Soooooooo I was at Gordon Korman's site confirming a book title

[conuly]

aaaaaaaand it transpires that the recent Macdonald Hall movies are available on Netflix! And also that some of his older books are now available on ereaders everywhere, but I've been dragging around a pirated PDF through four computers and counting, so I don't really care.

**********

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Comments

[beccaelizabeth]

I'm reading the thing about gaming the lottery and got to the bit where it says just how many people are regular winners
and
the other week I was looking up lottery facts so I could figure out how much money a time traveller could win without leaving a paper trail.
... guess some of them weren't so worried about the evidence...

[conuly]

So, see. All you have to do is win!

[marahmarie]

The gaming the lottery one sounds like something I wish I was smart enough to do (and determined enough, because my God that's an awful lot of work!) Truly fascinating reading. :/

I wonder if in light of the WindFall issues, if changes were made to lotteries across the nation to prevent such things from happening again, or if in certain states they still happen but people have maybe learned from the press on the WindFalls to be more discreet about getting away with unusually high winnings using the methods described?

[conuly]

I doubt changes have been made, either on the part of lotteries or the people who game the system.

[conuly]

Also: Did you edit this twice? Because I got two notifications, but they say the same thing, so I'm trying to figure out if it's a glitch.

[landofnowhere]

My impression is that the Cash WinFall system was exploitable in a very specific way: some weeks you could get high expected value with relatively low risk, and the bettors only played on those weeks. . Most lotteries can't be gamed in that specific way, which is why the MI couple had to drive all the way to MA when MI changed the lottery rules. Cash WinFall is no longer being used in MA, and I don't think anywhere else either.

(The MIT syndicate are friends of friends, and I'm under the impression that it was a lot of tedious work, highly stressful, and not that much more remunerative that the sorts of jobs that MIT graduates could otherwise be working. But it's still a great story!)

[conuly]

The MIT syndicate are friends of friends, and I'm under the impression that it was a lot of tedious work, highly stressful, and not that much more remunerative that the sorts of jobs that MIT graduates could otherwise be working. But it's still a great story!

I believe it. The profiled couple made, in the end, a very small profit after a lot of work.

[marahmarie]

Yes! I forget what the first edit was for, though; maybe a typo. The second was to actually help the comment make any sense...

[flexagon]

My favorite Gordon Korman books are No Coins, Please, Don't Care High and Son of Interflux.... does anything recent compare to those at all?

[conuly]

Right now he's been doing more middle grade work and a lot less YA.

And it's a strange thing, but while his writing has visibly improved over his early years, he lost something in the process. I don't think we'll ever get quite the same level of hilarity ever again.

But Don't Care High is one of the books available as an ebook now, so.

[flexagon]

Thanks! I still have an old paperback, so I'm all set on that one. :-)

[archersangel]

i saw the ting about the canadian air force accidentally "bombing" miami & they said they'd pay for a motel for the homeowner, but i hope they pay to fix the roof too.

[conuly]

SERIOUSLY.