America is all about productivity and efficiency, right?

In my previous blogs, I’ve written about all the fun I had in the Visual Studio 2010 launch event in Las Vegas. In one of the technical sessions, the presenter let a detail slip that has alerted me to the possibility of implementing enormous productivity and efficiency in Nevada gaming. He said it was all very secret and that none of the two hundred or so people who had randomly decided to attend should let the secret out. Not being that honorable myself, I’m going to do it anyway. But I’m still going to keep the presenter’s identity confidential because I wouldn’t want to get Tim in trouble with his customers. Grandma Huckaby would never forgive me.

The secret is that slot machines in Las Vegas are being installed that use Microsoft’s latest Windows Presentation Foundation technology to display the images of spinning wheels and the theme window above them. Not only is it cheaper to build the machines, but it’s more flexible too. The guys behind the one-way glass can change a St. Patrick’s Day theme to a Hanukah theme with the click of a mouse. Instead of three bars (or “pubs” as the Irish call them), you can win with three bitter herbs.

As I wandered back to my room, I could see that it was all true! White-haired grandmothers were pressing touch-sensitive screen images to see graphic representations of spinning wheels all over the place.

The original concept of a slot machine was kind of a three wheeled roulette. A handle kicked off three actual wheels that, presumably, stopped in a completely random configuration. My neighbor here in Springdale has restored some of the antiques in his back room. They’re great!! As mechanical devices, however, they were really not all that random. The dependability of the process of extracting a predictable amount of money from white-haired grandmothers was improved a lot when the internal workings were changed to electronic control.

Now that we have made the leap to an improved electronic User Interface (or “UI” as we say in the biz), it’s a short hop to vastly improved productivity. Since the mathematical accuracy of money extraction is calculated to … ummm … maybe thirty or forty decimal places in modern slot machines, why can’t we just accept a credit card at the door, extract the calculated amount, and then the white-haired grandmother doesn’t have to spend those endless hours with her finger pressed to a touch-sensitive device control. The “winners”, so necessary for advertising reasons, can be selected automatically at the door too.

It’s the humane thing to do! If Nike was forcing third-world factory workers to press a button all day like that, people would be marching in the streets protesting their mistreatment.

But … (I hear you protesting) … Grandma likes to spend those endless hours that way. She can get away from her grandkids for up to a week at a time. And it even takes less mental effort than watching TV.

Gotcha covered! Simply inject Grandma with drugs to induce a coma that will last a week and wake her up when it’s over. You can even position her so that the same bedsores created by those endless hours in a chair in front of a slot machine are reproduced.

And she can’t remember what she did yesterday anyway.