Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 09:24:16 -0600 From: "Jacques A. Vidrine" <n@nectar.com> To: Matt Dillon <dillon@earth.backplane.com> Cc: Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>, Kris Kennaway <kris@obsecurity.org>, Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.ORG>, Nick Sayer <nsayer@FreeBSD.ORG>, cvs-committers@FreeBSD.ORG, cvs-all@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: cvs commit: ports/astro/xglobe/files patch-random Message-ID: <20010225092416.A46959@hamlet.nectar.com> In-Reply-To: <200102250900.f1P90Qc12868@earth.backplane.com>; from dillon@earth.backplane.com on Sun, Feb 25, 2001 at 01:00:26AM -0800 References: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0102251920150.6561-100000@besplex.bde.org> <200102250900.f1P90Qc12868@earth.backplane.com>
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On Sun, Feb 25, 2001 at 01:00:26AM -0800, Matt Dillon wrote:
> It's only security and cryptography where rand() really breaks down.
This is simply not true in my experience. I fixed two ports in the
recent past that were using rand/srand, because:
Case 1: A game's sound-effects that were essentially white-noise
(e.g. explosions) sounded silly. Using random/srandom
made it sound much better.
Case 2: XMMS used rand/srand to shuffle the playlist. I have a
4000+ item playlist, and the shuffle was noticeably not
very random. Changing XMMS to use random/srandom fixed
this.
My conclusion is that either:
Our implementation of `rand' loses.
OR
`rand' has inherent limitations that make it unsuitable for
most applications.
Cheers,
--
Jacques Vidrine / n@nectar.com / jvidrine@verio.net / nectar@FreeBSD.org
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