Get Back to Work

THE DAILY FED

Get Back to Work

According to a recent issue of CIO magazine, users from government computers logged more than 5,000 hours during one recent three-month period on Jumbo!, a Web site that offers thousands of shareware and freeware computer programs.

The most popular area of the site is its games channel. And one of the hottest games is Quake, in which the player takes on the role of a government-appointed warrior. Jumbo! bills Quake as "one of the bloodiest computer games ever created."

Another government-worker favorite, according to Jumbo's statistics, is a multimedia scene of cartoon character Homer Simpson belching.

However, these antics won't be continuing much longer if Senator Lauch Faircloth, R-N.C. has his way.

The senator yesterday proposed banning computer games in federal government offices. Faircloth proposed the computer game ban after his staff took the senator on a tour of his Web site and he saw how easy it was to switch from games to work areas on the computer, a spokesman said.

Faircloth said the computer game ban "could save the taxpayers millions of dollars recovered from lost productivity."