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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."
Tax returns due in the United States.
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.
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.
Hmmm. Is that funny or clueless?
In case you don't know, Minesweeper doesn't lay out the mines until *after* you make your first pick, and won't put a mine where you made that pick, to avoid the "unfairness" of losing on your first move. So a board with only one clear square cannot be lost. You make your pick, Minesweeper puts mines on all the other squares, you win. Every time. Actually, you can't do it any more. On an m by n board, recent editions of Minesweeper won't let you have more than (m-1)*(n-1) bombs. But it's still true that you can't die on your first pick. (Some non-Microsoft Minesweeper clones don't implement this, though)
Chris Mattern
Marxian theories have, on the contrary, largely proven correct since his death. Marx did not argue "for" violent overthrow, but rather that violent attempts to overthrow capitalism were at his time of writing inevitable - and therefore not worth arguing "for" or "against".
ceci n'est pas un sig
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 love reading all the slackers trying to excuse their massive Slashdot reading time while working in this thread.
No company is asking you to be productive 100% of the time. All they're asking is 40 productive hours a week. That's less than 24% of your time. I'd hope anyone could manage a 24% productivity rate.
Face it, that time you're SMSing your wife and doing crossword puzzles is time you're stealing from your employer. Find something worthwhile to do then. You can do your crosswords and talk with your wife after work. You should never be doing it while you're supposed to be working.
Now no one can really go a straight 8 hours, but the breaks you're taking should be trips to the WC or the like, not something trivial and pointless like reading webpages or doing crossword puzzles. If you're going to do that while at work you damned better make up for the lost time after hours.
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
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."
You have never worked in a call center have you? They have supervised slave labor down to a science. Outside of taking advantage of 3 minute leeway for phone logins and clock punches there was very little time available for screwing off.
They had all the computers locked down, no applications installed other than those you needed for your job, remote screenshot ability, and apparently an alert when you were surfing on a page other than the ones that were permitted.
You were scored on your performance and adherence to the time schedule.
If the employees are getting their paychecks and can quit whenever they like...
Would explain the massive churn rate in that industry...
...and you may have to shell out three months (or more) salary to the poor schmuck you're firing, whether in accrued leave, severance or both on top of the three months you'll waste training the new guy--and it just gets worse the higher up you go. There are horror stories at damn near every company of the worthless manager who just can't seem to get fired barring gunning down the place because the parachute is just a little too golden, so it's cheaper to churn the ranks to keep him/her in a constant state of denial and let the company die the death of 1000 cuts in the process.
FWIW in certain jurisdiction law enforcement is considered "on duty" at all times, hence the requirement to carry concealed weapons when not "at work". They do have days off and vacations and are free to leave the jurisdiction.