Date: 23 Sep 2002 00:15:01 -0700 From: swear@attbi.com (Gary W. Swearingen) To: Doug Barton <DougB@FreeBSD.org> Cc: doc@FreeBSD.org, markm@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Another project: rndcontrol Message-ID: <01sn019nyi.n01@localhost.localdomain> In-Reply-To: <3D8EA8BC.59D0B10C@FreeBSD.org> References: <3D28AC09.9AD48DF4@FreeBSD.org> <3D8EA8BC.59D0B10C@FreeBSD.org>
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Doug Barton <DougB@FreeBSD.org> writes: > I put up a page for this project at > http://people.freebsd.org/~dougb/randomness.html > > Comments or suggestions are welcome. ... The page seems to imply that /dev/random outputs (high quality) pseudo-random numbers while random(4) seems to imply that they are not pseudo-random. If it's not pseudo-random, I'd like to see some words about how truly random it can be. Can it output 100 zeros in a row, like a true random number generator can? (Or other behavior that seems non-random in the sort term.) Or does it have guarantees to seem random at small sample sizes too, like a good pseudo-generator does? Are they guarantees or just extreme probabilities? For some purposes, numbers that seem random can be more useful than numbers that are random. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message
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