+1. Well said Atomic. Games really are quite symptomatic more than anything. Even those of us who play games less often often do so to catch up on something we miss, be it social interaction, the feeling of success, the ability to do things where failure isn't lasting, sometimes it's even just the desire for a colourful screen and deep story when we feel what we're going through in life just isn't that grand. Best thing to do is to AVOID this kind of situation entirely, by ensuring that you (and those you care about) have a strong sense of purpose and confidence. Your friends need to know that if they are ever in trouble, you'll be right behind them. Never make it about how bad the game is; make it about how much they _can_ do (though if their self-esteem IS low, you may need to start with baby-steps -> low-risk high-reward RL situations etc). People tend to take the path of least resistance. That's exactly what's going on here. But when people realise that a short-term investment in Real Life can have huge dividends down the track, that's when awesomeness begins.

Yeah? You know a lot of people that wake up at 9am and get on the religion forums and then pray until 3am?

Nah, generally they get up at 6am and pray until 12 :P. Seriously though, I think that while it may certainly help him out of the MMO issue, religion also opens a potentially larger can of worms. If he is an addictive personality, surely there is the chance that he would end up taking it to an extreme? If religion becomes a lifestyle, it can have many of the same detrimental effects as game (withdrawing from others because they don't fit your lifestyle, spending lots of time away from the "real world"). It's hard to quantify, but my guess would be that there's at least some risk of it.

...so lets destroy the OS so that they look good by comparison!" -Paraphrased from the article.

GhostBusters!

And lets face it, the reason Watchmen was undervalued was that it had that dumb love plot. Audiences have seen it before, and it made the movie seem sickeningly predictable. Thank heavens I stayed to watch the end, and the Rorschach bits - 5 star material there.

I don't think that this is in the company's best interest. $36 a year is 10c a day, and even if the machine boots in 1 minute, that's ~$20/60 = 33c of wasted employee time. So there's not that much incentive (carbon trading may change this). I'd be interested to see the effect of Sleep mode, however, as that boots much faster.