From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Sep 18 23:48:14 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id XAA18627 for hackers-outgoing; Thu, 18 Sep 1997 23:48:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: from time.cdrom.com (root@time.cdrom.com [204.216.27.226]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id XAA18620 for ; Thu, 18 Sep 1997 23:48:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: from time.cdrom.com (jkh@localhost.cdrom.com [127.0.0.1]) by time.cdrom.com (8.8.7/8.6.9) with ESMTP id XAA21984; Thu, 18 Sep 1997 23:47:59 -0700 (PDT) To: "Jamil J. Weatherbee" cc: Eivind Eklund , md6tommy@mdstud.chalmers.se, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: CDROM image In-reply-to: Your message of "Thu, 18 Sep 1997 21:16:37 PDT." Date: Thu, 18 Sep 1997 23:47:59 -0700 Message-ID: <21980.874651679@time.cdrom.com> From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk The CDROM comes with automatic entropy reduction features, don't worry. For one thing, we take the output of a very high quality random number generator (a ring of 40 sampled lava lamps from SGI's Countercultural Randomness division), bias it with the detected events from a cosmic ray detector and then write this in a subtrack on the CD. When data from the CD is read, the randomness is automatically inverted and added to the data, thus cancelling out any entropy in a fashion similar to the way noise cancellation is carried out. In other words, don't sweat it. We're experts, dude. Jordan > > So how does this effect the entropy of the system of bits? > > > trees, etc. If you look at the sheer volume of bits involved, they're > > really almost completely different products. > > > Jordan > > >