New technology encourages new vices. When someone keeps me dangling, incommunicate, at the end of a phone-line I use my (newish) technology to play Windows Solitaire. To the point where I often find myself reluctant to respond when a human voice is finally made available.Solitaire, which we Brits call Patience, adapted for the computer screen has one enormous attraction. Finish a game and the computer re-deals the cards. No shuffling, no problems with jammy fingers. But therein lies the puzzle.
Dealing is the result of random selection. Yet the computer is a machine ("A system that moves/In predestinate grooves/In fact not a bus but a tram.") How does it do randomness?
Anyone able to answer this one is entitled to kick off their comment with a sequence of five stars.
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