From owner-freebsd-doc  Mon Sep 23  0:12:21 2002
Delivered-To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org
Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.FreeBSD.org [216.136.204.125])
	by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP
	id 855D337B401; Mon, 23 Sep 2002 00:12:20 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from rwcrmhc51.attbi.com (rwcrmhc51.attbi.com [204.127.198.38])
	by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP
	id 1D85B43E42; Mon, 23 Sep 2002 00:12:20 -0700 (PDT)
	(envelope-from swear@attbi.com)
Received: from localhost.localdomain ([12.242.158.67])
          by rwcrmhc51.attbi.com
          (InterMail vM.4.01.03.27 201-229-121-127-20010626) with ESMTP
          id <20020923071219.GTUG21615.rwcrmhc51.attbi.com@localhost.localdomain>;
          Mon, 23 Sep 2002 07:12:19 +0000
Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1])
	by localhost.localdomain (8.12.5/8.12.5) with ESMTP id g8N7F83q013924;
	Mon, 23 Sep 2002 00:15:08 -0700 (PDT)
	(envelope-from swear@attbi.com)
Received: (from jojo@localhost)
	by localhost.localdomain (8.12.5/8.12.5/Submit) id g8N7F2Xn013921;
	Mon, 23 Sep 2002 00:15:02 -0700 (PDT)
	(envelope-from swear@attbi.com)
X-Authentication-Warning: localhost.localdomain: jojo set sender to swear@attbi.com using -f
To: Doug Barton <DougB@FreeBSD.org>
Cc: doc@FreeBSD.org, markm@FreeBSD.org
Subject: Re: Another project: rndcontrol
References: <3D28AC09.9AD48DF4@FreeBSD.org> <3D8EA8BC.59D0B10C@FreeBSD.org>
From: swear@attbi.com (Gary W. Swearingen)
Date: 23 Sep 2002 00:15:01 -0700
In-Reply-To: <3D8EA8BC.59D0B10C@FreeBSD.org>
Message-ID: <01sn019nyi.n01@localhost.localdomain>
Lines: 19
User-Agent: Gnus/5.0808 (Gnus v5.8.8) XEmacs/21.1 (Cuyahoga Valley)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Sender: owner-freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG
Precedence: bulk
List-ID: <freebsd-doc.FreeBSD.ORG>
List-Archive: <http://docs.freebsd.org/mail/> (Web Archive)
List-Help: <mailto:majordomo@FreeBSD.ORG?subject=help> (List Instructions)
List-Subscribe: <mailto:majordomo@FreeBSD.ORG?subject=subscribe%20freebsd-doc>
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:majordomo@FreeBSD.ORG?subject=unsubscribe%20freebsd-doc>
X-Loop: FreeBSD.org

Doug Barton <DougB@FreeBSD.org> writes:

> I put up a page for this project at
> http://people.freebsd.org/~dougb/randomness.html
> 
> Comments or suggestions are welcome.
...

The page seems to imply that /dev/random outputs (high quality)
pseudo-random numbers while random(4) seems to imply that they are
not pseudo-random.

If it's not pseudo-random, I'd like to see some words about how truly
random it can be.  Can it output 100 zeros in a row, like a true random
number generator can?  (Or other behavior that seems non-random in the
sort term.)  Or does it have guarantees to seem random at small sample
sizes too, like a good pseudo-generator does?  Are they guarantees or
just extreme probabilities?  For some purposes, numbers that seem
random can be more useful than numbers that are random.

To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message