<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">Not to sound like a specialist but I've read quite a bit on randomness theory.</font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">1st, nothing is truely random. </font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">Calculating something truely random is of truely infinite complexity.</font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">2nd, celular automata are just like digits in a number (or sequence of #s)</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif"> BUT consider each to be individually picked based on some neighbor number rules</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">Meaning one affects the other... This means there is a pattern - it's time-based! </font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">If you want truely random without much fuss do this:</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">take a serie of long numbers </font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">pick random digits in them</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">associate them randomly... </font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">repeat a random number of times...</font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">This can easily be done picking some random digits in random picks of the milliseconds.</font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">Last but not least...</font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">To make it even more random, you can change the randomseed global before any use</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">of the random function... </font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">And even make sure that any pick is not = to the last or within a Standard deviation of last</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">picked choices... </font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">How much more random do you want?</font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">cheers</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">Xavier</font>
<br>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">On 11/07/2003 00:34:16 metacard-admin wrote:<br>
>Nelson,<br>
><br>
>If you're looking for a random number generator you should check out "a<br>
>new kind of science" by stephen wolfram. They are using an automata to<br>
>generate a map that contains extremely (he claimed completely) random<br>
>sequences. This should not be a computationally intensive process and,<br>
>again according to him, gives good randomness (good enough to be the<br>
>random number generation technique used in mathematica where the audience<br>
>is made up of picky people who actually care). He mentioned this as an<br>
>aside during a lecture at xerox parc, so I suspect the full algorithm is<br>
>somewhat more complex. Interesting stuff.<br>
><br>
>YMMV.<br>
><br>
>J/<br>
><br>
><br>
><br>
>metacard@lists.runrev.com wrote on 7/10/2003 3:11 PM<br>
><br>
>>Microseconds? Now we're talkin'.<br>
>><br>
>>OK, here's the deal:<br>
>>A high quality Random Number Generator (RNG) needs two things: a good seed<br>
>>and a clever algorithm to turn the seed into pattern-less numbers. A good<br>
>>seed is one that's unpredictable. And for good security RNGs, the seed often<br>
>>comes from some real world event--quantum stuff like radioactive decay or<br>
>>chaos stuff like lava lamps. (see the current WIRED, p. 88) For low-level<br>
>>security or something with no security concerns one can use computer clock<br>
>>time and be done with it.<br>
>><br>
>>My idea is this: the time it takes to run some little bit of code isn't<br>
>>predictable (temperature of the processor and about a zillion other factors)<br>
>>and changes from moment to moment, and is specific to every local machine<br>
>>and circumstance. So it might be possible to write a very secure RNG that<br>
>>uses the unpredictability of run time for the seed.<br>
>><br>
>>So, compute something meaningless like deriving God's last name (about a<br>
>>half second) and use the run time as a good unpredictable seed for the rest<br>
>>of the RNG. Thus it would be possible to have a high quality RNG based in<br>
>>software alone.<br>
>><br>
>>Also:<br>
>>set the numberformat to "0.00000000000000000000"<br>
>>put the long seconds<br>
>><br>
>>Punches up the fraction with digits other than zeros, where they come from I<br>
>>don't know.<br>
>><br>
>>Nelson<br>
><br>
><br>
><br>
>-------------------<br>
>Jonathan Feinstein<br>
>Shrink2Fit Software<br>
><br>
><br>
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