Free Republic

A decades-old classic that joins the likes of Doom, Tetris, Pokémon, and The Legend of Zelda When selecting new entires for the World Video Game Hall of Fame, judges consider a number of criteria. Is the game widely known and remembered? Has its popularity endured over the years? And did it influence not only other video games, but society in general? Microsoft Solitaire, bundled with the Windows operating system since 1990, might seem like a modest example of video gaming culture, but it easily meets the above benchmarks. And so, as of this month, it’s now an official member of...

OK, I've put this vanity post off for a month or more. Its a bit lame but when I find I enjoy something a bit I like to post what I found. So here goes,,,,, when I'm at the computer and not on FR I do solitaire. Yeah I did say lame but I put my time in. I did SOAP II, Autocoder, GMAP, COBOL, Burroughs medium systems assembler, several variations of SDL and finally C++. But to get back.... Specifically I find Freecell very entertaining. Statistically one can win 9 out of 10 games. Maybe half of those won...

Solitaire has been a staple for office distraction since Microsoft first included the game in Windows 3.0 in 1990. But the digital adaptation wasn’t made by an iconic coder or just one of the company’s many full-time employees. It was programmed by an intern. Great Big Story has an interview with Wes Cherry, who was an intern at Microsoft in 1988. He describes the experience as “all-encompassing,” but even internships at Microsoft have lulls. He put the downtime to good use. “I came up with the idea to write Solitaire for Windows out of boredom, really,” Cherry said. “There weren’t...

(It still has the bouncing-card victory animations from Windows 95!!)Most people still have fond memories of spending hours playing Solitaire on their old Windows desktop computers.The rise of mobile gaming combined with Microsoft's decision last year to charge users for the Windows 10 version led to the popular game falling out of fashion.But the classic Solitaire is back, and it is available on iOS and Android. Microsoft has launched a new app called Solitaire Collection, which is free to download and contains classic card games such as Klondike, Spider and Freecell.Microsoft has retained features of the classic game, including the...

A photo of two Democratic legislators playing solitaire has ignited controversy at the state Capitol and in the blogosphere. The Associated Press picture has appeared in any number of venues, and it shows two lawmakers sitting in the back row of the historic Hall of the House in Hartford during the lengthy debate over the two-year, $37 billion state budget. On the left is Rep. Barbara Lambert, a freshman Democrat from Milford who won her first legislative election in November 2008. She replaced longtime Milford Democrat James Amann, who ended his legislative career as the House Speaker and is now...

State lawmakers in Democrat-dominated Connecticut raised income taxes on the wealthy and borrowed more than $1 billion to balance their budget this week. While a minority Republican legislator spoke on the floor late into the night yesterday, what were his Democrat colleagues doing? Playing solitaire on their computers: (See photo below) And watching baseball over the Internet: . . .

House Minority Leader Lawrence F. Cafero Jr., R-Norwalk, far right, speaks while colleagues play solitaire on their computers as the House convenes Monday night to vote on a new budget. (AP)

Radio host Curtis Sliwa thinks it's time for a federal judge to fold her cards. The Guardian Angels founder told the Daily News he saw Manhattan Federal Court Judge Shira Scheindlin playing a computer card game while he testified at the trial of John A. (Junior) Gotti. Sliwa said Scheindlin should recuse herself from the case, in which the 42-year-old mob scion is accused of orchestrating the 1992 shooting that nearly killed Sliwa. He drew a parallel to Mayor Bloomberg's firing of a city worker caught playing computer solitaire at his desk. "Should a federal judge be playing video solitaire...

From North Carolina comes a report that a State Senator wants to erase all game applications from state workers' computers. His belief: that preventing government employees from playing Solitaire and Minesweeper will recoup millions of dollars worth of productivity for the state. "...The solitaire crackdown here, though perhaps rare in its specificity, is part of a behind-the-scenes battle over personal time that's affecting not just unionized state workers in North Carolina, but sales reps in Washington and phone-bank workers in San Francisco..." This effort is, itself, a giant waste of time. It makes about as much sense as teaching Mandarin...