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Why Windows Solitaire Eats So Much Time
An anonymous reader writes "This article suggests that Windows Solitaire may be the most-often played computer game. It's not so much an article about Solitaire, but rather an article about Windows and human nature and socialization. If you play FreeCell, there's a interesting paragraph about its inventor." Can Solitaire really eat up more hours than have been sacrificed to Tetris?
Actually, I think I'll wait until tomorrow...when I have work to do.
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"Can Solitaire really eat up more hours than have been sacrificed to Tetris?"
On a Per-Person level, I think there are more people that have spent 20 hours in a day playing Tetris, than Windows Solitaire.
But, I think more people play Solitaire than play(ed) Tetris, so collectively its more hours.
Seriously though, I have Quake, SimCity2000, and Diablo on any computer that I use just in case I do get bored. Those titles will run on pretty much anything.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
... and could only have one thing, it would be a deck of cards. I would start to play solitaire and eventually somebody inevitably would come along to tell me to place that red eight on the black nine and I'd be rescued.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
People waste time because they don't know how to cheat! Here are the vista Solitaire and XP Solitaire cheats.
Honestly, solitaire has the perfect assets to be the most popular computer game.
1. Anybody can figure it out. My children picked it up in 5 minutes.
2. It's available on to a huge population. Everybody with a windows box has it installed and staring them in the face. Any system is powerful enough to run it.
3. It fills downtime while other processes are loading. Need a few minutes to download that huge iso? Heck, you can probably get in a game of solitaire!
Interestingly enough, solitaire is probably the most popular card game as well... for similar reasons.
"It is the cockroach of gaming, remarkably flexible and adaptable..."
I don't have any proof, but I'll still tell:
A few years ago I was cleaning out the records room where I worked. Among all the old manuals of long dead software, I found a four floppy install set of Windows 3.1 (or 3.1.1? It was a very long time ago). On its list of features was Solitaire, listed as mouse practice software of all things. Needless to say, a joke quickly circulated in the office, that we weren't playing games; we were training for better hand-eye coordination with a computer mouse.
That aside, if anyone has an old copy, or knows of an image online, I would very much appreciate the correlation of ecidence.
I loathe Freecell. I also play an average of 3 or 4 games of it a day. I don't think I get any satisfaction from the act of playing or from winning, but it has become the primary opportunity to shut off my brain for a moment or two between tasks. I cannot count the number of times I have opened the game, then closed it because I could find no motivation to play, then re-opened it and played a game 15 minutes later. In the meantime, I could be reading /. or wikipedia or playing a real game, but none of these other diversions quite fill the short-term, no thought required niche that the hated Solitaire game does. There is something seriously wrong with me ...
One virtue of solitaire over most other computer games is that it's not time-based. You can play for exactly as long as you want to. You don't need to finish a level in the time allotted, kill the aliens before they land, play a word before your opponent gets annoyed with you, or anything like that. You have complete control of the gaming schedule.
One can have similar experiences from playing board games vs. computer opponents, or from the crafting aspect of MMOs. But solitaire is by far the simplest way of achieving them.
To err is human. To forgive is good system design.
It was often said in days of yore that Windows was the best $80 Solitaire game one could buy. However, I believe that Sid Meir games such as Civilization dwarf Solitaire have consumed far more time. Civilization IV is epic and can take days to finish a single game.
I won't even touch the MMORPG's like Evercrack and WOW.
Can anyone get me a pre-release demo of StarCraft II ? That is the one I really want to waste a lot of time on.
-William Brendel
Do you think GWB has admin rights on his PC? As a system administrator, would you have the guts to remove sol.exe? If you did, would it be a unilateral decision?
Just imagine, sol.exe could be the only thing to stop GWB from getting bored enough to push the Big Red Button.
Task Mangler
if there's no doors in their house.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Solitaire is a good thing.
Although it probably seems foreign to most of us here, mouse hand-eye coordination is not automatic.
And for new users or even new users at a business, our IT people encourage people to start with something like solitaire and just let people goof off until it becomes automatic. (Notice the stores or businesses that have mouse driven software and the users take FOREVER to move the cursor on screen to make selections. Giving them a week of play time on something like Soitaire would increase their productivity in the long run, and reduce customer frustration. (Not that I recommend a Mouse UI for checkstands or small business invoicing, but there is a lot of crap software out there in specific industries that rely on it.
It is also a good tool for users moving to touch pads, pens, thumbsticks, etc as it is simple, mindless and yet lets people master the abstract motor neural control of input devices.
Everytime we have a proficient tech that 'hates' an input device, our policies are to make them use that input device, at least for stuff like solitaire if not general work until it becomes second nature. Especially if the tech is ever going to be using it in public or assisting corporate clients where the device might be widely used. (Touchpads and Thumbsticks being #1 on this list.)
MS Solitaire eats up so much time because they did not ship a decent version of Maijong.... meh
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
I'm not kidding. Well, I was finishing my engineering degree, and had a frisky girlfriend, so it didn't consume all my time, but I swear every remaining waking moment was spent playing it. On my tricked out zero-wait-state 12 MHz 286. And it was the original Russian DOS-mode game, none of this crappy flash knockoff shite. I will bury you.
One simple rule for its versus it's
Mac OS X has had Chess for YEARS!!
Full disclosure: I am a Microsoft MVP and have been on campus and this information is not from anyone there but rather from a conversation in a bar in Seatle as I recall. My memory is a tad bit fuzzy. I blame beer.
/. crowd but it seems to make some sense to me.
However... I came away with the impression that Windows "still included" the games (this was XP release era) because of the reason that it has always included the games. The games were there as a test for graphics and the ability to create random numbers. I am unable to find anything online to add to this however and would love some insight/thoughts. Saying, simply, "That's what I was told." Surely isn't going to cut it with the
I'm not sure how or why you got modded down but them's the breaks.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Just grab GNU chess Windows port.
Funny story about GNU chess.
Back when I was in college I had two friends that were sharing an apartment. One worked in the day, the other at night. Their only communication was a chessboard on top of the TV. Each person would take a move before going to bed.
One friend cheated. He compiled GNU chess on his Linux box, inputted the board, cranked it up to nearly maximum, and left it to calculate the next move. It would take about 10 hours or so to calculate its next move.
He'd come home from work, make a sandwich, login and get his move, and go to bed. Needless to say he was kicking much ass, and his friend was mightily puzzled at his ability to do so.
He finally came clean though - it was a pretty funny scene when he did. =)
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
The really significant thing about the Windows Solitaire program is that it has probably permanently changed the name of the card game Patience to "Solitaire".
I don't know why Windows still includes games, but I do know what Solitaire is awfully good for: education.
All the computer-illiterate people I've taught found Solitaire an invaluable aid in learning how to use the mouse.
While to us geeks, the mouse is a natural extenstion of the hand, computer newbies have a really hard time with it; instead of looking at the screen, they look at the mouse, and left and right click are higher math. With Solitaire, they get something unimportant, yet interesting to look and click at; the game absorbs them and they forget about the mouse in the hand. Minesweeper is also great, but for advanced newbies -- after they've learned the basics of mouse usage, they can achieve precision playing Minesweeper.
For that reason, I use similar games under Linux as well when introducing newbies to the computer. First learn how to use the keyboard and the mouse, then we can get on with some real work. I found there was no use in teaching people advanced concepts when they still lose their way on the input devices.
Kind of like teaching aphasiacs the finer points in grammar.
Ignore this signature. By order.
I think the only ones that make themselves look bad here are the anti-twitter trolls. If you mod down bog standard, moderately insightful posts because you _think_ you know something about the identity of the poster, and completely unrelated to its contents, then my guess is that you are the one who has been played.
As for me, I've noticed a lot of this lunacy over the last months, where posts went flamebait just for the fact that someone pointed them out as stemming from twitter, something that wasn't obvious from what the post in question was about. There are hundreds of thousands of active accounts here on slashdot, why don't you do what the rest of us do: ignore the ten or whatever twitter account's postings unless one of them posts something interesting, instead of creating tenfold more inappropriate and offtopic posts because of your little paranoia? You and your kin don't even log in any longer because you are afraid twitter will mod you down? Let me tell you something: if I had had mod points now, I would have modded you down just as well.
A World in a Grain of Sand / Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Infinity in the Palm of your Hand / And Eternity in an Hour.