Doug Ross @ Journal

Defeating Solitaire

The WaPo's Robert MacMillan noted the following technical solution for the North Carolina State Senator who wants to prohibit state employees from playing Solitaire, Minesweeper, and other time-wasting games.

That prompted this alternate suggestion from reader Mark Colan: "When I was a developer at Lotus some time ago, we were under the gun for an important project. One team member spent entirely too much time playing Solitaire for our tastes. Someone came up with a Windows resource-editing program, exchanged the images for two cards, and installed it on his machine." The result? Every time he pulled a black 7, it would behave like a red 7 and vice-versa. "It did the trick," Colan said.

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