Man Spends 2,200 Hours Defeating Bejeweled 2 179
An anonymous reader writes "A California steel contractor spent 2,200 total hours over the last three years racking up a high score in Bejeweled 2. He exceeded the 2^31-1 maximum score programmed for the score display, proving that there is, in fact, an end to the game. I suppose congratulations or condolences are in order."
Re:Why this is sad (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:x64 (Score:2, Insightful)
THE reason to upgrade to x64
If the developer had used an UNsigned int, the game could have been twice as long.
Re:Why this is sad (Score:4, Insightful)
Q: "how many hours does the average American watch TV a day? "
A: "According to the A.C. Nielsen Co., the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV each day"
They should be locked up for that.
Re:Why this is sad (Score:1, Insightful)
I think this guy has a hobby he enjoys. It's one where no one else is being harmed, unless his playing has damaged his relationships with friends and family. No worse than someone who watches any kind of TV program or reads books two hours a day. IMO, no one has a beef long as this guy obeys the law, pays his taxes, etc. There are people all over the world who indulge in some kind of pastime for themselves, and even if no one else ever benefits from it, in the end all that matters is it made their lives more enjoyable.
Re:Why this is sad (Score:3, Insightful)
but if they did something crazy like, throw rocks at a tree for 2 hours, everyday, for 3 yrs, someone might notice. I think this guy needs professional help.
Throwing rocks at a tree is crazy? Talking to a tree and hearing a response is crazy. Throwing rocks at it might just be a new sport.
Why is it you seem to think something you don't understand is crazy? I don't understand anyone that watches their local news on TV every night. The sensationalist simplistic nonsense that comes out of it makes me want to throw rocks at my television when I see glimpses of it. But I don't think people that do watch and enjoy it are crazy. Badly informed and prone to fear everything yes, but crazy?
Why criticize? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:x64 (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, 2 hours per day does sound rather manageable. Until you step back, take in a bit of perspective, and realize that he spent about as much time as the modern worker spends with his/her children on a cheap iPhone game.
When the life energy of the members of our society is of such little value that such a huge chunk of it would be spent on such a mind bogglingly empty pursuit, one has to question the values that we as a society hold dear.
Oh wait, we're free, that's right. Who am I to ask questions like that etc etc.
Re:x64 (Score:2, Insightful)
So? The average american spends far more than 2 hours a day watching TV. We all waste our life in different ways.
Re:Why this is sad (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's what I don't understand... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would you use a signed integer for a value like this? I mean, you're never going to have a negative score, and it's not like there's a performance benefit to using a signed integer instead of an unsigned integer. It would take up the same 32 bits of memory. Sure, a score of two billion should be enough and four billion is overkill, but that's really not the point - if you know you're never going to need negative values, why would you reserve a bit for them?
I see this sort of thing all the time. For example, various IMAP clients (including Mozilla Thunderbird and Apple Mail) use a signed integer for the message UID, which breaks horribly in the unlikely event that you happen to have a message in your mailbox with a UID above 2^31. (Unlikely, unless your IMAP server stores the UID within the message itself as an X-UID header, and your SMTP server doesn't strip X-UID headers from incoming messages, allowing spammers to cause all sorts of interesting problems.)
Is it really that much easier to use signed integers? Or are people just idiots?
Re:Here's what I don't understand... (Score:1, Insightful)
Is it really that much easier to use signed integers?
Yes. I don't know which language Bejeweled is programmed in, but in most that I'm familiar with, to get a signed integer, you need to say just "int", whereas for an unsigned integer, you explicitly need to say "unsigned int".
Given that it took 3 years wall time, and 3 months solid of actual playing time to actually reach that point, I feel confident that the programmers figured that no one would actually ever get that high. And it's not like moving to an unsigned value would actually have gotten them anywhere - we'd just be having this same conversation in 2013. If they were really concerned about it, they should have gone for a long int or some sort of bignum value.
Re:Why this is sad (Score:5, Insightful)
Figure 40-minute newscast, 40-minute drama/show, 40 minutes advertising
FTFY
(Your point still stands. I agree with you.)
Re:x64 (Score:4, Insightful)
There are so many opportunities for people to do things that don't cost money (or at least in amounts that are far less than $20). I think that you've been over-consumerized.