You may have heard about the (Australians?) who bought massive numbers of tickets in lotteries that had accrued big jackpots (and positive expected gains). I'm sure they weren't generating tickets randomly (and I'd hate to get behind them at the 7-11).
Yes it is, and I just realized that it applies to the example I gave in #81 above. If there's 500,000,000 possible combinations of tickets for a $2,000,000,000 jackpot, you can guarantee a win simply by spending the $500,000,000 on all possible combinations.
Again, though, things are greatly complicated by the fact that there's a good chance of multiple winners who have to split the jackpot. If I spend the $500,000,000 million to guarantee a win, but so do 9 other people, we all end up losing by getting only $200,000,000 in return. We have to keep in mind that, while the odds that a particular person will win the lottery are pretty long, the odds that someone will win the lottery are actually pretty good, and more than one person winning is also a reasonable possibility.