Bad California Lottery Ad

[Rodina]

There this radio spot for the California lottery, basically with this ongoing thing about "gee, wouldn't it be nice if you didn't have to worry about money so you could be more patient?" (more or less).

Okay, so there are gags about waiting 4 days for the cable company, hours to be rescued from trapped elevators... and, finally, with crickets churping in the background a young woman says "We'll see Halley's Comet just over that ridge when it returns" (and then her male companion says) "here we come 2024!"

How very hard could it have been for the ad copy guy to look -that- one up. Geeeze.

2024 or 2061 who cares, no one will notice, right?

[dgruss23]

You would think that they could've taken the 30 seconds needed to Google on that one! :roll:

I wonder how long before some conspiracy nut adds 2024 to the list of doomsday dates. They're probably looking for something else. Y2K bombed. PX is bombing out. They've got 2012 coming up next and then I thought I saw something about 2037. So 25 years is a long time to go without fretting about the end of it all. 2024 will split that up pretty nicely. It'd be pretty funny if they start some the world will end in 2024 when Halley returns group/cult and then after they've already spelled out their expectations find themselves in the position of having to explain why Halley will return in 2024 instead of 2061. I say keep playing the commercials. Sounds like the perfect set-up for the paranoid.

[tracer]

Y2K bombed. PX is bombing out. They've got 2012 coming up next and then I thought I saw something about 2037.
2038 (http://home.netcom.com/~rogermw/Y2038.html) is gonna be a bad year for legacy software.

[tracer]

Of course, we shouldn't be too terribly surprised that the California Lottery corporation isn't interested in its audience knowing any facts or figures.

This is the same lottery company that, when it changed its Lotto game from one where you had to choose 6 numbers from among a list of 49 numbers, to one where you had to choose 6 numbers from among a list of 53 numbers, they advertised it as "Four more chances to win!"

(More like four more chances to pick the wrong number....)

[dgruss23]

Y2K bombed. PX is bombing out. They've got 2012 coming up next and then I thought I saw something about 2037.
2038 (http://home.netcom.com/~rogermw/Y2038.html) is gonna be a bad year for legacy software.

So do you think they can work that one out in the next 35 years?

[dgruss23]

Of course, we shouldn't be too terribly surprised that the California Lottery corporation isn't interested in its audience knowing any facts or figures.

This is the same lottery company that, when it changed its Lotto game from one where you had to choose 6 numbers from among a list of 49 numbers, to one where you had to choose 6 numbers from among a list of 53 numbers, they advertised it as "Four more chances to win!"

(More like four more chances to pick the wrong number....)

:lol: All math teachers should share that one with their classes.

Sounds like the new math is working well in California ... at least at lottery headquarters!

[tracer]

The Year 2038 Bug involves the use of 32-bit signed integers. If most computers have switched over to 64-bit CPUs by then, and if most software has switched over to being compiled to run as native 64-bit code, then the bug won't be a problem.

Of course, it's the old worn-out 32-bit legacy code that's gonna break. (And unlike the Year 2000 bugs, which were mostly rooted out before the year 2000 actually arrived, there's not going to be this general public sense of "oh my God, the odometer's about to turn over, we'd better make sure our old software will survive it!" for such an obscure date as 19-January-2038.)

[tracer]

The California Lottery ... the best excuse our State has for teaching probability theory to high school students!