Re: Random Numbers

From: Alun Jones (alun@texis.com)
Date: 11/07/02 

From: alun@texis.com (Alun Jones)
Date: Thu, 07 Nov 2002 22:07:43 GMT

In article <aqe72o$itm$1@canopus.cc.umanitoba.ca>, roberson@ibd.nrc.ca (Walter
Roberson) wrote:
>In article <e155108f.0211070846.685c0b73@posting.google.com>,
>Alan <a__l__a__n@hotmail.com> wrote:
>:"Omar Bohsali" <omarbohsali@omarbohsali.com> wrote in message
> news:<aqckj9$8t2$1@bob.news.rcn.net>...
>:> What is something that can be counted and is truly random?
>
>:Without getting into a tedious discussion of "truly random", here are
>:some sources of unpredictable "random" data that often suffice for
>:practical use:
>
>[a number of good leads snipped]
>
>See also the Perl module Math::RandomOrg which gets data from
>random.org:

.. and on the topic of still more further functions to do the same thing,
under Win32, you _should_ be able to get good random data from CryptGenRandom
(that is, after all, what it's documented to do!). It's not documented to use
hardware-supplied information, but one would assume that any cryptographic
provider in Win32 on a PIII and above would use the random generator built
into the chip to provide the seed. [I'd love to know if they actually do, or
if there's some other function that gets at this source of random data]

Alun.
~~~~

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