From owner-freebsd-current Mon Feb 3 4: 4:19 2003 Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CBA2337B401 for ; Mon, 3 Feb 2003 04:04:17 -0800 (PST) Received: from dignus.com (ip-64-32-254-102.dsl.iad.megapath.net [64.32.254.102]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E26C743F93 for ; Mon, 3 Feb 2003 04:04:16 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from rivers@dignus.com) Received: from lakes.dignus.com (lakes.dignus.com [10.0.0.3]) by dignus.com (8.11.6/8.11.3) with ESMTP id h13BkqQ26845; Mon, 3 Feb 2003 06:46:52 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from rivers@dignus.com) Received: (from rivers@localhost) by lakes.dignus.com (8.11.6/8.11.3) id h13C1oE03172; Mon, 3 Feb 2003 07:01:50 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from rivers) Date: Mon, 3 Feb 2003 07:01:50 -0500 (EST) From: Thomas David Rivers Message-Id: <200302031201.h13C1oE03172@lakes.dignus.com> To: ache@nagual.pp.ru, kris@obsecurity.org Subject: Re: Final fix for correlation problem (was Re: rand() is broken) Cc: current@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <20030203114629.GA77557@nagual.pp.ru> Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG I'm afraid I don't understand the fix... and how it seems to affect the historical behaviour of srand()/rand(). How does it address the understanding that if I use srand(28), I will get exactly the same sequence of numbers srand(28) produced yesterday, last week, last year? I have worked with programs that depend on exactly that behavior. That is, given the same input seed - I expect to see the same "random" sequence again. This requirement would seem to indicate that changing srand()/rand() isn't really possible... And, also, I believe, why random() was introduced... Please, oh please, don't change that behavior in srand()/rand(). - Dave Rivers - -- rivers@dignus.com Work: (919) 676-0847 Get your mainframe programming tools at http://www.dignus.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message