[Beowulf] OT: public random numbers?

[Robert G. Brown]

On Fri, 12 Aug 2011, Joe Landman wrote:

> On 08/12/2011 11:21 AM, David Mathog wrote:
>> Robert G. Brown wrote:
>>
>>>   Everybody must be able to obtain it
>>>> freely from a web connection.
>>>
>>>     http://www.random.org/
>
> And from SGI days ... http://www.lavarnd.org/

Yeah, like that.  Notice the work they have to do to make a
not-really-random or only partially-random source flat, unpredictable,
random.  What they do is probably overkill -- nobody on earth could
detect a deviation from randomness if they did only half of their
folding and retransformation with crypto grade prngs, but it is still a
pretty reliable scheme.

    rgb

Robert G. Brown	                       http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/
Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305
Durham, N.C. 27708-0305
Phone: 1-919-660-2567  Fax: 919-660-2525     email:rgb at phy.duke.edu