RE: random number generator oddity

["McKown, John" <John.Mckown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> -----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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