todd

Until people believe that the non-physical computer machines are more fun than the ping-pong ball machines to view. People will most likely view the machines as rigged in the favor of state.

They can hold way to much data on past results. Perhaps just to verify they are working statisically within bounds but the whole thing smells like rigged slot machines to provide money supposedly for schools.

However only a small portion of  money really ends up there.

I like the concept of actually seeing my balls choosen --I hope my state in illinois never goes to RNG.

I'll stop playing that very same day.

HAWK

How can anyone ever trust machines that one can never see, feel, and hear ?!

Note they use marketing catch phrases "Advances in computer technology" "new approach".

"Because there is no way to witness the exact method the computer generates the numbers, there will always remain a degree of doubt as to how random the numbers really are. 

The Missouri Lottery, by way of its inside-look video, hopes to erase some of those doubts, and to tout the system's benefits as more efficient, less costly, and more secure."

Less costly to use their retired machines and ballsets, broadcast live no frills draws on the web.  No fancy stuff, just draws where everyone can see for themselves which balls drop.  Sales would probably increase exponentially.

The
Tennessee Lottery did something like this about a year ago.  Their video did nothing to convince me that their drawing was fair and balanced.  They still retreat behind closed doors only to emerge several minutes later with the "winning numbers". 

I want to see the balls being flung around in a clear plastic container.  I want to see the balls drop into a clear plastic chute.  I want to see the numbers on the balls.

Until that day comes, I will firmly believe the Tennessee lotto is rigged in some shape, form, or fashion.  I also believe any state that uses RNG to determine winning numbers do so to their advantage; the player can go to the River Styx.

Not only that, but the whole world got to witness how easy it is for a computerized drawing to become corrupted, as weeks of drawings were tainted, and thousands of tickets had no chance of winning, because of a "programming error".

See the window to the left. That is the draw room. You see the hallway they are in?

That is where you have to stand to watch the drawing. You see how narrow it is?

That is a regular working hallway in the building. When I went to cash my 5 out of 6 hit last year

on the MO Lotto I ask to watch the midday drawing. In the very short process I was interrupted

from watching it 3 times by passersby trying to use the hallway.

I have said it all many times before. And I will say it again.

And again, I yell about something, and something is done about it! I have kept saying, show us how the computerized numbers are drawn so we have less fear of these drawings being used. Unfortunately the @*&^! BoobTube site won't allow me to download. Anyway now hehehe I can write my own program to mimic the computerized one. Doh! it's in Missouri, too far away! How about Pennsylvania Midday? use the same software??? We're there!!!

By the way, don't we want it to NOT be too random? if it's completely random then I might as well not play knowing that only 50% of the money I play will be returned. Quick Picks are no fun!!!!

PS- how come the Lottery drawing room & hallway looks slightly less inviting than the gas chamber where they execute serial killers?

i trust the ball machines way more than i trust that RNG.....it looks to fish and it seems like they have the control all they way in their hands.....

my state rng errors "tn"

made me think, we need "open source" code to the public LOL

if we could all View the code, look into it, run it our selfs,

if such a thing happened, someone in the public would of freaking noticed TN massive Beep code was missed up beyond belief

and they could show visiters the "open source code running on their pc, unedited form what the public has

MAYBE just , MAYBE then I start trusting it

when i can use their software my self,

and see for my self if the software for the draws is worth the harddrive space its on

i hope i we never see the day thatpb or MM go to the dark side

their about the only 2 games left that due to marketing/trust  they wont Dare Touch with RNG

, in the years ahead, am sure we see more and more states going RNG over time

their is 1 thing i like about that video

"3 diff pc's can do drawings"

will good for them, , they have backups

i remb when ball drawings get delayed ever now and then a hour" rare, but it happens"

with backups, they can be like, this broken, next, lol no hour delays like if a ball draw goes wrong

When a man has to tell you how honest he is....

ez

Does anyone know how many states choose their number this way,

and are there any live drawings.

Click State Lottery Report Card in the Results menu.

ain't nothing like the real thing, ball based numbers generated and out in the open for all to see as it happens. One thing about computers that can't be denied.....Garbage IN, Garbage OUT!

Nuff Said

 >Michael

I like this forum because it is helping the lotto players push back. If we dont push back against those awful RNG's then God forbid but they will try to use them for Mega Millions and Powerballs. I know the adminstrators for the two interstate games are watching very closely to see how people react to RNG's. We cant let them one day be able to say "see, it has worked for Tennessee and Indiana so it should work here"

Nothing is safe, if it is in regards to computers or anything else.  The only thing you can be 100% sure of is DEATH & TAXES.   You think you are safe, and not to change the subject, but read this article from CNN on 04/16/2010.

(CNN) -- Nathanael Paul likes the convenience of the insulin pump that regulates his diabetes. It communicates with other gadgets wirelessly and adjusts his blood sugar levels automatically.

But, a few years ago, the computer scientist started to worry about the security of this setup.

What if someone hacked into that system and sent his blood sugar levels plummeting? Or skyrocketing? Those scenarios could be fatal.

"If your computer fails, no one dies," he said in a phone interview. "If your insulin pump fails, you have problems."

As sci-fi as it sounds, Paul's fears are founded in reality.

Researchers say it is possible for hackers to access and remotely control medical devices like insulin pumps, pacemakers and cardiac defibrillators, all of which emit wireless signals.

In 2008, a coalition of researchers from the University of Washington, Harvard Medical School and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst wrote that they remotely accessed a common cardiac defibrillator using easy-to-find radio and computer equipment. In a lab, the researchers used their wireless access to steal personal information from the device and to induce fatal heart rhythms by taking control of the system.

********************************************************************************************************

It stories like this one makes you want to stop & think how safe you really are.  Hackers have gotten into every type of computer that everyone thought was safe.  Why do you think you have so many security software companies today to write programs against hackers & virius.  And even their programs are updated daily because of new threats.  I was watching a special on Home Land Security a couple of weeks ago, and they had security items only sold to certain governments & a select group of people.

They had what look like an ordinary rock which you could hold in the palm of your hand.  The security agent gave it to Jessie Ventura, and asked him what it was.  Jessie told him it was a rock, looked like a rock, felt like a rock.  The agent then told him it contained electronics.  When thrown into someone's bushes in there front yard.  By the next morning, they will have this persons phone number, cell phone #, the code to any security system, garage door opener, and alot more which he couldn't talk about.

Major Stores, Compaines, & even the Federal Government have had their computers broken into.  Even your wireless keyboard emits signals to your computer.  Think you are safe, guess again. if your computer can pick up your keystrokes from your keyboard, so can someone else sitting in their car with the proper equipment.

Makes you want to Stop & Think how safe you really are.  And if I can't trust my computer to be 100% safe, how can I trust someone else's.   Someone built their computer. Someone installed the hardware.  Someone wrote the programs. Someone built in a security system. Someone will try to break into it.  Do I trust computers -------- No!!!!!

What about the guy in Vegas, that supposely won a grand prize in the millions as displayed on the games monitor.  Only to find out it was a glich in the slot machine's software.  As the sign above the slot machines stated what the Max payout for the slot machines were, that is all he legally got. 

P.S.  Have a Great Day.

Awesome find about computer controlled devices .... very pertinent to this discussion!  Thanks for posting it!  

Sales in Tennessee plummeted when the computer draws took over.

I can see it as OK if a State has two drawings a day and one is computer and the other ball, but if both drawings are computerized that would not be a good thing.

Powerball and megamillions.............hundreds of millions in revenue would likely be lost if they were to become computerized.

Did he say that they ran 3 "pre Test" Then the actual drawing??! Just asking?

they lost my business is tennessee when they went RNG and i was spending a healthy amount.thing is i was winning quite a bit so i had no problem spending quite a bit.when you factor in the hundreds of people just like me who quit playing then the pick 3,pick 4 games took a huge loss of business.i think mrs. hardnose here in tennessee realizes that now but its too late to turn back so she justifies it and twists the facts about how great things are.

MO lost 99% of my playing business as well, the day I got to see how things were conducted. The straw that broke the camel's back was the 3 different systems making the drawings. It is bad enough that it was all done with pseudo randomness in the way of a computer, but then to spread it over 3 systems? The only reason to spread it over 3 systems is because they are afraid that their pseudo randomness over 1 computer is not secure and of course they are correct, but they would never admit that.

Because it is a computer system making the choices, it has to follow a program, meaning that only certain outcomes are possible. It is not random, there is nothing random about it. The only random thing in the whole process is the person picking which system to use. They do that off the top of their head when they have 3 choices laid before them, A, B or C. This selection is the only random thing in the entire process. After they choose which system will make the drawing. They have in fact eliminated a great many choice that can not possibly come out. Between the seed placed in the system and the program steps it has to follow, it can not make choices outside of it's programming. The combo you selected to play for the night may be eliminated before they even draw for the evening by the mere selection of which system (A,B,C) they use. How is that for random?

And yes, they said they do pre-test drawings as well, right after they said the systems are programmed for only 1 drawing per day?

Now that MO has a new lottery director (May Scheve), do the right thing and bring the balls back!

If you do, you may find out you do not have to close all the schools slated for closing in the near future.

Who knows, it could work. Let us, as a state, have the guts to find out. Reverse the decision for computer drawings.

Be the first to admit to the country it was a poor choice to bite the hand that feeds you by going against the players and introducing the computers when they were not wanted. 

Tn lost a lot of my business too. I was really pissed when they changed the format for drawing and the fact that so many people including me had complained and they swore nothing was wrong. There are a lot of people who track numbers and can tell when something is wrong with the drawings and contacted the state about it. I was one of the 1st to contact the state and tell them that it was extremely rare for them to go 2 weeks without a double coming out in both the evening and day drawings.

 I figure since I am writing this post that a double 9 will fall on the evening soon. A double 9 hasn't come out on the evening draw since Nov 14th. If anyone is still wasting money in Tn you might want to play the 99's now.

"After they choose whichsystem will make the drawing. They have in fact eliminated a great manychoice that can not possibly come out."

I think you're a little off here.  The computer selects the winning combination based on the parameters of the game.  No potential combinations are "left out." 

I beg to differ and ask you to show me where I may be mistaken if you can. (considering I know you work for the MO lottery office there in Jeff)

O.K. If you started your game with 3 different computer systems drawing the numbers and each hard drive has the exact same software installed on it and each of the 3 systems started with a different seed originally get the program up and running. From that point on, they have to follow the same routine to give a result. Do they not?  Based on radioactive decay or not. If all 3 systems were turned on at the exact same time and give a result and then turned off at the exact same moment, at no point will you get the exact same combination simply because they all started with a different numerical value from the very beginning. It would not be possible. Now add in the factor that the machines are not all used at once. You may use drive A for 2 or 3 drawings in a row and then change to drive B, If I base my data on drive A's output over the last 3 days, Drive B's output will not be the same, It may have been used only half the cycles that drive A, or C has been used and not able to produce a number that the hard drives that had more completed cycles can produce.

Now, I am sure that this is all as clear as mud for you. But I believe the logic is sound.

And please do not attempt to bluff your way through for an answer, because lots of people here including myself work in the computer field.

If my logic is flawed it is in the coding that you use. You can put our minds at ease as soon as you post it here in all it's glory for us to see.

And explain in detail what Chi_Square is?

And last but not least, none of this discussion would even be a point of contention if the MO lottery would go back to ball (real) drawings.    I'm just sayin'...

I look forward to your posting to clear this all up.

I live in TN and I for the Pick 5 the avg life before it resets back to 40k is around 140-160k, meaning the jackpot is hit before it goes any further. I hear alot of harsh things about TN, what exactly is the probably other than the numbers being generated. Do people suspect of TN choosing when to let the jackpot go? or etc? If so I will only play PB and MM.

But as for Cash 3, Cash 4, and Pick 5 people are hitting, I just want to become one of them! lol.

Just some thoughts I have:

- The Missouri Lottery started day drawings in 2004 as well. Is there a link between the two perhaps? 

- I remember reading that the Arizona and Texas lotteries had problems with their lottery drawing computers. In Arizona, the machine was accidentally programmed to draw numbers between 0 and 8 instead of 0 and 9. In Texas, the machine was programmed to not draw doubles. Arizona fixed the mistake, and Texas went back to its balls.

- D.C. used ping-pong balls until 2004. I remember the day that they switched to computerized drawings (although I cannot remember the date). I was not aware at the time that they had switched to a computer - I thought they were still using balls but they animated the drawings. The drawings immediately lost their entertainment value. I thought, "What the h*** are you guys doing? This is no fun to watch!" I like watching ping-pong balls go up and down in the machine. That's part of the fun to me.

- Virginia stopped broadcasting its drawings on TV, but still has the videos up on the Internet. They still use ping-pong balls. So I am happy.

"But I believe the logic is sound."

The logic is sound but your reasoning and assumptions aren't.  As near as I can tell you're simply saying that the nature of RNG's is that under an exact set of circumstances there will only be one possible result that can be produced. Obviously if the seed is different then the exact set of circumstances between two machines isn't identical and with all other factors being exactly the same they won't produce the same results. You're obviously assuming that there's noting else in the RNG that could produce different results in different machines. That's not necessarily true, but let's assume you're correct.

Where you're wrong is in claiming that means that each machine isn't capable of producing all of the possible combinations. The seed is only a starting point, and many other factors will  affect the outcome. While the starting seed will produce one result when all other factors fit one exact set of circumstances, the same seed will produce a different result  under a different set of circumstances. As you point out, the machines will have different duty cycles, and other factors will differ. Because those other factors are different and also affect the result, it's entirely possible that two machines could produce the same result, despite starting with different seeds and operating under different circumstances. Each machine may produce a different result and that result may be predetermined by the exact set of circumstances leading to the result, but that doesn't mean that  the result can be known ahead of time, or that that the result wouldn't be different if the circumstances of the drawing were slightly diffferent, such as pressing a button 1 millisecond later.

I see your point and the clock on the machine could make a huge difference, and that I had already assumed, is why the start, stop and draw time would be crucial. A way for them to show us that is not the case is to rig 3 identical systems together and set the seed to all the same values and have them all set to turn on and off and draw with one button. 1 button for start, one button for draw, one button for shutdown, I would like to see the results for that scenario and see just how different the results would be, if at all. And if what you are saying is true, and the RNG does different things to different machines to produce different outcomes how do we know simply eliminating possibilities isn't one of them. Without seeing the code we will never know what they do, it is all conjecture one way or the other. They say the machines can draw them all, I say their programming routines says they can't. We need to see the code (or go back to the balls). All I can say is that I played the game, both ball drawn and non-ball drawn, and the difference in my hitting ratio after MO went computer has dropped considerably.

I have no idea if you belief tracking can help you with your P3 or P4 game or not. But as a tracker, I greatly improved my winning percentage by a lot when I finally fine tuned my tracking skills when balls were used in the MO games. Nowadays, when they change from drive A, to drive B, they might as well call out," We will not be using MO numbers tonight, we have decided to use GA's results instead!" and then when they change drives again, They will use VA results that night. Every time they change a drive, it is the same as playing a completely different game. One I no longer enjoy.

Thank you for stating some points worth consideration.

Still, no discussions to be had, if we get the real balls back, all the assumptions become moot.

I would even settle for a compromise at this point. one computer drawing, and one real...It would be a start.

I think most people don't play the TN Cash5 for one reason - computers.

But if you look past that there are even more reasons not to play it if you can cross over to another state and play theirs.

I go to VA to play their Pick5.

TN has 3 drawings a week (M-W-F). VA has 14 drawings a week (Twice a day, 7 days a week)

TN has 39 numbers in their game. VA has 34.

TN's odds are 1 in 575,757. VA's odds are 1 in 278,256.

TN's game only allows $1 plays. Va's game lets you play $1 or 50 cents or 25 cents.

TN only lets you play up to 12 draws. VA lets you play up to 91 draws.

TN starts at $40,000. VA starts and stays at $100,000

TN rolls but is parimutuel if there is more than one winner. VA stays at $100,000 but up to 5 winners can win that top prize without sharing.

TN's got computers - VA's got balls.

In short, VA's innovative and pro-active with their lottery. TN is dull and boring and afraid to try anything new or different.The only time they change anything it's for the worse - like going to computers.

I like VA a lot better and drive there once a month to get my Pick5's for the whole month.

Check out a neighboring state if you're close to one.

I have to admit, the computer talk is beyond me.  But it seems like you'resuggesting that you should be able to predict the outcomes.  That's the exact opposite of what the Missouri Lottery works to achieve.  The goal is to produce secure, fair and random drawings and the system isdesigned to do just that.  The computers are secure and not connected to any networks.  A true random number generator resides with each system. The drawing process is random for each game within the parameters of that game, or an independent event.  Pre-tests and historical analysis of the outcomes are certified by independent parties as random. 

The Chi-squared distribution test is conducted during the pre-tests to determine if the numbers drawn fall into the population of random numbers - if not, then a different machine is used.  And because the computer can work so quickly, a very large sample is tested and confirmed before the process continues. 

All of the combinations are possible and every drawing is random.  There is no way to predict the outcome and the results speak for themselves.  That's what the mission dictates and the Missouri Lottery delivers.  The nature of this enterprise demands Lottery operations are conducted with the highest integrity.  The Missouri Lottery feels their computer system is the most efficient method of achieving fair and random drawings.

Wow that's very impressive for VA. I am going to check in on neighbor states and see if I can play a bunch of times.

"Secure, true random, highest integrity." Big words for a MO lottery ad, that can't show a way to prove it.

In any event, the bottom line is, you can show me a set of balls, you can show me the blower, you can show me the button to turn it all on and operate the machine and get a result, yet, in a million years would you still never expect me to be able to select the very next outcome with all the bouncy balls, would ya? That is because it is truly random.

Yet, you would never consider showing us the code that operates the computer system you have selecting the drawings now, why is that? Your exact words were, " There is no way to predict the outcome and the results speak for themselves.". If , " a true random number generator resides with each system."  and it was truly random wouldn't you be able to show me every aspect of the computer drawing procedure and it not affect the next outcome, just like the ball procedure? But you don't or can't, why is that? Is it because if you showed us the code we may be able to emulate your program and match your true (not-so-) random generators?

It is questions like these that make you go hmmm.... (Todd, you really need an emoticon that either rubs it's chin or scratches it's head in a quandary)