Top 10 workplace time wasters

6. I Can Has Cheezburger network

Iain Thomson: This network has spawned such enormous and fun time wasters as LOLCats, the Fail blog and This is Photobomb among others.

It's all user-generated content, mostly wickedly funny and has become firmly established as one of the key time wasters of the modern internet, so much so that Randall Munroe, unofficial online Court Jester, was forced to speculate on the extreme measures needed if the service went down.

I hate to think what proportion of a network's time is spent forwarding some of the pictures these sites contain, and how much business productivity has been lost. But mankind cannot live on work alone and letting loose once in a while is no bad thing.

Shaun Nichols: 400 years from now our descendants will stumble across the crumbled remnants of our society.

Eventually they will be able to access our records, and they will come across the phenomenon of LOLCats. And then they will feel very, very good about the progress mankind has made since the 21st century.

The Cheezburger Network is without a doubt extremely popular, in no small part because it appeals to some very basic humorous qualities that we all enjoy. Anthropomorphic cats are funny. People falling over is funny. Someone messing about in a serious photograph is funny. Like it or not, we all get a chuckle out of it.

5. Fantasy Sports

Shaun Nichols: Perhaps the best part about being a sports fan is that no matter how good or bad your club is performing, you know that if given the chance you would be a far better manager than the guy currently calling the shots.

Fantasy sports lets fans live that role. The idea is that fans form leagues and each person gets to pick a full squad of real world players who score " points" for the team by way of their real-world statistics.

In the US, Fantasy NFL Football has become a huge industry, a sort of video game for adults who normally wouldn't touch a computer. Not only are there countless sites and services designed to help fans organize and manage leagues, but there are also hundreds of books and newsletters devoted to strategy and predictions.

As with any passion, fantasy sports can take up a large chunk of time if not properly managed. It is very easy to lose a good chunk of your day reading up on the top halfbacks or checking the waiver wire for a new receiver.

Iain Thomson: I was a little sceptical about this pick. I thought it was like trainspotting - I mean, people do it but surely not very many.

A bit of research later and I'm a little shocked at the amount of stuff out there for the fantasy sports fan. There's reams of the stuff, with millions of people living out their fantasies of control over the internet. It's been an eye opener.

Lest you think I'm being snooty about the thing I did find some fields that could suck me in too. As a Formula One nut there were loads of interesting fantasy F1 teams out there and, as I scanned the choices, I found myself thinking "oh come on, no-one's picked Sutil in a Red Bull chassis using the McLaren engine - they must be mad!"

It took a concious effort to back off. That way madness lies, but good call Shaun.

4. Minesweeper

Iain Thomson: Microsoft may have increased the productivity of millions of companies but the inclusion of the Minesweeper game in versions of Windows from 3.11 has taken the edge of those productivity gains somewhat.

Minesweeper is a deceptively simple game that you can pick up the rules to in seconds and master the simple version in minutes. But move onto the largest sizes and you're looking at a lot of time and some agonising clicks, which usually end up in teeth-gnashing failure.

Because the game was bundled into the Windows operating system most IT administrators couldn't be bothered to go through the hassle of removing it and bored staff quickly discovered its addictive qualities. The game has changed little over the years - the true sign of a classic - although on Vista you can replace the mines with flowers as a mark of respect to mine victims around the world.

Shaun Nichols: As a small child I can remember going to visit my dad in his office, and having to spend a couple of hours sitting quietly while he attended to an emergency meeting. It was there that I discovered Minesweeper.

You don't think that the game is much at first, particularly when you're used to computer games that involve hacking up mutants with a chainsaw, but Minesweeper very quietly sucks you in. As with many of the best puzzle games, the presentation is very basic and the game is easy to learn. From there however you get involved with a substance only slightly less addictive than caffeine and not nearly as good for productivity.

As Iain noted, Minesweeper still ships with Vista, marking a decades-long run as a mainstay in the operating system. Along with the likes of Tetris and Solitaire, Minesweeper is one of the enduring workplace game titles.