Random Number Generation -----> Hardware or Software?

"Nicholas O. Lindan" <see@sig.com> writes:

>> Philosophy itself as a subject is completely useless 
>> from a practical standpoint,
> That's a very philosophical statement.

A person who states that philosophy has merely embraced 
a particularly simplistic one.

"Nicholas O. Lindan" <see@sig.com> writes:

> Home Study Question: Are the digits of the square root of 
>                      two random?

No.
Since a small and deterministic algorithm can calculate the n-th number 
of the sequence.

Terje Mathisen <terje.mathisen@hda.hydro.com> writes:

> The fun part is that not only will they write Hamlet, in all living
> and dead languages expressible on said typewriter, they will also
> write them with all possible typos.

I have always wanted to read a version in which the prince was named
Omelette.

Eric Smith <eric@brouhaha.com> writes:

> There are readily available PRNGs that operating at one output per
> nanosecond would take longer than the current age of the universe
> to repeat.
>
> Any frequency check you can actually perform on them within your
> lifetime will not reveal the periodic cycle.


Diehard Battery of Tests of Randomness

stat.fsu.edu/pub/diehard/
www.cs.hku.hk/~diehard/
random.com.hr/products/random/manual/html/Diehard.html

And for a distillation of the Diehard Battery into 3 tests, see:

www.jstatsoft.org/v07/i03/tuftests.pdf

Jan Vorbr�ggen wrote:
>  > humans are very good in seeing patterns in cases where
> 
>> there isn't one.
> 
> As the film "A Beautiful Mind" so convincingly illustrates.

Good movie!

Last night here in Norway, the Bruce Willis' film "Mercury Rising" was 
shown on NRK. The really funny premise of the movie was that a 9-year 
old autistic boy could directly decode NSA's most secure code, simply by 
looking at a page of encrypted data. :-)

Terje

-- 
- <Terje.Mathisen@hda.hydro.com>
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"

Clifford Heath wrote:
> Random numbers require a source of entropy - like a
> quantum noise source. I've made use of a cheap sound
> card, no input connected, with the microphone record
> gain turned to the max, to generate noise from the
> quantum shot noise of the pre-amplifer input. This is
> helping produce random numbers to drive the SSL key
> generator for online banking systems in major European
> banks :-).
> 

> Clifford.

And you are positive that the the noise is only coming from the quantum 
fluctuations and not from coupled electrical noise, local radio 
stations, or power supply ripple?  :-)

Or is there some process for removing those sorts of things?

del

"Guy Macon" <http://www.guymacon.com/> wrote in message
news:112mkr0btpqtr36@corp.supernews.com...
>
>
>
> Nick Maclaren wrote:
>
> > You claim to be an engineer.
>
> >>...a Mathematician traveling incognito?
>
> >I can assure you that he isn't!
>
>
>  "When anyone resorts to personal attacks, it is almost always
>   because they are losing an argument."    -The Happy Heretic

Or he who fears he is losing an argument publicly killfiles his antagonist.

Richard Henry wrote:

>Or he who fears he is losing an argument publicly killfiles 
>his antagonist.
 
Alas, I re-installed my OS and changed my news reader recently, 
and lost much of my killfile.  It won't take long to identify the
tossers and re-plonk them, though - flamers can't stop from being
flamers.

Your accusation is false.  You can examine my posting record and 
see that I don't killfile when I am losing an argument, but rather 
when someone stops having a reasoned discourse and engages in 
personal attacks.  Perhaps you believe that flaming someone rather
than sticking to facts and logic is "winning the argument", but most
people believe that the first person to engage in personal attacks
has *lost* the argument.

If you believe that the above is incorrect, I invite you to attempt
to win an argument without resorting to personal attacks.  You will
find that this will *not* result is a public killfiling.  Then try 
a personal attack with no argumnts of any kind attached, and watch as
I plonk you.



  

In article <38slgmF5ohqo0U1@individual.net>, dcecchi.nojunk@att.net 
says...
> 
> "Jim Stewart" <jstewart@jkmicro.com> wrote in message
> news:pt6dnXVJY4niIbXfRVn-hg@omsoft.com...
> > David Magda wrote:
> > > Del Cecchi <cecchinospam@us.ibm.com> writes:
> > >
> > >
> > >>Actually there are no software random number generators.
> > >>Generating random numbers is very difficult.
> > >
> > >
> > >     Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random
> digits
> > >     is, of course, in a state of sin.
> > >         John Von Neumann, 1951
> > >
> >
> > LOL.  Turing proposed that all computers have a
> > low-level radioactive source whose decay events
> > could be used as a random number generator.
> >
> Been there, done that.  Customers really bitched about the random soft
> errors from the radioactive lead in the solder balls and the thorium in
> the glass.  :-)  They wouldn't believe it was really a feature....

Don't forget the Polonium rinse.

-- 
  Keith

> Good movie!
>
> Last night here in Norway, the Bruce Willis' film "Mercury Rising" was
> shown on NRK. The really funny premise of the movie was that a 9-year
> old autistic boy could directly decode NSA's most secure code, simply by
> looking at a page of encrypted data. :-)
>
> Terje
>

He probably read the solution in the movie manuscript before.
It is easy to break codes when you have the access to the key.

-- 
Best Regards
Ulf at atmel dot com
These comments are intended to be my own opinion and they
may, or may not be shared by my employer, Atmel Sweden.