The lottery drawing date still says 6-18-2009... I'm pretty sure that date has passed 
When is the next one?
Sorry about that. I made a change in the code so it would display the last winning number and for some reason, there is a bug.
I'll look into it 
Thanks.
---------- Post updated at 14:45 ---------- Previous update was at 14:32 ----------
I moved back the original file, the one before adding the SQL query to save the winning lottery number. Let's see if it will work now. The next drawing date is:
Drawing Date 2009-06-26
Sorry about that! It seems I might have broken it when I added code to write the winning number to the lottery table in the db.
Let's see what happens then. If moving the original file back does not work, I'll have to delete the winning number field I added to the lottery table. Or try creating a new lottery instead of repeating the one where there was no winner.
Thanks for your patience.
---------- Post updated at 14:50 ---------- Previous update was at 14:45 ----------
Note, daily crons seem to be running OK:
72577 Daily vBCredits Tasks 23:00, 18th Jun 2009 Applied Referral, Birthday, Paycheck and Activity Credits. Picked Drawing Winners.
72535 Daily vBCredits Tasks 23:00, 17th Jun 2009 Applied Referral, Birthday, Paycheck and Activity Credits. Picked Drawing Winners.
72491 Daily vBCredits Tasks 23:00, 16th Jun 2009 Applied Referral, Birthday, Paycheck and Activity Credits. Picked Drawing Winners.
72450 Daily vBCredits Tasks 23:00, 15th Jun 2009 Applied Referral, Birthday, Paycheck and Activity Credits. Picked Drawing Winners.
72404 Daily vBCredits Tasks 23:00, 14th Jun 2009 Applied Referral, Birthday, Paycheck and Activity Credits. Picked Drawing Winners.
72368 Daily vBCredits Tasks 23:00, 13th Jun 2009 Applied Referral, Birthday, Paycheck and Activity Credits. Picked Drawing Winners.
72328 Daily vBCredits Tasks 23:00, 12th Jun 2009 Applied Referral, Birthday, Paycheck and Activity Credits. Picked Drawing Winners.
72285 Daily vBCredits Tasks 23:00, 11th Jun 2009 Applied Referral, Birthday, Paycheck and Activity Credits. Picked Drawing Winners.
72244 Daily vBCredits Tasks 23:00, 10th Jun 2009 Applied Referral, Birthday, Paycheck and Activity Credits. Picked Drawing Winners.
72196 Daily vBCredits Tasks 23:00, 9th Jun 2009 Applied Referral, Birthday, Paycheck and Activity Credits. Picked Drawing Winners.
72152 Daily vBCredits Tasks 23:00, 8th Jun 2009 Applied Referral, Birthday, Paycheck and Activity Credits. Picked Drawing Winners.
72104 Daily vBCredits Tasks 23:00, 7th Jun 2009 Applied Referral, Birthday, Paycheck and Activity Credits. Picked Drawing Winners.
72063 Daily vBCredits Tasks 23:00, 6th Jun 2009 Applied Referral, Birthday, Paycheck and Activity Credits. Picked Drawing Winners.
72024 Daily vBCredits Tasks 23:00, 5th Jun 2009 Applied Referral, Birthday, Paycheck and Activity Credits. Picked Drawing Winners.
71983 Daily vBCredits Tasks 23:00, 4th Jun 2009 Applied Referral, Birthday, Paycheck and Activity Credits. Picked Drawing Winners.
Right now it says:
Lotto! 310,600 Bits Jackpot
Drawing Date 06-25-09
Also, how about an option to be able to purchase more than one lottery ticket at a time? Say, maybe, max 5 or 10 at a time?
---------- Post updated at 10:53 AM ---------- Previous update was at 10:52 AM ----------
Also, there appears to be something funky about the math... odds of winning doesn't seem to be consistent with the # of tickets I've bought vs. the # of tickets already sold...
Update: The Forum Bits Bank (FBB) has reclaimed all Bits from users who have not be active on the site for over today years. In addition, we have set these same users "can earn" status to false, if not active over the past two years.
We might change this period of inactivity policy to 1 year in the near future.
When is the drawing supposed to take place? My system says it was supposed to take place on the 25th (26th Neo's time). There was no notification that the drawing had taken place. I still have a bunch of tickets and the date of the drawing hasn't changed.
My view says the drawing will happen on the 26th. It is still the 26th here, and the server time in GMT was around:
Current UTC (or GMT/Zulu)-time used: Friday, June 26, 2009 at 13:59:26
UTC is Coordinated Universal Time, GMT is Greenwich Mean Time.
... a few minutes ago.
Let's wait and see what happens .....
---------- Post updated at 14:21 ---------- Previous update was at 14:11 ----------
Database says drawing at 1245974400 unix-server time.
---------- Post updated at 14:24 ---------- Previous update was at 14:21 ----------
Now it is after 1246026123
---------- Post updated at 14:24 ---------- Previous update was at 14:24 ----------
I think it is waiting for the vbCron to run.
---------- Post updated at 14:33 ---------- Previous update was at 14:24 ----------
Yes, it was waiting for the cron to run at midnight server time. I just ran it manually. No winners sorry!
OBTW, I am working on a mod to the code that publishes the winning number, something missing from this version. You might recall, I added it two weeks ago, but there was a bug somewhere. I removed all the code mods and the lottery is running again, but I need to add the code that publishes the winning number of the past lottery.
Anyway, buy more tickets! The jackpot is getting bigger!
---------- Post updated at 15:18 ---------- Previous update was at 14:33 ----------
OK, I have debugged the code and have the winning number in the database... now I just have to display it.....
Thanks for your patience! 
---------- Post updated at 15:40 ---------- Previous update was at 15:18 ----------
OK, thanks for your patience.
I have the winning number displaying now.
so when can we buy other stuff than the lottery tickets?
So far, we have implemented Bits to:
(1) Post in the Job Board;
(2) Post in Emergency Help Forum.
(but this has not gained any traction ....)
We provide the "economic engine".... it is primarily up to the users on how to conduct commerce with that engine.
wouldn't it be nice if users could buy a vip account (maybe even for a limited time)? or other things to make this forum even more worthwhile?
Yes, that would be nice, but the primary purpose of making the Bits engine available is not for us, "The Forum Admins", to make things available to users. The primary purpose is for users to have an economic engine to conduct commerce. If the users do not find creative ways to use the engine, that is OK too And, is does appear that there is no "emergent property" going to happen with regard to this engine we provided.
One alternative is to simply pull the plug on it altogether if the users do not find a way to use it. It take a lot of time to write code and keep things moving and unless the users take the lead and use the engine, I have no motivation to spend a lot of time in further development. There are simply too many things to do, and further Bits development is not at the top of the list these days.
Thanks for your comments.
The emergency board might not have taken off because it is towards the bottom of the screen. Maybe it should be moved up? I found it today by happenstance. Just a suggestion.
Yes, others have also suggested we move this forum up higher in the stack.
Any suggestion where exactly?
with blinking red and blue light at the top of the list
Hahahaha.....
OK. Let's try it for fun
---------- Post updated at 20:30 ---------- Previous update was at 18:03 ----------
OK, done, but without the blinking red and blue light (yet!)
I think I've found a bug in the Bits Lotto ticketing system.
After purchasing a bunch of tickets (around 100 or so) in the 100 bit lotto, it has started occasionally buying me a 1000 bit ticket instead of the 100 bit ticket I want. As I get more and more 100 bits tickets, the frequency of it getting confused has been increasing.
I've tried this in firefox and ie and observed the same effect.
Bug?
Where can I see which Lotto numbers I've bought and what Lotto Numbers won?
You can see the last winning number if the last winner was the prior drawing period. Otherwise, you can't see the historical numbers, sorry.
Also, currently, if you want to keep track of the ticket numbers you have, you must do it manually. We would have to alter the code to add this feature.
You can request new features here:
thought I'd poke my head in here, been working on some updates for the core systems you guys use for "bits" nice to see how you guys are using it here.
Thanks for stopping by.
To be frank, our advisory team is considering dropping the "Bits" feature from our site. It is a nice feature, but we are not seeing an overall benefit versus maintaining, upgrading the plug in code base. The code base requires too much modification to meet our user requirements and the add-ons that create more value are encrypted PHP code which we do not run as a site policy, for a variety of reasons.
Recently, we have replace the "user awards for a post" with the "thank you" feature, which is generally better, our users have commented.
Since we have installed this system we have seen little tangible benefit for users, and may drop this from the site in the near future, after receiving forum user comments.