Re: GLUG lotto blotto

["Jan Korrubel" <korrubelj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

OK, I've watched the debate on cracking the lotto without jumping in (so far), 'coz my take on this gamblin' stuff is much the same as so eloquently put forward by Mark Musson on Friday......<grin>.....that being said, the sudden swing to forging sparked an interest......

>>> "Hendrik Martin" wowed us all with the following utterings:

>> But there's another more nefarious option.
>> I have a friend who worked as a 'customs officer' for a foreign governent - He said it would be very easy to change the numbers on the lottery ticket. It's ordinary paper with dotmatrix printing, nothing like a passport or ID
document. A child could do it, he said, on any given Sunday.
>> The only catch is I suspect the organisers of Lotto has some record of all issued tickets - with the tendered numbers -  so they would probably know your ticket is fake. Or would they?

My guess is that IF such a list exists, there is a remote possibility that you could be exposed.  However, with the sheer number of tickets involved, it would be a very small chance indeed.  Unless of course two winners tried to make a simultaneous claim.......!
On the forging front - I am somewhat of a semi-serious philatelist - stamp collector for those who don't have an Oxford at hand.... ;-)  - and forgeries interest me greatly.  So much so, that I have been known to produce a few of my own.  Very bad one's I must hastily add, before I get deluged with orders.....!
As a test of the Postal Service System - you see, it's in the  true spirit of Science and knowledge acquisition that I do this! - I scanned a common local stamp and reproduced them with an HP deskjet and Canon colour laser.  All went through the mail just fine - so much for the so called "phosphor-impregnated paper" that the auto-cancelling machines are supposed to be on the look out for with their electronic eyes.......

But back to the LOTTO - as I said, I am not a Lotto player, so haven't seen a ticket, so comment directly on the font.  But I'll bet it's pretty close, if not the same, as the font currently in use by the Postal Service in their "inkjet cancelling" machines.  Which is a "double dot matrix" - so called because the rounded tops of the letters have 2 dots.  You get "single" and "triple" dot matrix fonts.
>> Unless you have an old dot matrix lying around, True Type dot matrix fonts exist - but I have yet to come across an exact match for the one used by Postal Services.  If anyone has some dot fonts lying around, let me know!

>> We could always make one - here's a link to a tutorial on font making: <http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/~twm/makefont/>.  Anyone care to share their copy of Fontographer with me.....???

Cheers,

Jan Korrubel
Pietermaritzburg.