You are reading the blog of the next Mega Lotto winner

I wish. Hehehe.

Did you know that the the Super Lotto and Grand Lotto prizes are at least P121,208,572 and P236,691,122, respectively? Both will have another draw this Saturday and Sunday, and it is expected that the prizes will be higher. Argh! In case you are wondering about your chances of winning, let me paste here a part of a previous post of mine on another site:

I computed the chance of a single ticket winning in the super lotto and it’s 0.00000715112384201852%. If it is hard to imagine, well, look at this: If there are 100 people in your company, the chance that 1 of you will be absent today is around 0.0007151123842018520000000%. Hmmm… still hard to picture out, yeah? Here’s a better one. Given that chance (of winning in the superlotto), how many employees should there be so that there is only a probability that 1 person will be absent in any given day? Here it is: ~14,000,000 employees… 13,983,816 to be exact.

After reading that again, I realized it would be easier if I say, there are 13,983,816 possible combinations in the 6/49 lotto (Super Lotto) and 28,989,675 possible combinations in the 6/55 lotto (Mega Lotto). The question is, do you think you'll be lucky enough to guess that winning combination considering the number of possibilities?

PS: If I'd be the lucky winner of this lotto, I'll buy not just one HDTV, but a hundred of them and give all those who will comment here one HDTV and some balato. Hehehe.

Moving on...

This is one of the things that I think the present government will never be able to accomplish (among so many other things). Aquino will always blame the previous administration for everything bad that has happened or will happen to the Philippines. In fact, I think I won't be surprised if (or probably when) Aquino, on his 6th State of the Nation Address, blames Arroyo for his poor performance in the last 6 years of his administration.

I was reading the Official Gazette and a lot of his speeches include his usual Arroyo-bashing. Imagine, he was able to bash the previous administration in his "Statement ... on Supertyphoon Juan, October 19, 2010"?! Saan ka pa, di ba? In Aquino's world view, Arroyo is to the country as a malignant Mesothelioma is to a human body.

As I've mentioned to my dear friend, Mordsith, I still have high hopes for our country -- but none of it is in any way connected to this present administration.

Happy Friday!

Free rider for life

Those of you who know me personally wouldn't be surprised if I say I've been researching diets that work fast for the last few weeks. D#rn this schedule of mine, I don't even get to feel the sun shine on me on some days! Sedentary lifestyle at its best!

I was waiting for this invention, but I guess it will take a while before this goes out in the market.

Anyway, yesterday, I was able to have a workout at Gold's Gym for free. One of the few simple pleasures you get to experience from time to time. :-) A colleague of mine offered to arrange this free visit for me. A target shooting on a weekend was also offered. (What did I do to deserve all these freebies?!) And because it felt so good to be out there and burn these fats down, I might make this a regular thing. Hehehe.

PS: I am not referring to the Gym workout being a regular thing, but the free something from time to time. I still have 2 free movie tickets here with me. D@rn, can't contact Sollenn!

Speaking of courage and principles: A modern Wonder Woman

I'm not sure if you've read the news that a college major, at 20 years old, was appointed chief of police in a town in Mexico. We'll in case you haven't read that yet, actually, that's not yet the actual news. You see, Mexico is well-known for its drug cartels and drug wars, right? And since its president declared war against illegal drugs a few years back, more than 20,000 lives have been lost -- I can only assume this number includes criminals, victims, as well as collateral damage, so to speak.

Anyway, going back to the 20-year-old criminal major student, Marisol Valles García was chosen as chief because she's the only one who applied for the job! It seems like, in their town, going into public service is like a suicide attempt. No, it's not as if you'll just need an offshore injury lawyer and everything will be alright. Public officials have become targets of assassinations. According to a news report from Yahoo!:

Public officials have increasingly become the targets of assassination as Mexican cartels try to tighten their grasp on the country. Just this year, 11 Mexican mayors have been slain, including the former mayor of Guadalupe [the town where the lady heads the police force], who was killed in June. In the small town, "police officers and security agents have been killed, some of them beheaded," according to the AFP.

According to García, "[t]he weapons we have are principles and values, which are the best weapons for prevention." If only our officials in the Philippines have that courage to fight off the diseases of the society... We'll pray for you, Ms. Marisol Valles García.

The collective wisdom of the Supreme Court Justices vs Microsoft Word

I have always known that justice is on my side when I was accused of plagiarism. You see, in college, I accidentally deleted 99 reference citations when I used someone else's work in writing my paper. I accidentally deleted terms like "According to Machiavelli", "as argued by Foucault", or "Marx cited...." Had I raised my case to the Supreme Court of the Philippines, I would have been cleared of the plagiarism charges. (Hindi tuloy ako naka-graduate ngayon.)

In a recent case invoving a Supreme Court Magistrate himself, a case very related to my plagiarism charge, the Supreme Court ruled that (from GMA news)

Del Castillo [the SC Magistrate] did not commit plagiarism because when his researcher "cut" research materials from a law website and "pasted" them on the decision's main manuscript, the attributions were "accidentally deleted."

The mistake of Justice del Castillo's researcher is that, after the Justice had decided what texts, passages, and citations were to be retained, including those from the Criddle-Descent and Ellis, and when she was already cleaning up her work and deleting all subject tags, she unintentionally deleted the footnotes that went with such tags — with disastrous effect," said the SC.

See? That was exactly what happened to me. I just accidentally deleted the reference citations and footnotes showing the original source of the idea in my paper. And because I am just a human, I really cannot easily detect if part or partial of my paper has been copied/pasted without proper attribution. If there is anyone or anything to be blamed, I think Microsoft's operating system is the culprit. Again, in the recent case mentioned above, SC ruled:

The court also held that Del Castillo cannot be accused of plagiarism because the program used in writing the decision cannot detect "copied and pasted" material, so to speak.

 During their deliberation, the Justices ruled, in essence, that the culprit is no less than the Windows operating system itself!

Microsoft Word program does not have a function that raises an alarm when original materials are cut up or pruned. The portions that remain simply blend in with the rest of the manuscript, adjusting the footnote number and removing any clue that what should stick together had just been severed," said the SC.

See? If I directly copied materials from a certain website, say, www.lipofuzereviews.com, would MS Word detect that? I guess not. The software application is very stupid. Or if it not stupid, it is not very intelligent as well so as to detect copied ideas and alarm the user!

Tsk tsk tsk.

With this SC decision, we can now be assured that students who have good intentions of just using another's idea or work who just happen to accidentally delete the reference citations (like in my case, 99 reference citations) will be protected by law.

Good job, Supreme Court Justices. Bad job, Bill Gates.

Am I just lucky or what: Part II

Do you still remember when I wrote something about this lucky day (relatively) when I received 31 USD via Paypal from someone I really do not know? I mean, how often do you receive 31 USD without knowing what the reason is, right? So, I thought as far as surprises and luck are concerned, that 31 USD basically covers a few years of my life already, and that the next surprise/luck of that type would probably come when I'm in my 40s.

I. Was. Wrong. (And I am so happy I was.)

But not wrong like this poor creature which was
at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Just a while ago, an LBC personnel delivered a package to me (nope, not some Diets pills that work or health magazines). It's more like a pouch. And you know what it contains? Two movie tickets to any Ayala Cinemas. The tickets were from Nokia. I am sure I didn't sign or avail of any of their promos online or offline, so, at the moment, I really have no idea what these tickets are for. But who cares, right? These are two tickets. Free movies. Hmmm... any chance you guys can help me contact Sollenn Heusaff?

Google: Imagining the impossibilities

It's probably not an impossibility for Apple to come up with an iTable, or an iBlanket for that matter (and I'm sure you know what I mean by these two gadgets). I wouldn't be surprised if Nokia would come up with a cellphone which can project holograms or something like that. And again, Microsoft building a Windows version that is "almost bug free" is not that surprising. (But IBM offering term life insurance quotes? That is something else.)

But Google is the only company I know of that keeps on doing something that normal people like me did not even think of as possible within the next few years. Here's report from Yahoo!:

Google tests cars that can steer without drivers

By DANIEL WAGNER, AP Business Writer

WASHINGTON – Google Inc. is road-testing cars that steer, stop and start without a human driver, the company says.

The goal is to "help prevent traffic accidents, free up people's time and reduce carbon emissions" through ride sharing and "the new 'highway trains of tomorrow,'" project leader Sebastian Thrun wrote Saturday on Google's corporate blog.

The cars are never unmanned, Thrun wrote. He said a backup driver is always behind the wheel to monitor the software.

It's not the first signal that Google wants to change how people get from place to place. In a speech Sept. 29 at the TechCrunch "Disrupt" conference, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said "your car should drive itself. It just makes sense."

"It's a bug that cars were invented before computers," Schmidt said.

The cars have traveled a total of 140,000 miles on major California roads without much human intervention, according to Google's corporate blog.

More... 

I mean, Google started out with its search algorithm, and now, look at its ventures -- green technology, "mainstreaming" trips to the moon, phones, and now, this? Google is like Massive Dynamic!

Next stop for Google: Beam me up, Scotty!

The Google StarShip!

:p