Walter, I just thought you might want to hear this story.

This is your fault.    ;-)

There was a graduate student I knew who spent one entire semester playing Empire in the early '90's.  Around the end of the semester he had to show his progress on a math-related project he was supposed to have been working on all that semester. So he put some code together.  The user interface part was working well, but, he said, the calculation portion kept crashing and he would have to spend some time finding the bug.  Actually, the entire mathematical part of the program was like this:

x = 1/0;

"Keith Fuller" <Keith_member@pathlink.com> wrote in message news:dbkebl$18pj$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> Walter, I just thought you might want to hear this story.
>
> This is your fault.    ;-)

LOL. When I was in college, another student threatened to "beat me up" because the game consumed so many resources and caused students to flunk out. There's just something endlessly seductive about conquering the world, putting it under iron control, and having your minions call you "Master" <g>.

> There was a graduate student I knew who spent one entire semester playing
Empire
> in the early '90's.  Around the end of the semester he had to show his
progress
> on a math-related project he was supposed to have been working on all that semester. So he put some code together.  The user interface part was
working
> well, but, he said, the calculation portion kept crashing and he would
have to
> spend some time finding the bug.  Actually, the entire mathematical part
of the
> program was like this:
>
> x = 1/0;

Right from the web page <g>:

Warning: Empire has been known to be addictive. Typical games can take many intense hours. Empire can be hazardous to your Grade Point Average and can damage your personal relationships.