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posted by
cmn32480
on Wednesday August 05 2015, @03:37PM
from the corrupt-random-number-algorithm dept.
from the corrupt-random-number-algorithm dept.
Aleksandar Vulovic, czar of the Serbian state lottery, has resigned from his position after winning numbers were mysteriously broadcast on television before they had been drawn.
Allegations of fraud abound on every hand following the incident, reports the Associated Press.
In what was presented to the public as a live broadcast on Tuesday evening, one of the numbers in the winning combination was revealed before the number appeared to be drawn.
"That sparked accusations that the numbers had been chosen in advance," according to AP.
Vulovic has denied there was any dodginess and explained that the incident was due to a "technical mistake".
He added that he was stepping down from his position, not out of guilt, but out of "moral obligation".
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Lottery Chief Resigns as Winning Combo Numbers Appear on Screen BEFORE Being Drawn
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poverty, n.:
An unfortunate state that persists as long
as anyone lacks anything he would like to have.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by wantkitteh on Wednesday August 05 2015, @04:36PM
Okay, so the guy who's job it is to manually tap in the number that's been drawn so it can be overlaid onto the video feed forgot to enable the few seconds of delay on that "live" feed so that the graphics could seem to pop up instantly. Big whoop. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday August 05 2015, @04:45PM
I think you nailed it. I remember lottery drawings in the distant past, that were broadcast "live". There was a disclaimer that the "live" broadcast was actually delayed for some small time, for technical reasons.
Radio used to always be delayed, four or five seconds, I think, so that live callers could be stifled if they used an Evil Word. The lapse was minimal, but it was there.
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Wednesday August 05 2015, @05:00PM
Not to mention the delay induced by the live-running pre-broadcast video encoder that requires 5-or-so seconds of data in it's input buffer to achieve a quality level that isn't totally terrible within the confines of the CBR profile it's dealing with. DAB/Streaming audio has the same problem - BBC Radio 4 has been wondering what to do with it's broadcast of the Greenwich time signal [wikipedia.org] AKA "The Pips" for a while now, given that for everyone listening online or over DAB it's just plain inaccurate, it always will be and there's nothing they can do about it.
(Score: 2, Informative) by wantkitteh on Wednesday August 05 2015, @05:26PM
Ok, for anyone else hating Flash right now, Youtube has an HTML5 video clip of what happened here [youtube.com]. Here's how it went down:
1) The third ball drawn was number 27
2) The graphics come up showing 21 - whoever it was doing the live graphics either misread or misentered the number that came up
3) The graphics then show 27 coming up as the fourth ball - the graphics guy tried to fix his mistake but entered a new ball instead of correcting the previous one
4) The fourth ball drawn was number 21
The odds of it happening are 1 : (total number of balls in draw machine - number of balls already drawn)*. That's not a fix, it's a coincidence, but of course everyone paying their idiot tax is demanding that this "crime" be investigated and the evil bastards behind the fixing of their precious draw be hung drawn and quartered.
*I'd love to tell you exactly what that was, but you try finding out how many balls there are in the Serbian state lottery with a search engine right now!
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Wednesday August 05 2015, @07:48PM
I gave it 10 minutes of searching but like you, I could not find out how many balls are in the Serbian lottery. I did find a page that purported to be historical results though it may not have been for this lottery, and noted some numbers in the high 30s. If we guess it is 40 balls, and 3 are already drawn, that would make the odds 1:37, which is better than roulette (1:38), a game lots of people play.