Investigation Into Security Director Who Hacked the Lottery Expands (bgr.com) 167
An anonymous reader sends the latest update on Eddie Tipton, the man who worked for the Multi-State Lottery Association who was convicted of rigging a lottery game so he could win a $14 million jackpot. BGR reports: "Not too long ago, Eddie Tipton was convicted of hacking into the Multi-State Lottery Association's computer system in order to rig a nearly $17 million jackpot in Iowa. Now comes word that an investigation into Tipton's hacking activities is expanding to include a number of other states. Thus far, lottery officials from Colorado, Wisconsin and Oklahoma have indicated that Tipton may have also gamed lottery jackpots in their respective states. What makes this saga all the more interesting is that Tipton actually used to work at the Multi-State Lottery Association as a security director. In that capacity, Tipton allegedly installed a rootkit onto his company's computer system that influenced the manner in which 'random' numbers were generated. As a result, Tipton was able to calculate and gain access to winning lotto numbers before their public unveiling. With the numbers in tow, authorities claim that Tipton would reveal the winning numbers to friends who would then buy 'winning' lotto tickets and then collect on big paydays."
Serious question.. (Score:5, Interesting)
There are states that use a computer to pick their numbers and not balls pushed out by a machine?
Re:Serious question.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Not only that, but they seem to license a specific random number generator from a 3rd party, with, apparently no oversight, security etc in place.
I wonder if they pay good money for the generator to be "really" random, not like the pseudo-random crap you usually get with one-liners...
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Many random routines boil down to trusting the OS, like /dev/random, and just running entropy tests against the data. /dev/random or the kernel.
This is relatively secure, unless someone has root access to the machine, and can replace
It's easy enough to mod the kernel to feed numbers from a list that passes any entropy test, but which is already available.
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Many random routines boil down to trusting the OS, like /dev/random, and just running entropy tests against the data.
This is relatively secure, unless someone has root access to the machine, and can replace /dev/random or the kernel.
Alternatively, they can just predict /dev/random output if it contains sufficiently low entropy. You don't need root access for that.
See Mining Your Ps and Qs: Detection of Widespread Weak Keys in Network Devices
Implementation details... (Score:3)
Alternatively, they can just predict /dev/random output if it contains sufficiently low entropy. You don't need root access for that.
No you can't, you're mixing things a bit up. /dev/random - in most implementation is of the *blocking* variety. I will never let the entropy go low enough. If there isn't enough entropy, the device will simply block until enough entropy has been gathered. /dev/urandom - which is the *unblocked* one. It will always spits out random numbers, no matter what the current state of the entropy pool is. If
(Because of these pauses, it might be a performance bottleneck), that's why most implementations also offer...
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Alternatively, they can just predict /dev/random output if it contains sufficiently low entropy. You don't need root access for that.
No you can't, you're mixing things a bit up. /dev/random - in most implementation is of the *blocking* variety. I will never let the entropy go low enough. If there isn't enough entropy, the device will simply block until enough entropy has been gathered.
But only if /dev/random's judge of entropy is correct, if the machine is running in a VM, its environment could be manipulated to make it *think* it has sufficient entropy even if it's not "real" entropy.
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Or /dev/random might be a link to another device that acts differently, or the kernel might be compromised and switch the output from /dev/random to a pregenerated list that passes entropy tests but is known, or the file system driver might interface your open() call with a different program if the calling process has one specific name and tries to open /dev/random, or the compiler you build your polling software with might be compromised and substitute parts of specific code, or any of hundreds of other po
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No you can't, you're mixing things a bit up. /dev/random - in most implementation is of the *blocking* variety. I will never let the entropy go low enough. If there isn't enough entropy, the device will simply block until enough entropy has been gathered.
While for most cases you are correct, Linux heuristic estimator function is dated and does not always work. For example, you can't rely on Disk I/O for entropy if you are using SSD. In such cases estimation function would fail by over-estimating entropy and system would not correctly block at low-entropy conditions. This is because when it was written disk drives with their variable seek time were the norm.
/dev/random, but in reality have system
Another consideration, is that you might think you are using
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You can buy off the shelf hardware random number generators that are certified to meet a high standard of randomness and unpredictability. They are mostly used for generating secure crypto keys but would work for a lottery too.
Considering the large amount of money involved you would think that getting the system as a whole designed properly and audited wouldn't be too much to ask. It's not like it's a unique or even uncommon problem - many countries have lotteries with legally mandated protections and stand
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You can buy off the shelf hardware random number generators that are certified to meet a high standard of randomness and unpredictability. They are mostly used for generating secure crypto keys but would work for a lottery too.
Yes, but how do you know that the random numbers actually come from the random number generating device, and is not substituted on the fly by the device that connects to it?
And how do you know the random number generator doesn't have a built-in exploit, like e.g. if being pulled in a specific time sequence, it switches over to feeding a list of pre-generated random numbers that still pass entropy tests but are known to the programmer who made the device?
Only systems that are built from scratch under monitor
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Keep reading my comment all the way to the end and you will find your questions were anticipated and answered.
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Legally mandated protections and standards does not ensure that a lottery cannot be manipulated.
If that were the case, casinos around the world would scramble to implement those protections and standards. Instead, they have much higher standards and protections, because they unlike governments know of far more pitfalls, and they still get manipulated from time to time.
Short of a system where the random numbers can be replicated by anyone without any proprietary equipment, but not be predicted, any lottery
Obligatory (Score:4, Insightful)
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Actually, it's a tax on people who cannot do math.
I say this because, even though poor folk have more impending reasons to cast their dreams (and money) in that direction, we both know there are well-off people who buy tickets whenever the jackpot goes over a certain amount.
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I think it depends on which book you prefer. I happened to be referring to Milton Friedman, but I read the tax on the stupid not long ago in a fantasy book (Pattrick Rothfuss). I still weigh in the favor of what I stated because many people in poverty play the lottery because it's the only way they can see out of poverty. The further people go into poverty the more likely they are to play. It's very easy for the state to appear egalitarian by offering a lottery, but we all see where those education fund
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Obviously people with mod points are ignorant to any discussion on the topic... *sigh*
Probably people with gambling addictions, or pissed because Draft Kings and Fanduel was banned in New York.
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I don't think its math just simple logic. You take money in, pay all expenses, take profit, pay a few people out whats left. That is the way a lottery works, its clear that it is not a good deal even without doing the sums.
Those who disagree can send me money now, I promise to return 50% of what I collect to one of you.
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It is more complicated than this. There is the possibility of multiple winning entries, the complicating factor of other prizes besides the entire jackpot, etc.
I haven't bothered doing the statistics on this, but I suspect somebody has. I have the impression that when
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Generally no. The 'split winnings' factor kills it.
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MIT students did, for years as a matter of fact. And that was AFTER they both explained how and asked the lottery board ( who said it was legal ) if they could use the exploit they found. There was a TED talk on it, it was actually quite interesting. I don't remember who it was, but it was an easy to follow, yet informative talk.
Basically what it all boils down to is this: state run lottery gets pretty much the same amount of money if there is a winner or a not since tax / cost of entry on tickets goes to t
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Your odds of winning with no ticket are exactly zero. Your odds with 1 ticket are greater than zero.
No tickets cost $0. One ticket costs more than $0, and it usually costs more than (prize_money)*(probability of winning the jackpot).
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Your odds of winning with no ticket are exactly zero. Your odds with 1 ticket are greater than zero.
No tickets cost $0. One ticket costs more than $0, and it usually costs more than (prize_money)*(probability of winning the jackpot).
On the other hand, if one ticket costs me the loose change that's been piling up for the last several months and gives me three or four days to daydream while I'm stuck doing an otherwise unpleasant job, so be it. That's $2.00 for three or four days of a greater degree of happiness, and no letdown because I know that I'm not actually going to win.
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On the other hand, if one ticket costs me the loose change that's been piling up for the last several months and gives me three or four days to daydream while I'm stuck doing an otherwise unpleasant job, so be it. That's $2.00 for three or four days of a greater degree of happiness, and no letdown because I know that I'm not actually going to win.
I was listening to a show on NPR recently about gambling.
Here's some excerpts from it. http://www.npr.org/2015/09/29/... [npr.org]
They spoke about different people, and why some go on ot become gambling addicts, while others do not.
It turns out that for some people such as myself, if we don't win, we get not enjoyment from it. This would seem correct to me, as in my one experience with gambling was tears ago on a return trip from the West coast, where my wife and I stayed a couple nights in Las Vegas. I tri
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they had people getting the happy reaction even if they almost won. Missing one number on the lottery ticket or one fruit on a slot machine actually makes them feel as good as if they had won
That is certainly counter-intuitive. Personally, I would feel a lot happier winning $10 million than not. I guess I'm also not a proper gambler then.
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This would seem correct to me, as in my one experience with gambling was tears ago
That was a funny typo. Gambling can lead to tears.
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But in the studies done, they had people getting the happy reaction even if they almost won. Missing one number on the lottery ticket or one fruit on a slot machine actually makes them feel as good as if they had won.
Casinos know all this and they definitely use it. I used to go to the casino with a friend of mine who really liked playing the video slots. Some of these machines were billed as quarter slots, but certain combinations would only pay out if the player has put 2 or even 3 quarters into the machine for that play. I could never get my friend to understand that when those special multi-coin only combinations came up, invariably when my friend had only put in a single quarter, it did not necessarily mean that he
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easy to say "gambling sucks I only bet $20 in my weekend in vegas" until you put $2 in a slot machine and win $4,500.
then you're really in trouble because you know you can win big, it's not just a vague possibility. They got you, it's like crack cocaine.
And that's why I'm willing to play the big lottery for $2.00 a couple of times a year, but why I don't play slot machines, video gambling machines, card games, or dice games. A couple of times a year I waste less money than the cost of a soft drink at a restaurant, and because the duration to reach the drawing from the buy-in is several days, I don't get to stimulate those parts of the brain with an instant response such that I do it again right away.
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Your odds of winning with no ticket are exactly zero. Your odds with 1 ticket are greater than zero.
No tickets cost $0. One ticket costs more than $0, and it usually costs more than (prize_money)*(probability of winning the jackpot).
There's more to it than just (prize_money)*(probability of winning the jackpot) is less than the cost of a ticket.
The costs of a weekly lottery ticket over your entire life is still a low number. $52 * 100 years = $5,200. That's peanuts. It may even be less than I have actually spent on peanuts so far in my life counting the wife and kids.
It is a game and there are TWO payouts.
The first is, you're playing a game and you have fun. That is a payout.
The second is the money you get if you win. The payoff is muc
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The second is the money you get if you win. The payoff is much much larger than you can get any other way - you cannot make that much money by investing $5200. Even Madoff didn't promise that large a return. So the usual rules of ROI don't apply here.
Dunno... I spent something like that amount on a few classes back in the early 90's to get more acquainted with the whole sysadmin thing, and 20+ years later, I'm making a far more comfortable salary than I would have made than if I had stuck with being an EE - I'm guessing at least twice the income.
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I dunno... I started out with a $5000 grant, my last check for living costs from the GI Bill, a buddy's apartment, and a loaned computer.
Well, and a contract with most of the work already done but I'm gonna pretend that part didn't exist.
I am 58 and have been retired for just about 8 years now, slightly less.
Sigh.
I knew that someone would say something along the lines of "look at meeeee, I did it without the lottery".
Yes, most people who have done well did it without lottery winnings, but their wealth didn't come from an single investment such as college education or $5,000, it came from a few decades of hard work and being born with a very good brain. I suspect yours came the same way. I do not accept the implied assertion that your wealth came from the $5,000 investment.
Being born with a good brain isn't an o
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LOL Mine was kind of luck. I didn't work any harder than anyone else really. Or, more accurately, people who are far less fortunate worked harder than I ever have.
Also, I knew what you meant which is why I added the caveat. Though I must emphasize, it was largely due to dumb luck. I was in the right place, at the right time, and able to take the risk.
Heh, you have the kind of luck that comes from having your eyes open.
I imagine some ancient greeks talking about it.
student: He is so lucky. He never gets tripped up by life. Why do the gods favor him so and not us?
teacher: Instead of complaining to the gods about KG, ask yourself why you walk around looking at the sky instead of the road.
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Bored, huh?
I've been reading this guy off and on over the last few months. It's from around AD 120, who knows for sure.
https://archive.org/stream/mor... [archive.org]
Elizabeth Carter did the translation in 1758; they had a fondness for long sentences with many commas back then.
The Rufus he often refers to was Epictetus's teacher.
In this one, I like #25 - it gave me a different (more tolerable) view of butt-kissers, and this is from Hadrian's time.
http://classics.mit.edu/Epicte... [mit.edu]
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Actually, it's a tax on people who cannot do math.
I see a lot of people (like you) who suck at math make that claim. Your odds of winning with no ticket are exactly zero. Your odds with 1 ticket are greater than zero. I'm not sure what part of Math class you missed to not understand this.
I agree that purchasing more than 1 ticket for something like the Powerball is silly. Because the difference in odds between 1, 2, or even 100 tickets is insignificant. But 1 ticket is still infinitely greater odds than no ticket at all.
From what I have seen personally, and the number of tickets some folks I know have purchased, I've done better by putting that money in the bank - even at today's crappy rates. Why? Because even when they do win, it's something small, and they do what with it? That's right, they buy more lottery tickets. So they might sink a couple hundred to maybe have a slim chance of winning 50, then buy 50 dollars worth more tickets, but don't win. So they are out that much, where I still have my original couple hundre
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Actually, it's a tax on people who cannot do math.
I see a lot of people (like you) who suck at math make that claim. Your odds of winning with no ticket are exactly zero. Your odds with 1 ticket are greater than zero.
You forget ROI, which is why your assertion fails. No tickets and no winnings costs me $0.00 One ticket and no winnings costs me $2, with no ROI. Multiple tickets with no winnings is $2 * n, again with no ROI. Powerball's absolute best odds [wikipedia.org] are at 1:55.41 , which means that one would need to purchase at least $112 in tickets to even halfway hope for (but obviously not guarantee) a return of any kind, and that's just for a $4.00 ROI at minimum - if you're sufficiently lucky.
Of course, you could defy all odds
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Well, you can justify buying ONE ticket. Just one. Because it's a sort of entertainment - you bought the ticket, then you spent hours dreaming what yo
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The Lottery is a hidden Tax on the Poor.
Wow - they called you a Troll? Should be modded +5 insightful. The poor buy a huge number of lottery tickets, and many others are bought by people who are trying to use it as a retirement plan.
Abut around Slashdot these days, the truth is often considered trolling.
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No, it's a tax on people that failed math.
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I wonder if they pay good money for the generator to be "really" random, not like the pseudo-random crap you usually get with one-liners...
They're paying someone to run a lava lamp and webcam in their closet 24/7.
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No array is needed, and yes, it's trivial. Here's one unnecesarily BIG example that prints 8 unique numbers between 1 and 52, and it's certainly not anywhere near 4K.
10 RANDOM
20 CLS
30 FOR I = 64 TO 92 STEP 4
40 R = RND(52)
50 S = POINT(R,0)
60 ON S GOTO 40
70 SET(R,S)
80 PRINT R @ I
90 NEXT I
99 END
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Re: Serious question.. (Score:2)
Balls picked by a machine have a calculatable bias. There are papers on the subject.
Re:Serious question.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I call balls on that!
The analogue method with balls shown on live TV isn't done "for show", it's done specifically to prevent the risk of tampering - the exact same reason why we all still vote with pieces of paper & 100s/1000s of people counting them out by hand.
Drawing the numbers beforehand has zero to gain, other than a ton of controversy if something happened to backfire.
Re:Serious question.. (Score:5, Insightful)
the exact same reason why we all still vote with pieces of paper
I'm afraid I have some bad news for you.
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the exact same reason why we all still vote with pieces of paper
I'm afraid I have some bad news for you.
Right States run by Republicans use electroniv voting. Much more reliable results that way.
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Maryland has only this last election been taken over by a Republican governor. You should perhaps rethink your hatred of Republicans, the Democrats are just the same.
Maryland has had electronic voting for as long as I have been voting (late 90s).
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Maryland has only this last election been taken over by a Republican governor. You should perhaps rethink your hatred of Republicans, the Democrats are just the same.
Maryland has had electronic voting for as long as I have been voting (late 90s).
So Trump = Clinton?
Sorry, as the Republican Party teeters on the brink of insanity, with a modern day il Duce as the absolute front runner, I don't think your old "They are all the same" meme quite works any more.
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Trump and Clinton both are horrible candidates. Clinton breaks federal law, and just doesn't seem to care. Trump speaks his mind and pisses people off.
Re:Serious question.. (Score:4, Informative)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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How do you test the circuits? How do you know that Joe's Random Generator is truly random? Tests for random number generators can only ensure they don't hit any known distribution patterns; but as the Dual EC DBRG fiasco showed, even a high quality random number generator can have an invisible back door.
And the number space isn't large enough to take a lot of chances. If Joe and Frank both get their corrupt RNGs in the vault, the number of tickets they have to buy to have a good chance of winning drops d
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How do you test the circuits? How do you know that Joe's Random Generator is truly random?
I work for an SSD manufacturer, and when you want to get your product FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standard) certified, the testing lab will pull several hundred megabytes from your RNG output pin* and conduct some type of analysis on the data. I believe they also asked us what the RNG algorithm was (i.e. something from NIST, etc).
*Our first SoC (system on a chip, ie an ASIC) did not have the RNG signal brought out to an external pin, so we had to have a few parts put through a FIB (Focused Ion Bea
Lawsuit? (Score:2, Interesting)
Does this open the hacked lottery to class action lawsuits by people who played the rigged lottery but had no chance of winning?
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What do you mean? Their odds of winning were identical. Their expected payback, however, would be lower since it would be split with cheaters. So non-cheating winners might have a gripe.
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What do you mean? Their odds of winning were identical. Their expected payback, however, would be lower since it would be split with cheaters. So non-cheating winners might have a gripe.
Well, TFA implies that this guy may have changed the algorithm so he could predict the numbers, and it puts "random" in quotation marks. So it depends on exactly what he did, but if the numbers could be predicted in advance, it's possible he did something that might also alter the odds, which would potentially violate the published odds.
If certain patterns of numbers had a better or worse chance than the published odds due to his tinkering, I'd imagine there might be grounds for a case... but it'd like
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Their odds of winning were identical.
Wrong. He's accused of manipulating the "random" number generator. If he knew what the winning numbers were going to be, that implies that the pick is no longer random. If you put money on numbers 1 2 3 4 5 and 6, and he knew the winning numbers would be 7 8 9 10 and 11, that means you had a 0% chance of ever winning on that draw, by way of his actions. It's not as if he just played the numbers that were picked truly at random, he somehow steered the outcome of that game to a fixed result.
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I didn't see what the actual manipulation was, did you? He could have manipulated the RNG so that instead of generating a new number every time it was called it just returned the next of a set of previously generated numbers. If he had access to that set of numbers, which could have been generated perfectly, he would know the winning numbers, and everyone else's chances would be exactly like they were before.
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Does this open the hacked lottery to class action lawsuits by people who played the rigged lottery but had no chance of winning?
He didn't change the numbers so if they didn't win they wouldn't have won anyway. They still had a chance of winning but had they won they would have had to share the money.
Though if there were any winners that legitimately won, they should sue and get their fair share of the money.
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They had the usual chance of winning, it's just that this guy was able to predict the next set of numbers. They would only have a case if they won the same week as him and got half as much as they otherwise would have.
Can we just drop the lottery already? (Score:5, Insightful)
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No.
It's the best possible tax. One on people bad at math.
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I'd say people who are bad at music ought to be taxed more than those bad at math, but maybe that's just me.
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The people bad at math are being taxed when they try to do math. (see the dude upthread who thinks one lottery ticket is a good idea).
How do we tax people bad a music only when they try to play? Just tax disco, country and rap music acts?
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The people bad at math are being taxed when they try to do math.
How do we tax people bad a music only when they try to play?
When they buy overpriced "professional" musical equipment thinking they'll strike it rich as a rock star? Or is that yet another tax on people who are bad at statistics?
It's not just people bad at math (Score:2)
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Actually, it's a great indicator of people who think they understand maths but in reality have a poor grasp of magnitudes and no appreciation of value.
A lottery ticket is cheap. Buying one doesn't affect my quality of life at all, but gives me some entertainment and excitement. Even if I don't win, it wasn't money wasted, and it's such a small amount that investing it wouldn't be beneficial enough to make me choose that option.
Sure, if I was really poor I'd stop playing. Then again, I'd also own a much chea
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We're all laughing at you, you math genius.
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He would have better odds putting the dollar on the roulette table and just letting it ride to riches.
It's not that gambling has poor returns, it's that there are much MUCH better bets to be made. Including entertainment value of gambling in the picture makes the lottery an even worse bet. No free drinks, no scantily clad waitresses etc
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Why would you spend $30 on a steak when $2 hamburgers are available? Why would you spend $1000 on a home entertainment system when you can watch videos on your cell phone? Why would you spend $75 going to a concert when the radio is free? None of these make sense from a purely financial point of view, but people do them because they enjoy it. Tell us what you spend your money on, and we will tell you why you are wrong.
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It's a voluntary tax. If they don't want to pay, they can find a better game to play.
Re:Can we just drop the lottery already? (Score:5, Interesting)
When Italy first proposed a state run lottery, the Catholic Church pointed out that gambling was a sin. The government replied that lotteries aren't gambling, they are a tax on imbeciles.
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Good joke. But gambling and drinking are sins that were added by the anti-fun brigade at a much later date. Catholics are fine with both.
Catholics and gambling . . . (Score:3)
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Uh... you sunk my battleship?
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I think he's trying a bingo joke.
Which is unfortunate. The last funny bingo joke was in flying circus "howsy, howsy'.
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Uh... you sunk my battleship?
No - Bingo! The Catholic official sport!
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the Catholic Church pointed out that gambling was a sin.
Bingo!
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How else are you to get that golden ticket to the upper side, utopia, The Island, or Elysium?
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He's a comic.
I just hope he remains funny, unlike Bill Maher.
So is Stewart... (Score:2)
Difference is Stewart knows what's getting laughs from pandering to the audience and what you need to do to get laughs from parodying. [youtube.com]
He goes up against his own preconceptions when constructing a joke.
Oliver follows his own preconceptions.
I wonder... (Score:2, Funny)
Is it too late to 'Friend' this guy on Facebook?
vote (Score:2)
gonna be fun at trial (Score:2)
So your friend worked for lottery security and he told you the numbers and that's how you won the lottery...
Ummm... what? I did win the lottery. And my friend did tell me the numbers. But he told me BEFORE the numbers were picked.
Yeah, that's what we are saying
So why am I on trial.
Because your friend worked for lottery security and he told you the numbers and that's how you won the lottery...
Oh, boy.
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The numbers in this particular lottery are drawn by computer. Other games use balls drawn on live TV. Even with the live drawing method, fraud [wikipedia.org] is possible.
Why would you think lotteries are rigged?
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Why would you think lotteries are rigged?
Why would you think they are not?
Nothing is Truely Random on a Computer (Score:2)
If a computer picks the numbers, it can be rigged.
Better would be to come up with an equation that would take a dynamic natural phenomenon, such as so,e kind solar measurement.or some other naturally occurring and dynamic process in nature, and use that. Or, at the very least have the seed for the random number generator taken from a natural process
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there are ways around that like haveing 4-5 systems (Can just be basic desktops) and some kind of ball / wheel to pick the system to use.
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If a computer picks the numbers, it can be rigged.
Better would be to come up with an equation that would take a dynamic natural phenomenon, such as so,e kind solar measurement.or some other naturally occurring and dynamic process in nature, and use that. Or, at the very least have the seed for the random number generator taken from a natural process
Because that would be science.
You think many lottery players would believe in science?
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You could easily use post production effects to replace the surface of the balls with the white lettering of the numbers. hey could simply be unmarked balls, then when one gets selected, the number is added. They already use that technology to make adverts multi-lingual by replacing any posters or text in the scene.
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What are you talking about? Powerball is run by the Multi State Lottery Association, which is owned and operated by the member state lotteries. 'A European Group' has nothing to do with it, and never has. And CA, 'with its massive number of citizens', didn't even carry Power Ball until April 2013.
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Not always,
https://news.google.com/newspa... [google.com]
old but still very relevant.
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That is a stupid likening. The lottery is random, used car sales are not. I play the lottery when the jackpot is getting up there, say $80M or so. Do I think I am going win? Certainly not. But I know for certain that I definitely won't win if I don't buy a ticket. The loss of a few dollars means nothing, but a win of $80M is a life changing event. So for a few bucks I get to spend a little time fantasizing about having that money. In other words, it is a couple bucks spent on entertainment. Why don't
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, I thought you meant the people who thought it was a scam were the normal people who know they have no real chance of winning but keep playing. Sorry.