

All Work And No Play ... 251
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!"
Pot, Kettle, Black (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Pot, Kettle, Black (Score:1)
Re:Pot, Kettle, Black (Score:2)
if you are referring to Slashcode development, perhaps you are thinking of the "monkeys with typewriters" analogy...
Re:Pot, Kettle, Black (Score:3, Funny)
--
Humour through misdirection: I could write for Angel!
Re:Pot, Kettle, Black (Score:2, Funny)
It seemed like the amount of money (measured by person-hours) spent reading the article and posting nasty rants about the DoJ involved far more money than the measly few hundred k allocated by the DoJ :)
no freecell? (Score:1)
Re:no freecell? (Score:1, Informative)
According to the article... "Freecell was number two, with 14.8 million users". I guess you must have read something different than I did.
Re:no freecell? (Score:2)
Gaming Improves Us! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Gaming Improves Us! (Score:1)
Don't know if that's really true?
Re:Gaming Improves Us! (Score:2)
Nice joke!
...Oh. It wasn't a joke?
You can improve mouse skills by simply doing work with pointing and clicking on little buttons and stuff. There's realy no need for solitaire.
Good thing the boss doesn't think this way...
MYST!!!! Get some more improvement! (Score:3, Funny)
The only critical thought one needs when playing Myst is 'where is the off button?'
Sorry, I'm busy. (Score:2, Funny)
--Charlie
Minesweeper #4?!? (Score:2, Funny)
Come on, we need to make a concerted effort to get Minesweeper up to number 1! I mean, it's available on many different platforms (Minus the Microsoft copyright, at least) so there's got to be more than 21 million users of Minesweeper!
Minesweeper forever!!!
Come on. (Score:2, Funny)
It runs on more platforms than minesweeper, there are even forms of solitaire which run without an computer or any electric power !
Why should we even consider playing minesweeper ?
It's obviously much worse.
Re:Come on. (Score:2, Insightful)
Particularly the version where the mines are actually disguised as really neat wristwatches and stuff like that.
Solitaire? No (Score:2)
Re:Solitaire? No (Score:4, Insightful)
Given that Minesweeper is NP-complete [bham.ac.uk], 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.
Re:Solitaire? No (Score:2)
Re:eh? (Score:2)
Bzzt...NP means that it's nondeterministically solvable in polynomial time. This assumes that the nondeterminism is solved ideally, or that the correct guess is made every time it pops up. Each nondeterminism requires a guess to resolve. (At least that's more or less how I remember it was explained in automata.)
What about TV (Score:2, Interesting)
So let's waste more time.. (Score:1)
On that note, why am I replying..
Think of the man-hours wasted on sex (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Think of the man-hours wasted on sex (Score:1, Troll)
Re:Think of the man-hours wasted on sex (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Think of the man-hours wasted on sex (Score:3, Funny)
The difference here (Score:3, Insightful)
Bubblet (Score:1)
inspiring (Score:2, Offtopic)
It was both a humbling experience and encouraging. People can do both great and horrible things when working in concert. We just need good ideas to rally around, rather than sitting idly by or doing repetitive tasks.
Anyone want to help me with my spaceship?
Play Games and Sleep is important (Score:1)
work you could do while you sleep. But if you
don't sleep the next day you can't work.
hehe.... (Score:2)
though i have coded for 30 hours straight before, i would not recommend it.
WinFlower (Score:1)
This is exactly what keeps Linux down. (Score:1, Funny)
Until Linux distros wake up and realize that packaging high quality games with their installations will guarantee their success, Linux will remain a minor thorn in Microsoft's side.
Microsoft knows what's important when bundling their OS: games and entertainment. Redhat, Debian, etc. just need to wake up and follow their lead.
Re:This is exactly what keeps Linux down. (Score:1)
Re:This is exactly what keeps Linux down. (Score:1)
Amusing how Linux has hundreds of bundled games. (Score:1)
Gaming is certainly an addiction. I recommend Uplink (posted here on
If anything, Linux comes with too much bundled software, causing it to load more slowly as the icons are drawn in the K menu (which is why I predominantly use Blackbox).
There is a big market for card games (Score:3, Informative)
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.
What were solitaire makers playing during breaks? (Score:1)
Yeah, but I can afford to play solitaire! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, but I can afford to play solitaire! (Score:2)
Just how much does it cost to 'play' Empire State Building or Panama Canal?
Last time I checked, the "players" of those two "games" were paid to play--not the other way around. Of course, the same could probably be said for most of the Solitaire players out there as well...
Why Solitaire? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Why Solitaire? (Score:2)
Regarding the man-hour comparisons... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Regarding the man-hour comparisons... (Score:5, Insightful)
Being a libertarian, I said a few disparaging words upon hearing this suggestion, but I have to admit, he had a point.
Of course the proper counter is, having increased my efficiency 2000% or more, why shouldn't I reap the benefits? Because you didn't stop me? Is that a threat? There are other ways of getting threatening freeloaders out of the way...
Re:Regarding the man-hour comparisons... (Score:2)
Socialism is about the most good for the community, not how to make one person more productive. The most good for a community actually involves having most people feeling productive. When people do not feel productive, they get bored. When they get bored, they start mucking around. When people start mucking around, the bell shaped curve idicates that a certain percentage will turn to crime. The more the people who are bored, the longer the tail on the curve...
Socialism is not about raping the productive individual, but rather, the individual not raping the society.
To counter your argument, just because someone is born a cripple, is that reason to make them lve on the street?
Using your text, I suspect that the answer would be euthanasia, but, as I recall, that is illegal in America....
Anyway, to make this vaguely on topic, if you brush your teeth, as dentists recommend, twice a day, three minutes a time, that is roughly 3 hours a month just wasted. Better kill all those people with clean teeth too.
If you drink one coffee a day, assuming 1 minute to walk to the machine, get the coffe etc, then you are wasting a 1/2 hour per month. Better kill those people who like coffee as well. They are just robbing you of your riches!
If you get stuck in a traffic jam, then you, along with the thousand or so others, could easily build a new freeway to alleviate the congestion. Hmm, maybe I have the answer to road rage here....
Relaxation has nothing to do with Socialism vs. Capitalism. In a true capitalist society, you make money so that you can enjoy it. And guess what, that is what we "socialists" call relaxation.
Re:Regarding the man-hour comparisons... (Score:2)
First, my friend was not using the 99% forced unemployment as an example of socialism -- he was arguing that in a socialist society, where the unemployable are supported, it is not morally wrong to deny them work because of incompetence, and might be more efficient, overall.
Socialism is about the most good for the community, not how to make one person more productive. The most good for a community actually involves having most people feeling productive. When people do not feel productive, they get bored. When they get bored, they start mucking around. When people start mucking around, the bell shaped curve idicates that a certain percentage will turn to crime. The more the people who are bored, the longer the tail on the curve...
How can you define what is "good for the community", if not in terms of what is good for individual members? Further, "feeling productive" does not put food on the table -- being productive does. And when people do not see the fruits of their labour as benifiting them directly, they tend to be less productive. The horse requires the carrot, in other words.
Socialism is not about raping the productive individual, but rather, the individual not raping the society.
Ah, but "raping society" is invariably defined as "not sharing the fruits of your labour" often to a degree decided by others. I'd define "raping society" as living off the fruits of others' labour, without their consent. Let me provide an example: my father died because he could not save up enough money to travel to the U.S. for a lifesaving operation -- his taxes having gone to pay for a social healthcare system that had collapsed to the point of not being technically capable of providing the required surgery (which, admittedly has only a 70% recovery rate). He certainly earned enough money over his life to pay for that operation, but, alas, it was taken and given to others. Should we debate whether society is better off because, perhaps, someone else's life was saved?, or even more lives were saved? Socialism, as practiced, in Canada, reached the point where the state decided who lived and who died (there being a celebrated case of someone dying of a broken leg because they had to wait in line too long for care). Note: I am not bitter because of my father's death -- I was a libertarian for many years before that event, but I do note that Canada's brand of socialism certainly accelerated it, and surely the deaths of others.
To counter your argument, just because someone is born a cripple, is that reason to make them lve on the street?
They can live wherever they can afford, or from what charity is available to them. Certainly I am not responsible for their state of affairs? Should others have to feed me because I am disadvantaged in that I am not a stellar athlete? I have also met many so called "cripples" that were quite capable of supporting themselves at least as well as I support myself.
Using your text, I suspect that the answer would be euthanasia, but, as I recall, that is illegal in America....
Why kill someone if they do not want to die? I do not understand.
Anyway, to make this vaguely on topic, if you brush your teeth, as dentists recommend, twice a day, three minutes a time, that is roughly 3 hours a month just wasted. Better kill all those people with clean teeth too.
Now, I really don't understand the relevance of this.
If you drink one coffee a day, assuming 1 minute to walk to the machine, get the coffe etc, then you are wasting a 1/2 hour per month. Better kill those people who like coffee as well. They are just robbing you of your riches!
Oh, I see, you're equating inefficiency in others with a lack of productivity in the productive. That wasn't my friend's point. Such people have a neutral effect (unless the coffe machine crowd is so noisy as to be a distraction). His point was that many workers actively impede productivity. A better example would be a policy (and yes, this is an exagerated example) where one had to change all 1's in a file to 2's, by hand, and being forbidden to use sed to automate the process because (a) not everyone knows sed, and (b) it makes other's "look bad".
Re:Regarding the man-hour comparisons... (Score:2)
"We" is the invarying productive component of society, in this case (beholden to all of society, according to socialists).
The general idea is if you pay people to not work and mess up or slow down what productive people do, those productive people would be so much more efficient that they could earn enough to pay the non-workers.
IOW: Factory employs 1000 people to make widgets. Do the investors care if they can make the same widgets by paying the same total wages to 10 really efficient people who automate most everything? Probably not: those 10 people are worth 100 times the average. So pay each of those people 100 times as much, and tax them at a 99% rate to "pay off" the other 990 to not have to work.
Of course, why should some work while others get a free ride just because it is possible? So those others don't make our working lives miserable? To some extent this may actually be worthwhile, but not as a general principle.
I can cite a personal example here: I produce pretty good code with below average defect rates at above average coding rates. (After 25 years, you'd think that I'd better!) In many shops, we had formal review processes. I was asked to reduce my output because it was taking too much of others' time to keep up reviewing it. This, despite taking on the coding efforts of many of those other reviewers in the process. The right thing to do, IMHO, would be to relax review requirements where there was a history of low defect rates. But, PHBs being what they are...
Re:Regarding the man-hour comparisons... (Score:2)
Well, I no longer work there for the very reason you mentioned.
Regarding the quoted suggestion: this wouldn't work: I was constrained to get a certain amount of work done in a particular interval of time which translated to a particular coding rate (and my code is quite dense, it it wasn't simply a matter of racking up useless LOCs). I could not simultaneously get the work done in the time required and produce code for review at a slower rate. Yes, it was very much a "do the impossible and if you can't we will fire you without cause" place. Like I said, I stopped working there (3-1/2 years without any time off or compensation was too much). I would have left sooner, but being on an H1-B visa made that difficult.
I thought about it (Score:2, Interesting)
It just isn't but for some stupid reason I keep playing it.
The interesting thing about the article is that it shows more than ever that graphics and speed are unimportant to the quality of the game. Right after the bundled games were and I quote
October 2001were (Electronic Arts) Maxis' The Sims, with 1.6 million users; Microsoft's Age of Empires, with 805,000 users; (Vivendi Universal) Blizzard's Diablo II with 624,000 users; and (Electronic Arts) Westwood's Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun with 563,000 users.
none of these are visualy very impressive, but they all share one common theme anyone can play them with ease.
conclusion gameplay over style every time
What a waste... (Score:5, Funny)
I'd write more, but i don't want my boss to see me on Slashdot.
Slashdot Man Hours? (Score:1)
Here's what I really want to know:
- How many man-hours are spent by people reading/posting to SlashDot?
You gotta figure there's millions of hours spent by young smart programmer's minds reading this stuff instead of writing code. Think of all the great improvements that could have been made to the world's software if we hadn't been wasting time on this website!?
Maybe Slashdot can add some rough time-calculating scripts to slashcode for tracking user hours spent.
Re:Slashdot Man Hours? (Score:2)
I guess you don't program... Cause from where I'm sitting, if I didn't take a few minutes every hour to do something other than programming, there would be a ten fold increase in the amount of crap code I write... Programmers aren't machines, we need a mental break too...
Funny numbers (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Funny numbers (Score:1)
Re:Funny numbers (Score:3, Informative)
No, it couldn't. This is the mythical man month, which was truely debunked in the book of the same name. Each project has it's optimal size. If you don't have enough people, then the project will fail or take longer than neccessary. However, if you have too many people, then the project will also fail or take longer than necessary.
This is especially true when you think of overall design, or other tasks which cannot be sub-divided. If you split the design work into 10 units, then you could well have either a canal where the two ends don't meet in the middle, or your designers spend longer in meetings deciding on the route instead of just doing it.
Re:Funny numbers (Score:2)
Anyway, the Panama canal killed enough workers originally. When contemplating the magnitude and grandeur of such a giant project we should remember that a lot of lives were lost in the creation of it. Come to think of it, this may even support your point.
Cool! (Score:3, Funny)
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.
Re:Funny numbers (Score:3, Funny)
6,480 women could have a baby in an hour!
388,800 women could have a baby in a miunte!
23,328,000 women could have a baby in a second!
Now, while I doubt I could handle all of those women, I would certainly be willing to try...
Solitaire programmer 'killed' 36 people (Score:2, Funny)
Quantitative vs. Qualitative. (Score:1, Insightful)
My grandfather worked on the Apollo project; granted his role was small, he helped to turn down the radio stations operating in Apollo 13's band when it was operating under power due to difficulty. But without even his minor contribution men could have died. To compare the work of brave men in the same tally as lazy overpriveleged goof-offs is a damned insult.
Sorry if I come of as irate; it's because I am.
Re:Quantitative vs. Qualitative. (Score:1)
Re:Quantitative vs. Qualitative. (Score:1)
Look, I'm sorry if I seem upset, it's just that this whole "comparison" between people who are considered America's heros and people who are doing their best to destroy the economy by cheating American business really pisses me off!.
Who pissed on my Wheaties? Probably someone who dragged a company into the ground playing Minesweeper at work. It takes the same destructive attitude.
Re:Quantitative vs. Qualitative. (Score:2)
Oops.
Re:Quantitative vs. Qualitative. (Score:2)
... but men have died playing solataire as well.
gus
Re:Quantitative vs. Qualitative. (Score:2)
I agree that people should take responsibility for using their own time productively. However, let's not ignore the toxic organizational environment in some companies that actually discourages personal contribution or penalizes it (no good deed goes unpunished).
Maybe the "lazy overprivileged goof-offs" are the managers of these people, who can't seem to find them anything to do that's more interesting than Solitaire. Yes, in an ideal world each person would manage themselves. But since we live in THIS world, it falls upon the manager to motivate and develop the people who report to them, instead of frustrating them so much they escape into games instead of doing their work.
On the other hand (Score:1)
If Solitaire was not bundled any more with Windows:
Hours lost due to nervous breakdown by people not being able to relax and let off some steam using solitaire at work: 21.3 * 1 day * 3% ~ 5 million man-hours (60 floors of the Empire State Building?). Hours lost frantically searching the internet and trying to bypass the company firewall to get the darn game back: 21.2 * 2 = 42.4 million man-hours (2 Panama Canals). Damage provoqued by irrate postal workers deprived of their favorite game: 852285 * 0.001 * 20 years ~ 27 million man-hours (one more Panama Canal and an Empire State Building, we're starting to run out of Panama to dig new canals...).
As they say, 87.3% of all statistics are made up.
Deer Hunter? (Score:2)
#30 Deer Hunter 364,000 unique users.
I'm going to give away the secret to winning right here:
1) Be sure to get at least three six-packs on the way to the stand. You can't win without them.
2) Make sure Bubba drinks more of them than you.
3) Piss into Bubba's box of ammo to prevent him from getting a deer.
4) Tell Bubba you're headed into town for more beer.
5) Drive on Rt. 17
6) Hit the deer that jumps out near mile marker 248.
7) Put the deer in the back of the truck.
8) Return home, leaving Bubba on the stand.
9) Victory!! You bagged more deer than Bubba!
Solitare is a trainer... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Solitare is a trainer... (Score:2)
Mythical Man Month (Score:1)
Nothing compared to TV (Score:2)
-josh
to heck w/ solitare (Score:3)
Re:to heck w/ solitare (Score:2)
But if you have MAME... (Score:2)
What were they doing? (Score:3, Interesting)
Cumulative hours waited for internet to download this year [osearth.com]
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.
Well Hell! (Score:2, Funny)
I am shocked!! (Score:1)
Actually, quite lacking in FPS's...
Forgetting the real problem... (Score:1)
Please, let's eliminate this awful practice of "sleeping." Those 6 hours a day should be spent working!
man hours doesn't work (Score:2)
OTOH, maybe they'll give us the Ultimate Question...
Kinda Ironic (Score:4, Insightful)
People spent too much time playing games (Score:2)
IF people could be just ALITTLE more serious, perhaps we wouldnt be having economy trouble, terrorist attacks, problems with virii, hackers, worms.
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.
Re:People spent too much time playing games (Score:4, Funny)
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
and before Solitare and Mindsweeper... (Score:5, Interesting)
* 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.
Re:and before Solitare and Mindsweeper... (Score:3, Insightful)
Er, perhaps it has something to do with the bars on the cage?
Have you ever seen people in prison? wasting time is all they do!
Too bad we can't combine work and play... (Score:3, Interesting)
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...
Re:Too bad we can't combine work and play... (Score:2)
Consider Everquest. I've never played it (would get way too addicted) but hear that people have jobs in it, such as making shirts or swords or whatever. Now, no real-world good comes from this time, because you're pretending to be putting physical work into a physical product.
Most slashdot users however spend most of their days doing various forms of information-processing. Replace "making shirts" with "writing a perl/python script to do x", perhaps you could find some way of doing that without even breaking the Middle Earth setting, and WHAMO, people's productivity skyrockets.
Re:Too bad we can't combine work and play... (Score:2)
No more wonders (Score:2)
That's why humanity won't build no more major wonders anymore. We'll spend our lives playing games.
Re:No more wonders (Score:2)
Damn. Just...damn.
Damn.
Damn.
Solitare on Mac (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Thank you wine (Score:2, Funny)
Distributed Processing... (Score:3)
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.
The curse of violent video games (Score:2, Funny)
As noted time and time again by those opposed to game violence, just a casual glance reveals that the Most Popular games are also the Most Violent.
For example, just take a look at number 21 : HOYLE SOLITAIRE. HOYT SOLITAIRE has been comdemned by numerous game anti-violence activism groups, including The Lion and Lamb Project [lionlamb.org].
How many more children need to die before HOYT and other violent-game makers stand up and becomes accountable? How many more people will buy (and I'm getting ill at the thought of it) ... _Guns_, for 'self-protection' and 'hunting', before congress will take action against these code-writing purveyors of death?
As a bible-thumping christian, I am reviled by the thought of these violent games and guns, especially remembering the death of our savior, Jesus Christ, at the hands of Doom-playing gun-wielding members of the pharisees. Evil is no older than videogames and guns. Write to your congressman now! Stop the corruption of our children!
(and since I typically get mod'd down at least once before someone realizes my sarcasm, yes, this is sarcastic.)
pregnant (Score:2)
Re:pregnant (Score:2)
If you're posting to slashdot, that's a pretty big IF....
Solitaire sucks... Minesweeper rocks. (Score:2)
I have a lot of fun with it on Linux as well...
Solitaire is a waste of time.
Utilize the time wasted... (Score:2)
http://www.chem.ox.ac.uk/curecancer.html
lies (Score:2)
how do they know that?
Other high-ranking activities on Windows (Score:2)
Maybe if the BSOD was made to resemble Solitaire, it'd be less threatening?
Didn't they do just that... (Score:2)