This morning I helped someone Get It (how gratifying!), and during our conversation she told me this story. Last New Years Eve she and her husband were at a big casino in Las Vegas. He had won a few thousand dollars, and had stored the chips in their room safe. They were leaving the next day, so he asked his wife to get his chips. She was unable to open the safe, so she contacted the front desk. They told her that computer-controlled safes all over the world, even on cruise ships, had malfunctioned at midnight. About 5 a.m. three men came to their room and manually unlocked the safe. I think that glitch may have been a factor in helping her Get It.

-- Pearlie Sweetcake (storestuff@home.now), October 03, 1999

Answers

During my last stay in Vegas I was instructed to "reboot" my room safe when it wouldn't accept the punch-in code (believe it or not this involved inserting a safety pin into a tiny hole next to the lock). My guess is, the devices just don't work on occassion, & the staff was kidding you a bit.

-- have (pin@will.travel), October 03, 1999.

These cards get their codes from a "random number generator". As pi cannot be used as a basses to generate numbers in a computer, the common method is to use the date as the starting point. There probably be problems after the roll over where the "random" numbers form a tracable pattern for a while until there are enough functions used causing mote randomness.

-- Cherri (sams@brigadoon.com), October 03, 1999.