quite a few people that could be more way more productive than they currently are. But it's not just the games. It's the phone, or the email, or the internet, or the conversations in the hall. Passing this bill will only make people spend more time doing those other things. Jimmy
In any work environment, whether private sector or public, there is slack time. What would be the macro-economic impact of eliminating all that slack time from the workplace? Mass unemployment? Cheaper goods and services? A shorter workweek?
What would be the impact on the distribution of wealth?. What would be the impact on the quality of life, considering that most of us have to go to work most of the days of our lives?
You agreed to pay me such and such an amount to do such and such each week. Now you find out that I can do it in ten hours, when you thought that it would take me 40, so you want to punish me by reducing me to 10 hours pay? You just eliminated any incentive I had to be efficient.
The Government is banning their employees from playing Solitaire? What next, Microsoft banning Monopoly? Sheesh! ;)
Before you pooh pooh this ask yourself if playing another game like say Grand Theft Auto should be banned on State owned computers. If so, what's the difference between playing GTA and Solitare on company time?
as every one knows that MSCE = Minesweeper Solitare Certified Expert
See my art -> http://herbevore.deviantart.com
Check this out,
Setting is a place I used to work at, a gov't place. We were contractors installing and administrating the network and servers.
A coworker and myself had to go to the 2nd floor of this other building, to fix one of the fiber optic drops (They ran 10mbps fiber to the desktop, we had to remove the included Intel 10/100 NICs and replace them with $400 10baseFL nics).
We came in, everything was call. But we had forgotten a tool. The workers were mostly quiet, as the cubes didn't allow us to see them. The old barrick buildings turned offices had a spacious and hollow feel on the 2nd floors. It was my coworkers turn to go get the piece or part we had forgotten. So hung tight as my coworker left.
The minute the door shut and his footsteps were heard thumping down the stairs, I could hear the mouse clicks increase. Immediately I could hear the Space Cadet pinball game from multiple computers. It was fairly funny. As my coworkers footsteps were heard coming up the stairs, all of the game noises went away as the games were minimized.
I said really loudly "DOUDE, you MISSED ALL THE ACTION"
Many gov't jobs = welfare/wealth redistribution.
Southeastern Virginia REPRESENT!
It all boils down to incompitent admins. Simple to remove all games from Windows systems. The process takes a few minutes when the machine is delivered. One nice thing about Windows Group Policy objects, you can enforce security policies where they can't be changed. You can also rescan machines as they log onto the network and re-apply the policy if the tech savy person manages to circumvent it.
Following their success boosting productivity by banning brooms...
--
make install -not war
I've always wished solitare could report minutes spent with the mouse moving cards. Can you imagine having a statistic for the enterprise for amount of active solitare games / hours spent playing?
Southeastern Virginia REPRESENT!
Before: users spend x hours playing solitaire.
After: users spend x hours trying to get solitaire working again.
All my management courses drilled into my head the idea that you can only expect six hours of productivity from an employee per day. I don't see any point in fighting it. Why piss them off in the process?
Maybe in the private sector, but in government (as the article discusses), it is extremely hard to get someone fired. Hearings, evidence, the prying eyes of watchdog groups...
Some people call it government waste, others call it job security.
WeRelate.org - wiki-based genealogy
Q. How many people work at Your Government Department?
A. About a third.
Attack its weak point for massive damage!
J
Abiit, excessit, evasit, erupit.
Obligatory Neal Stephenson reference ...
:-D
Sure, the solitaire cipher has a bias, but it's still good enough to keep your little black book interesting.
(that and paper doesn't crash)
Seriously, though, it would be funny if all the gov. office drones started bringing a deck of cards to work and leaving them in plain site
You can't remove it, just like you can't remove the web browser.
We do random scans at work and any given time about 5-10% of active machines on the network have the solitare service running. :-) Not going to divulge which branch, but probably all are about the same.
The "no games" policy should be followed by removal of said games from all systems, followed by removal of local administrator access for users, followed by group policy enforced at the PDC.
Come to think of it, you should already have the last two in place to begin with.
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
One of my biggest beefs with the music industry has been that you can't actually listen to enough of it, or listen long enough to decide if you want to buy it. 30 second high compression previews aren't good enough. Albums are also too expensive for what you get now. I think this will be a great service once a flash player comes out that works with the Janus DRM. I can preview tracks for days and decide if I like it enough to go buy it. Right now I buy all my music from a used CD store, rip them to Apple Lossless and sell them back to the store. This makes the price I pay more fair for what I am buying. The store keeps $5-6 of my money and keeps the original CD. The biggest problem has been shelling out the cost on CD's I don't know if I want to keep. Once a flash player comes out I can download a few albums and listen to them for a week or so from the flash player and then go shell out the $5-9 bucks for the used album if I like it. If you just think of it as Sat or Internet radio that you setup yourself, pick the songs and take anywhere, the $14.99 a month isn't so bad. Sure, it's not a long term solution to owning the music, but it's better than trying to find the good tracks on Limewire to try out for a while before you go buy and rip your lossless audio tracks.
Doesn't the IRS say that online gambling is illegal? Or is it another arm of the gov't...
The other way to look at this is that they are employing knowledgable people. If all government and businesses (read: humans) ran 100% efficient, then there would be like 20 jobs for any particular place. Having the 50% employed means that money can dynamically recirculate rather than stagnate for the 1% that can get employment. I am proud my tax-dollars are paying for this.
Imagine the headline: the IRS laid off half its workforce today and riots ensued. Plans are under way to ship up to 40 % of the remaining jobs to India.
Contrary to popular belief, government employees are not lazy do-nothings. I'm a US government employee, work in IT, and have worked for Uncle Sam since the end of last summer. My co-workers are some of the most hardworking, dedicated people I've had the pleasure to work with in my 10+ year IT career.
You find shirkers in any organization: corporate, government, and military. All federal employees have performance standards that they are required to meet. We've just gone through a massive revision in how our performance is measured. If you don't meet your standards you're put on a performance improvement plan. If your performance continues to be sub-par then you're demoted or can be dismissed from service. Shirkers will be shown the door.
Unlike the corporate world we have due process. We do have a union to protect worker rights and pay union dues. I think all employees - government and corporate - should have protections in place against discrimination and dismissal without cause. If you're a shirker you can shape up or ship out.
I was the chief IT officer for a fast-growing company before I went to work for the government. I took a big paycut and a couple of steps down the ladder because I found the work and the organization fascinating.
You may or may not agree with an organization's mission but that hardly makes it a scam. Frankly, I don't really care whether you do or not. It's not just your tax dollars at work, it's mine too. I not only have an interest in ensuring that my tax dollars are spent responsibly, I have a duty to ensure that they are.
We have an enormous amount of oversight, cross every t and dot every i to ensure that tax dollars are spent appropriately. Misappropriation is a serious crime and federal agencies are regularly audited to ensure that these funds are spent appropriately.
Thank god they are playing! Would you rather have them manually review more claims?
Even if all of your deductions are legit, do you have receipts for all of them and how many years back?
If you have seen the Manchurian Candidate IMDB, you know why Solitaire is standard install, don't you Raymond... I don't get out of my cell much, did they use the Win version in the Remake of the movie?
Come to think of it, the real Tetris did this too, but with a more intelligent-looking spreadsheet.
Does sol.exe do anything like this? I doubt it. And MS is probably too scared to put it in (productivity lawsuits).
While I'll be the first to admit that sometimes people take advantage of things and go too far in being irresponsible, I have to say one thing:
It is actually good if one is able to take a break every so often in order to rest one's mind. It actually helps productivity (as long as they remain judicious and can go back to work after a few minutes break).
For a little background, I am in a scientific field where reading volumes and volumes of material makes up everyday life. I have come to realize that it is impossible for someone to be fully productive without taking a break of a few minutes every hour or so.
In other words, don't micro-manage. Judge not by what an employee uses as an aside, but by whether or not they actually get the job done.
Innovative managers and institutions tend to understand this a little better.
- Adobe Acrobat
- Accessory Manager
- Microsoft Office
- Hummingbird Exceed
- Stop OnDemand
Anything that doesn't seem needful gets removed, most especially including games.As an aside, OpenOffice was considered for use in the COE, and was rejected based on a Gartner study that said it would be more expensive to use, as psychotic as that sounds, and I know who has the paperwork to prove it.
It may not be just, but it is fair, and that is more important.
Time for MS to remove solitare, and sell it as a stripped down version of XP for buisnesses and state/federal employees to use.
:(){
Paluminum.net
Solution: smaller games. No need to have so many pixels for such a simple game as solitaire. Unfortunately, Windows doesn't like making the cards very small....That's another victory for Linux, what with scalable vector graphics such as those found in Gnome
In these days where I get a call in the middle of the night to disable x part of the system while they run Y process or when I get called Saturday morning because Z office can't print, if I take a 1/2 hour to check out things on the web on Slashdot or whatever....that makes up for all those 10-15 minute things I get asked to do after hours. If I end up dialing in and working on something for 2-3 hours in the middle of the night or on the weekend, I tell the boss, hey I am taking off early because I did this and he says sure. I am flexible....the company beter be to. If I have to leave early to go to my kids soccer practice or to watch his game but you need me to do X at 2 am....well, you better be cool with me leaving for the soccer game. Having unlimited net access and the ability to install programs not sanctioned or supported by our PC/Network support lets me get my job done or lets me cool my jets before tapping off that nasty e-mail to the idiot who can't unjam his own printer. Talk to the idiots I constantly have to go spoon feed and get them to work better and I may have more time to do real work.
Also, you want me to do remote support, BUY ME A LAPTOP. I spent my hard earned money on my machines, they are NOT to be used for my work. It's not like I am a independent contractor and have to pay for my own stuff. Oh and don't complain if I have images or other non work software on it either. You want me to do the support and take it home, then you better let me do what I want to do with it, within reason of course. You have my promise there will be no kiddie porn on it too. Start getting uppity and my laptop and my cell phone just may not make it with me on my next business trip.
There's no way you, the manager, does work all 8 of those hours either. IN fact, most managers are worse than employees or at least the same. Managers are constantly checking the stocks and the damn NCAA tourney or planning their next "business" trip to Las Vegas...shyeah. Take it easy on the employees, and when you really need them to do that extra 8 hours on Saturday, they just might say sure, I had nothing planned.
Gorkman
Some people aren't paid by how much the do, but being there to do what needs to be done, when it needs to be done.
e.g. Firemen.
Granted, firemen are usually municipal not state workers. But they have lots of goof-off activities at the station to fight boredom.
Gee, nothing else to do since they took our T.V. and foosball away. Let's wash the shiny trucks AGAIN!
What you mean to say is a 50% reduction in their workforce is required.
Which means they are overstaffed by 100%.
Face it, that time you're SMSing your wife and doing crossword puzzles is time you're stealing from your employer.
.
As a manager, I have a lot of light to shed on this subject.
Essentially, every time we call in an "efficiency expert" who advises us to cut back on the number of breaks employees get, I shrug it off. An employer with any experience at all knows better than to count productivity simply in "man-hours." Man-hours of work are little more than a theory figure for comparison purposes, but they don't have any real value. When I try to weigh employee productivity, my equation isn't simply "ManHoursWorked/ManHoursPossible". It's something more like "ManHoursWorked*WorkDonePerHour/WorkDonePossible"
Of course, the real equation isn't THAT simple either, but it does say a lot. If I'm a fun-nazi to all my employees, all it does is create general resentment toward both myself and the job. Unhappy employees have a MUCH larger tendancy to do poorly at work, and slack off even more when I'm not watching. On the other hand, if I'm somewhat lenient about my policy, letting my employees take breaks when they feel it's necessary, they're happy and tend to get more work done in the time they work. End result, I have more more work done at the end of the day. (Which of course makes my salary go up every couple years, so it works out well for me too.) If someone tells me that my employees are "stealing" time from me, I laugh and don't worry about it, because the time they DO put in is much more valuable.
Loading up all the machines with Splinter Cell.
This entire nation is headed for a fucking revolution, and people are going to need to know how to snipe and use retinal scanners to protect themselves.
Viva los Pepes!!
It has for some time been obvious to me that government bureaucracy is the *real* welfare program in America. It's a jobs program for people who can't get work in the private sector.
The politicions who were to stupid for Washington, all end up in Raleigh.
My favorite bit (especially as April 15th draws ever closer) is where the author notes that fifty percent of the time an IRS employee is on the computer they are playing games, shopping online or gambling.
Isn't that a good thing?!
Considering that the IRS is far more likely to investigate/harass poor or average-income taxpayers as opposed to the rich, I see them wasting their time as a plus.
Now, if we could only spread this idle time-wasting idea to the Pentagon, maybe Iraqis and other people who are under the thumb of the empire could breath a little easier...
Nawww! C'mon slashdotters, you KNOW what those tax chaps are doin, eh mates? Why to a man they are downloading all the sex pix of Paris Hilton that they can find. After all, those apes are'nt goin to fall far from the tree what with screwin the public as a career choice for their favorite 24/7 activity. I bet that porn will figure largely in their downloads and other online activity, with S and M being the largest single category of download with all dur respect to Paris, the livin Barbie Doll of the new age. Think about it!
how many games each employee won and lost?
Tag lost or not installed.
Perhaps Solitaire is a blessing. Imagine if instead the IRS had nothing to do. They might get bored and start doing an audit on YOU!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
And that was for playing strip solitaire at work.
-- Mace only makes me hornier.
People can't be expected to sit there hours
on end, day in and day out processing paperwork,
without some sort of "microbreaks" during the
day. And before the outsourcing morons jump
up and boom "we'll ship their jobs off to India,
they are cheaper AND more productive", the same thing probaly happens over there too.
Take their games, SMS, brooms or whatever
away, and they will just idle some other way.
Now, if we could only spread this idle time-wasting idea to the Pentagon, maybe Iraqis and other people who are under the thumb of the empire could breath a little easier...
And people who work in tall buildings get more stressed out.
These people failed their first attempt and came back years later to try again on 9-11. Maybe we should make them sweat a little so we can breath a little easier.
The truth shall set you free!
It's an integral part of the operating system! How else are Microsoft going to crush those iD Software guys if they're not bundling their own games in for free with the OS?
First, the fact that people who 'hardly working' will always find something to do rather than work. Before PCs (so there was a terminal connected to a mainframe), I saw those 'cobol programmers' reading newspaper. After PCs (but before Internect connectivity), I saw the same cobol programmers playing solitaire, and finally after internet connectivity, the same cobol programmers happily surfing the web. I don't think taking away internet connectivity, or even taking away the PC won't change anything.
... and that's the nature of lots of govenment and state agencies. it's fairly easy to avoid doing *any* work. The real problem is not to get to bored and find the way to entertain yourself. (what I did was hiding somewhere between the file cabinets and reading the books on computer science.)
Second, government employees. That's thet's tough nut to crack. I've been working as a state employee for a few years, and what I've learned - if you do something, you may get some criticism for doing something rather than something else, or for doing it badly. BUT - if you are doing *nothing*, it's very difficult to make a case against you. I was working in the agency which collects contribution to unemployment fund, from employers. Collection takes place 4 times a year, and lasts for about a month, that's the period of fairly high activity. The rest of the time there is very little to do. again, I'm not sure that blocking the internet access, removing solitaire game from the PC or even taking away the PC will change anything. The'll be gossiping, talking on a phone, whatever
So the bottom line: it's not Internet fault, and it's not PC fault. it's the people or working environment or both.
Hailing from NC, I can definitely say people around here have some huge addiction to Solitaire. Now I realize in the grand scheme of the globe it's probably ya know, not isolated to my state or town but they seem to go out of their way in schools, and businesses to "fight" this problem. Day 1 of "Computer Literacy" back in HS the first thing we were "taught" was never to play Solitaire or other games during school hours. Of course, HS aged kids and such are gonna do the opposite. But the system admin went as far as disabling right click and windows key so you couldn't back door the .exe o_O
In college orientation, one of the first rules for computer labs and the campus library was do not play solitare or other games. Now this was a tad of a step up since ya know you're paying THEM to attend their school. (but thats a different debate for a different time).
And then any job just abou around here is very strict on any computer related activity. A family member of mine works for a local hospital doing patient billings in the accounting department (which isn't even located anywhere near the hospital itself) and they are allowed to recieve email, but cannot under any circumstances even in life or death situations email someone outside the office building. This is considered a violation of company policy and as such can have termination be warranted. The same goes for playing Solitaire or Minesweeper....
Now what I don't get is, A] why don't system admins just remove the damn games? AFAIK they've been built into Windows accesories since Windows 95 which can be disabled on machines one by one or through the network. and B] what is it with peoples obsession with these? I mean god I know what it's like to be bored out of my mind to the point I'd fall asleep. But if it ment risking my job or education over a game of Solitaire?
It's almost as bad as college kids addicted to AIM or ICQ. I can understand using them, and their use cause I've used them myself. But when you know it can cost you (a job, a class, a semester..), why continue?
Aw Frell this
Pilot: Uhh... commander... did you say 39 kilometers or 39 miles?
Air strike commander: Where's that jack... Oh! Ahem, y'know, somewhere around there. You can figure it out.
*If only more solitaire equalled less killing...
I know how people work and I can safely say that I bet that the majority of those people aren't playing just Solitare and Minesweeper in their free time -- they are also playing flash games. Even in school, no one really cares about or plays Solitare anymore. It's easy to find a ton of cool and fun games to play through a lot of free flash game sites. And if they are not doing that, then I bet they have their own game to install and play. One way or another, the only way to actually "ban gameplay" is to add it to the list of rules for your job, if it isn't there already. No point in banning game play, because people will find a way to do it one way or another. So do you honestly think they will lock the computers down so tight that they can only visit certain websites and install a few things? No idea if they will for all of those computers, but my best guess is no. People are lazy.
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
...that after NT4, Windows stopped including QBasic and the best game in the world, Gorillas, which ran under it.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
These people failed their first attempt and came back years later to try again on 9-11.
As I recall, the gov't claims it was a blind Egyptian cleric who -- in conjunction with the FBI -- was responsible for the first bomb in the basement of the WTC in the early 1990s.
For 9-11 the gov't claims that its former CIA agent Bin Laden was responsible for the attack. Those aren't "these people", that is two entirely different groups.
We should also note that, the gov't only "claims" Bin Laden was responsible. If you recall, the publicly-proven liar Condi Rice promised after 9-11 that she and the gov't would produce evidence to prove Bin Laden was responsible for the attacks of 9-11, but the gov't has never provided any such evidence.
And who cares about the attack that really terrorized the US -- the anthrax attacks. Nobody talks about those attacks which gripped the entire nation in fear for a solid month. The only thing we know about the anthrax attacks is that the attack was done using a strain of anthrax that the US military was experimenting with and that the anthrax was highly weaponized into an aerosol that even Iraq could not have produced in its WMD heyday.
After two+ years in DC at a well-known space agency which shall remain nameless, I believe that you can't remove government workers with nuclear weaponry and a backhoe. I was there as a contractor during the shutdown of 95-96, and when the civil servants were gone, we got a ton more work done.
The Independent: Reverend Spooner Arrested in Friar Tuck Incident - ISIHAC, Historical Headlines
I can say as a State employee of North Carolina, Solatire was removed from the machines where I work a long time ago.
Some of us have the coveted job of taking all the data on paper tax forms and typing it into the computers. I assure you, none of us in data entry have time to make a phone call, let alone play solitaire. I'm hoping for another dot com bubble so I can get a salary job playing air hockey.
This remembers me of an old joke.
I was having major problems with my office H/W and had called the help(?) desk to no avail. I knew something was hosed internally. When the fix-it person showed, he/she fiddled around and generally did not believe me when I described the problem.
Finally, I left the room in disgust, only to return when I heard the loud comment: "You can't even play solitaire on this machine!!!!"
Needless to say, fixit person became a believer and replaced the hard drive + who knows what else.
One good reason to have solitaire on your machine is that EVERYONE KNOWS WHAT IT IS SUPPOSED TO DO. When it doesn't, even the skeptics have to admit something is wrong.
If fifty percent of the time is devoted to non-work activities, we just need to follow the logical course and lay off fifty percent of the government workforce. That way, we can normalize the workload with the number of resources. Alternatively, we can fire all of them, and hire some people with a good work ethic.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
Yeah, the management at my old job where I was sysadmin for a small company tried to ban Solitaire because it was, indeed, seeing a lot of use during working hours. They commanded me to uninstall Solitaire on all machines; I did. Unfortunately what they did not realize was that sol.exe fits on a floppy disk, and people would bring it in their own sol.exe from their own Windows computers to play it. Nowadays they'd bring it in on a USB drive, but the concept remains the same.
Yep, seems simple enough but it ain't.
I work in the Personnel department at a quasi-government setup.
We have shelves of people that anyone agrees SHOULD be fired, but they can't be. We just shuffle them around from assignment to assignment, and hopefully distribute the damage equitably rather than bringing one department to a halt.
Last time I fired someone was for NOT showing up for work, bad conduct (telling people to fuck off on the phone), and misplacing crucial invoices on a regular basis (thus contractors weren't paid and pulled their services). It took a year of this behaviour before we could start the process, and then we needed 6 months of documented evidence.
Followed by 3 meetings with the employee, 2 with the employee and the Union rep, and then about a 17" stack of documents which had to be cycled around through my office, a few other departments, and finally the Union before we were allowed to termiante her.
And at that, we ended up giving her severance pay because it was just easier -- it would have almost doubled the length of the process to get everything pulled. And while we were going through all this, she still had her benefits, vacation, sick time, etc. (and used them to the max, I might add).
They removed Freecell, Solitaire, Minesweeper etc. from our PCs (State Government in Australia) ... and no-one could play ... until the next round of hardware refresh, by which time they'd forgotten to bother.
Meanwhile even the least geeky user found a copy of some old game, then brought it in on a floppy.
Don't blame me, it's usually 2 in the morning when I post
If you are not from the US, why do you care enough to speak up in a forum discussion on an American site about the US Internal Revenue Service?
Honestly, if you have no idea what's special about April 15, you probably didn't know what IRS stood for until I just spelled it out, in which case, nothing being discussed here really has much of anything to do with you.