Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 09:24:16 -0600 From: "Jacques A. Vidrine" <n@nectar.com> To: Matt Dillon <dillon@earth.backplane.com> Cc: Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>, Kris Kennaway <kris@obsecurity.org>, Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.ORG>, Nick Sayer <nsayer@FreeBSD.ORG>, cvs-committers@FreeBSD.ORG, cvs-all@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: cvs commit: ports/astro/xglobe/files patch-random Message-ID: <20010225092416.A46959@hamlet.nectar.com> In-Reply-To: <200102250900.f1P90Qc12868@earth.backplane.com>; from dillon@earth.backplane.com on Sun, Feb 25, 2001 at 01:00:26AM -0800 References: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0102251920150.6561-100000@besplex.bde.org> <200102250900.f1P90Qc12868@earth.backplane.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Sun, Feb 25, 2001 at 01:00:26AM -0800, Matt Dillon wrote: > It's only security and cryptography where rand() really breaks down. This is simply not true in my experience. I fixed two ports in the recent past that were using rand/srand, because: Case 1: A game's sound-effects that were essentially white-noise (e.g. explosions) sounded silly. Using random/srandom made it sound much better. Case 2: XMMS used rand/srand to shuffle the playlist. I have a 4000+ item playlist, and the shuffle was noticeably not very random. Changing XMMS to use random/srandom fixed this. My conclusion is that either: Our implementation of `rand' loses. OR `rand' has inherent limitations that make it unsuitable for most applications. Cheers, -- Jacques Vidrine / n@nectar.com / jvidrine@verio.net / nectar@FreeBSD.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe cvs-all" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20010225092416.A46959>