Fun Project: xTalk GUID Generator

[Mark Smith]

 From what I can dimly understand of the various versions of the  
spec, there are time-based, name-based and random-based versions.

All of them are built from 1 x 60 bit value, 1 x 14 bit value and 1 x  
48 bit value, plus 4 bits for the version id, and 2 bits for the  
'variant' (I haven't worked out exactly what that is, but apparently  
it should be 1 0.)

In the random version, each of these values (apart from the version  
and variant) is generated randomly, or pseudo-randomly.

So my naive question is, for the random version, what would be wrong  
with simply generating a random sequence of 128 1s and 0s, sticking  
the version and variant bits in the right places, and then  
baseConverting the whole thing in groups of 4 to Hex digits. Add the  
formatting dashes, and it's done.

This is probably very naive indeed, perhaps someone here understands  
the issues well enough to comment.


Best,

Mark