At 01:57 PM 12/24/2009, saidj...@aol.com wrote:
No need for that, just buy all ~18 million tickets (would cost $18 million
in the US) if the jackpot is ~$60 million or higher, which it often is...
I read someone from Australia did that in New York, and won..
Yeah, I've read this story before too. It may have been Virginia:
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/25/us/group-invests-5-million-to-hedge-bets-in-lottery.html?sec=&spon=&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
Some friends and I once discussed ways to make money off lottery
players. Would they pay for genuine random numbers, generated by a
true random generator (such as a radioactive or noise source)? You'd
want to explain how pseudo-random number generators weren't really
random, and try and scare 'em. Or maybe we'd use a Cray
supercomputer (one of the group has a working collection of low-end
models) to crunch numbers using super-secret algorithms or simulate
the draw and charge people to pre-test their picks. But every idea
we had just felt too dirty.
Here in Arkansas we've just started a statewide lottery. I think it
was $100k for the random number generator package!
http://www.swtimes.com/articles/2009/08/09/news/news080909_02.txt
John Walker (of Autodesk fame) has some good stuff on his site:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/
Our weighing scales use a 24 bit ADC. I've thought about wiring in a
high value resistor and digitizing the thermal noise. Maybe use a
few of the bottom bits, collect data, and run it through some of the
noise tests to see just how random they are.
--
newell N5TNL
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