RE: random number generator oddity

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
ChadB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 3:51 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: random number generator oddity


I'll be interested to hear on this one... I don't know any
specifics on
your question, but my reading has always led me to believe
that it's very
difficult to have a program that gives truly random results...

Very true. Most are really called "pseudo-random" generators. They are
called pseudo random because for a given seed value, they will always
return the same series of numbers. They are declared "good enough" when
the series of numbers has a high cardinality before repeating and when a
number of statistical functions declare them "random" (I don't remember
the functions).

I vaguely remember that Intel was going to have an instruction which
would give a nearly truly random number by measuring something
(temperature?) that simply could not be predetermined.

--
John McKown
Systems Engineer IV
IT

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