True Random Number Generator Goes Online 439
amigoro writes "A 'true' random number generator that relies on the unpredictable quantum process of photon emission has gone online providing academic and scientific community access to true random numbers free of charge."
An external random number generator? (Score:5, Insightful)
Great for research though, of course.
Re:Great (Score:4, Insightful)
close (Score:5, Insightful)
To use a very simple random event: Flipping a coin.
If you know all the variables, you will know what the outcome will be.
How heavy is the coin? what side is up at the moment of the flip? whats the air density? how hard was it flipped? etc. . .
Re:Wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't misunderstand (Score:3, Insightful)
Tell that to online RPG dice rollers. A true and trustworthy online RNG service can also be non-repudiable, instead of having everyone needing to trust that you didn't rig the RNG algorithm on your side. An online Nomic I play uses the cents digit of the opening price of publicly traded stocks as a random digit (the sample is typically once a month, so it's chaotic enough). Random.org has a daily log of its numbers. I'd really love an online RNG that logged in realtime so that I could pick them more-or-less on demand.
Re:Why pseudo-random for research? Reproducibility (Score:4, Insightful)
Because with pseudo-random seeds, I do. I store the 1000 seeds and run it 10,000 iterations on each run. If I were to store each random number, I'd have to store 10,000,000 numbers in my file rather than 1000. I'll always store them, but the question is whether it takes 1000 records or 10,000,000. For academic purposes, the results aren't statistically different, so why store more numbers?
Re:Why pseudo-random for research? Reproducibility (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:455FE10422CA29C4933F95052B792AB2 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wait... (Score:3, Insightful)
Here are the questions that I need answered before I give your numbers any credibility.
Its the equivalent to saying whats the probability of a coin being flipped heads three times in a row within a minute. You can't solve that problem with that limited amount of information.
Re:Wait... (Score:4, Insightful)
A random number generator might generate numbers in the range 0x10000000 to 0xfffffff0 (and thus never generate 42 (0x0000002a) as a result). As long as the distribution within that range is uniform, non-periodic, and lacking in underlying structure, it's random. If it meets the first and last requirement, but is periodic, then it's pseudo-random.
Re:wonky definition of pseudo-random (Score:5, Insightful)
These are all pure mathematical algorithms. Nowhere in any of these is there any sort of pre-generated random lookup tables. (Unless you count the S-boxes used in some block ciphers with Fortuna.) Pre-generated "random" lookup tables only hide poor randomness in the generation process and don't actually improve the situation cryptographically at all; I suspect that for most other applications there would be problems as well. If your generated numbers don't cover the entire domain space uniformly, then they still won't no matter how many lookup tables you use to transform them.
According to the article, people are sitting around rolling dice to generate random number sequences. Really? REALLY?!? Who wrote this article?
[BvL]
Re:Wait... (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, if we allow for evolution, then evidently it does not require infinite time, since at least one monkey already typed out the collected works of Shakespeare. He didn't have a typewriter, though.
Noise should be random, right? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wow! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Random numbers and human psychology (Score:3, Insightful)
Lets be realistic(ish): If the numbers 1,2,3,4,5 and 6 were drawn as winning lottery numbers, the press would be in uproar about the seeming lack of randomness. They'd be screaming that the machine was flawed, and maybe even the draw would be ruled as invalid (by clueless management at the lottery company).
If you had a winning lottery ticket with that same sequence, assuming you were the only person who had picked those numbers, accusations would fly that you had hacked the lottery machine! I can guarentee that this would be the case in the UK, with our excellent mainstream journalism!