Date: Tue, 01 Aug 2000 10:34:57 +0200 From: Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@critter.freebsd.dk> To: Matthew Seaman <m.seaman@inpharmatica.co.uk> Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: How to make *real* random bits. Message-ID: <8751.965118897@critter.freebsd.dk> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 01 Aug 2000 09:29:44 BST." <39868A78.B6B11393@inpharmatica.co.uk>
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In message <39868A78.B6B11393@inpharmatica.co.uk>, Matthew Seaman writes: >Poul-Henning Kamp wrote: >> >> Ok, some people just can't leave an open end dangling (people like >> me for instance :-) >> >> I located a surplus german geiger counter cheaply [1], I have always >> wanted to have one anyway, and in my junkbox I already had an old >> smoke alarm [2]. The Geiger counter has a thin-walled tube which >> takes about 15 events per second from the Am-241 source in the >> smoke alarm. >> > >Nice. If you're thinking about this a possible commercial product, I wouldn't even dream about it :-) >Perhaps there is a cheaper alternative as a good source of random bits. There are many ways to get random bits, this was just meant as an example that it doesn't have to be hard or even difficult to use FreeBSD for "special tasks". I'm pretty sure that "noise-diodes" are probably the most efficient way to generate random bits, but it doesn't measure up to a geiger- counter when it comes to "geek value" :-) -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 phk@FreeBSD.ORG | TCP/IP since RFC 956 FreeBSD coreteam member | BSD since 4.3-tahoe Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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