Several years ago, while doing research for a school project, a group of MIT students realized that, for a few days every three months or so, the most reliably lucrative lottery game in the country was Massachusetts' Cash WinFall, because of a quirk in the way a jackpot was broken down into smaller prizes if there was no big winner. The math whizzes quickly discovered that buying about $100,000 in Cash WinFall tickets on those days would virtually guarantee success. Buying $600,000 worth of tickets would bring a 15%–20% return on investment, according to the New York Daily News.
When the jackpot rose to $2 million, the students bought in, dividing the prize money among group members. But they didn't stop there; they were so successful in their caper that they were eventually able to quit their day jobs and bring in investors to front the money they needed to purchase the requisite number of lottery tickets.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by jimshatt on Tuesday June 09 2015, @11:10AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2015, @08:17PM
You're better than me, I've stopped reading his comments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2015, @10:47PM
MDC is the single reason I wish for a soylent equivalent of the usenet killfile. Some posters anger me for their opinions, but his posts are just such an annoying combination of prolificity and narcissim that his actual opinions don't even matter. If it weren't for him I could start reading a post without having to think about checking the name of the author first, such a time-waster.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2015, @11:41PM
I inspired myself to fix the problem.
If anyone else would prefer an explicit warning of MDC content before reading it, here's a quick and dirty way to do it:
(1) Install FoxReplace [mozilla.org] add-on.
(2) Turn on Auto-replace on page load from the Tools->FoxReplace menu
(3) Add the following filter:
Name: MDC Remover
URL: *soylnetnews.org*
Substitution:
HTML: Input & Output
RE (regular expression)
Replace: (MichaelDavidCrawford \(2339\)[^]*?<div id="comment_body_\d+">)([^]*?)</div>
With: $1MDC Warning:<br><div style="background-color:white;color:white;">$2</div></div>
That will cause the text of his posts to be rendered as white on white - you can still read them if you highlight it with your mouse.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2015, @03:55AM
Add MDC to your Foes list. In your account preferences set the Foe mod to -6. Read at a threshold of 0 or higher. Voila, no more MDC comments!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2015, @04:04AM
I use the Foes list to keep track of people who I think are dumbasses that way I can judge what they write - if they should or should not get the benefit of the doubt when they post something that sounds kinda stupid. So I can't make it do double-duty as a killfile.