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I keep getting GWB

http://www.random.org/cgi-bin/randbitmap?format=xb m&width=256&height=256&zoom=4

returns 8kB of random data in a convenient and easy to read image format, transmitted in a convenient and easy to read HTTP stream.

real shitty isn't it. I want my random data a wrapped up in a 100lines of JavaScript and applets and god knows what so that it take me 3 weeks to get a script to interact with it. Or hey now that I take a closer look at another option.

http://www.random.org/strings/?num=10&len=10&digit s=on&unique=on&format=html&rnd=new

10x 10 char strings with nice and convenient HTML tags place around them to make it real easy to find the relevant part of it. These protocols and formats were designed back when computer resources were valuable so wouldn't you know it there real easy and fast to implement and read. Just because it's doesn't make it better.

Line breaks! It's a good thing.

http://www.random.org/cgi-bin/randbitmap?format=xb m&width=256&height=256&zoom=4

returns 8kB of random data in a convenient and easy to read image format, transmitted in a convenient and easy to read HTTP stream.

real shitty isn't it. I want my random data a wrapped up in a 100lines of JavaScript and applets and god knows what so that it take me 3 weeks to get a script to interact with it. Or hey now that I take a closer look at another option.

http://www.random.org/strings/?num=10&len=10&digit s=on&unique=on&format=html&rnd=new

10x 10 char strings with nice and convenient HTML tags place around them to make it real easy to find the relevant part of it. These protocols and formats were designed back when computer resources were valuable so wouldn't you know it there real easy and fast to implement and read. Just because it's doesn't make it better.

Line breaks! It's a good thing.

I believe you meant simple HTTP interface. http://www.random.org/cgi-bin/randbitmap?format=xb m&width=256&height=256&zoom=4 returns 8kB of random data in a convenient and easy to read image format, transmitted in a convenient and easy to read HTTP stream. real shitty isn't it. I want my random data a wrapped up in a 100lines of JavaScript and applets and god knows what so that it take me 3 weeks to get a script to interact with it. Or hey now that I take a closer look at another option. http://www.random.org/strings/?num=10&len=10&digit s=on&unique=on&format=html&rnd=new 10x 10 char strings with nice and convenient HTML tags place around them to make it real easy to find the relevant part of it. These protocols and formats were designed back when computer resources were valuable so wouldn't you know it there real easy and fast to implement and read. Just because it's doesn't make it better.

I believe you meant simple HTTP interface. http://www.random.org/cgi-bin/randbitmap?format=xb m&width=256&height=256&zoom=4 returns 8kB of random data in a convenient and easy to read image format, transmitted in a convenient and easy to read HTTP stream. real shitty isn't it. I want my random data a wrapped up in a 100lines of JavaScript and applets and god knows what so that it take me 3 weeks to get a script to interact with it. Or hey now that I take a closer look at another option. http://www.random.org/strings/?num=10&len=10&digit s=on&unique=on&format=html&rnd=new 10x 10 char strings with nice and convenient HTML tags place around them to make it real easy to find the relevant part of it. These protocols and formats were designed back when computer resources were valuable so wouldn't you know it there real easy and fast to implement and read. Just because it's doesn't make it better.

You could, say, read up on the statistics they give you. The site has all sorts of fun info on exactly how their RNG works, and daily stats on the randomness of the numbers presented.

Atmospheric noise
Lava lamps
Radioactive decay
Entropy

Hasn't random.org done this for a while already? Perhaps they don't have academic backing, but I do believe they use numbers generated by atomic decay.

From http://random.org/ which is ok for expirementing i guess.For real-world applications,hardware RNGs are required.

This article was written for the 37 people (all employed by the entertainment industry) who believe any of the entertainment industry numbers. The rest of us know that the entertainment industry P2P loss reports are created with this tool:

http://www.random.org/

Looking at the FAQ for www.random.org, I see that they acquire their entropy from a radio tuned to an un-used channel. That just begs a question - what frequency? (and of course, where are they?)

Because they discard the high-order bits of their stream and only retain the low-order bits, it would be difficult to to deliberately inject bias into it, but it would be an interesting project to try. But correspondingly, wouldn't failure indicate that their ultimate source of randomness isn't the radio signal, but is the thermal noise in the amplifiers/ bias circuits/ etc in the microphone input and digitiser for their Sun?

I wrote a script right here. It will programatically generate all of Wikipedia. Eventually.

http://www.random.org/cgi-bin/randnum?num=1&min=1& max=100&col=1

IIRC Random.org just uses a soundcard and a radio tuned in between channels and collects atmospheric noise. Sounds much simpler/safer.

http://www.random.org/

There are plenty of sources closer to us that require less bells of whistles. Thermal (amplifier) noise? Radioactive decay?

Read.

Like most random numbers generated by computer they aren't really random. They're pseudo-random, generated by a deterministic algorithm and having the appearance of randomness. The less processing power you dedicate to the algorithm, the less random the numbers will appear on inspection. The iTune statistics can only be as good as the algorithm they used to generate their (pseudo-)random numbers.

You can find true random numbers here and also some more information on pseudo-random and random numbers.

Try here

http://random.org/

Ok, it's Pseudo-random, but it's not bad :

" Entropy = 7.999805 bits per character.

Optimum compression would reduce the size
of this 1048576 character file by 0 percent.

Chi square distribution for 1048576 samples is 283.61, and randomly
would exceed this value 25.00 percent of the times.

Arithmetic mean value of data bytes is 127.46 (127.5 = random).
Monte Carlo value for PI is 3.138961792 (error 0.08 percent).
Serial correlation coefficient is 0.000417 (totally uncorrelated = 0.0). "
(from http://www.random.org/essay.html )

Try http://www.random.org/

http://www.random.org

Random.org.

What if you took, say two modules, each would produce a number 0 to 99 from a given input number. But one of the modules would subtract 1 from the result and then multiply by -1. The result from each module could then be graphed together.

The input number would have to be a random number from something like http://www.random.org/ (or other TRUE random number - ever see the ones generated from lava lamps?) and if it was odd send it to one module and if even to the other. You might have to grab another random number to actually feed into the module.

I don't know if that would even be a valid experiment but I'm sure someone a lot smarter than me could come up with a better one.

There are some quality random number generators on the Internet like Random.org, HotBits, and Lavarnd. But to be technical, their numbers come from background radio noise, radioactive decay, and lava lamps (er, "Lava Lite lamps"), meaning they don't truly generate it on the chip.

After reading the article on Firefox, the same sort of browser I use to read Slashdot, I found that the best part of the article were the apparently random and inexplicable links. But the best part was how it obsessed over a theoretical far-off pie-in-the-sky technology of pure holography instead of focussing on the up-and-coming developments in 3d display.

A random.org clone!

Yes, I know the numbers are generated in a different way, but they're still random. Is the quantum angle the reason for the wow factor here?

Use a stream of output from /dev/random (or of course random.org) rather than the terabyte of characters, then MP3 encode it. Not knowing much about music, I don't know how well that would work, if at all.

Of course, if too many people did that there's always the chance someone would use the million monkeys argument: "That's /dev/random output, it just happens to sound exalctly like 'Of Wolf And Man'. Honest, m'lud."

The problem is that we're coming from vastly different points of view; so different that it seems we're talking around each other. So I'll start making a bridge. I ought to say I'm sorry for calling you an idiot, but I won't, since it seems you've brought your best thinking to the debate, at least once you got done whining. You think I didn't read your post at all when in fact I spent a long time reading it and working on my reply (notwithstanding the diversion into how many binary numbers are in fact evenly distributed).

You took my argument the wrong way; I have no intention of attempting to map the tortured turnings of your byzantine mind. I was trying to get you to accept that there are random events in the world. You went off and started talking about Laplace's Demon. My tactic was to make you see what a repugnant idea your radical determinism is, but that failed. I'll just put it to you straight. Determinism is dead. Heisenburg's Uncertainly Principle shot it and Godel's Incompleteness Theorem buried it. Einstein might not like it, but there are events in this world that cannot and will not succomb to the mechanistic tyrrany of a Turing Machine. God does play dice.

So skip the coin flip, quantum physics tells us that there are random events. It is not possible to calculate or predict alpha particle emissions.

That's the corner of the debate. You're not an idiot, you're right, it's not very useful in some situations to have a random number generator hooked up as input for a scientific experiment, because you can then never repeat the results. An LCG with a "properly chosen seed" is the correct tool to generate "random" input, when reproducibility of results matters. What you're not seeing is that there are situations, such as cryptography, where repetition is NOT desired, and so truely random numbers are needed and in fact do exist.

Where we actually differ is that you see that "properly chosen seed" as merely the output of a complex system, and I see true unpredictability.

If you'd like a random number of your very own, try HotBits which uses radioactive decay as its source of entropy, or if you prefer something cooler, try Random.org who can serve up random bits in whatever package you like, even via CORBA! Now, if you'll excuse me, it's time for me to take my completely predictable dog out for a walk.

jaz

Counting cards dosent really help you untill atleast half way through the deck. Hence why most good cheats will bet the minimum every hand and count the cards as they play, then bring in another player to bet the max while relying on signals from the player who has the count.

I'm not saying player swapping is nessisary in a PHP implementation, but anyone working on this should not rely on the count data untill atleast half the cards are gone. Which will leave another loophole for the programmer to account for: there can be anywhere from 1 to 10 decks.

A good blackjack player (not just a cheat) can not only count cards, but intimately knows their favorite version of the blackjack odds table, and most importantly how to bet to minimize the risk to their seed money and maximize profits when the cards are in their favor.

Another thing that must be compensated for is the greatest tool in any players bag of tricks. The ability to just get up and walk away. If the cards aren't treating you right, move to another table. This dosen't work in tournements, but is a great tactic for limiting your losses.. which is casino speak for "winning".

Oh, and when testing, make sure your shuffle is truely random.

He's been running for a while now - as his site claims, " 49816 million random bits served since October 1998".

He's got good links to the theory as well as some fairly through test of the randomness of number sources.

All this dealing with cameras and lavalamps seems like a lot of extra work.

Why not just get random numbers from random.org?

I believe they get them by monitoring certain radio frequencies which are predominantly white noise.

01100000 00111100 10000000 10100010 11100010 01000101 01001010 01101011 10101001 00101110 01011111 10000111 10100001 10000111 11010011 10000010 01111110 01010000 11110010 00010000 10001011 00000001 00011111 11000100 11101100 11100110 01010111 11110101 10000010 10001101 01100101 01010001 10001011 00111001 10100111 11100011 11101010 11001000 10111111 01000100 10100001 00101100 10111101 10010010 10010100 00110111 00110100 10100001 00100011 01001111 00000111 00111011 11100110 01010101 11010100 01101111 11101110 00100101 00011010 01101110 10010011 11000010 00010011 11000010 11101110 10010010 10011111 10001101 00101011 10111011 00111100 00001010 10000110 10001010 10111010 11000110 00010100 01111110 00110101 01110011 10011000 11001010 01101001 10101001 11011001 10011110 00101000 01101011 10101011 11111010 00101011 10001101 01100011 00010101 11000000 01001001 11000110 00110000 11111011 01100111 10110001 10001011 01000010 11010111 00101100 10110101 10010111 00011001 00001000 00011010 10011001 00110000 01101110 00001111 00010100 10100011 01110111 11100011 10010110 10100001 01110011 00011000 11100101 00011010 00111010 00110110 01000111 10110111 01011001 00100110 00011010 10111101 11010100 00011011 00100100 00010010 01001000 10100100 01101000 10011110 00001011 00000110 10011101 00110100 01001010 00100111 11111000 11101011 00000001 01110001 01010100 10100110 00101110 00110110 11110010 01110111 01001100 10101011 01100101 10001101 01111100 11101011 00111110 10010100 01100011 00110001 11101001 10110001 10111010 10110110 01110110 00110010 00100111 10011011 11100101 10010011 10111111 10111110 11001111 11010100 01010000 01011111 11110100 00000001 00000101 00011101 10000111 00001110 10010010 11010111 10011011 11101101 00100100 00011000 11000010 01110011 11100010 11101101 11100110 01111001 01110000 01010100 01111010 10010100 00011111 11101010 10011111 10011011 11111000 01111000 11000011 00001101 01010101 01110000 01110110 10001110 00110100 10111100 11101111 11010000 01010110 01010011 00110110 11101001 11001011 10100110 11101000 10001011 01101111 10010100 00010001 01010111 01010011 10011110 10111010 00101011 01110100 00110010 00100100 01001101 01000000 00111010 01100110 01000001 00011101 01010010 00001001 10001101 10010000 11000110 01000111 11101011 01111100 01110110 00110010 11011100 11110010 11101111 00010111 10010011 10000010 10110010 01101000 10001001 01110010 00101100 01100000 10011111 00001001 00000001 01001011 11001001 00100010 10011001 11111001 10101010 10010011 11010011 10010110 01110100 11100001 01110111 00110101 00000111 00111011 01100011 11110110 11110010 11111011 10111111 10011100 11001111 11100011 00010001 11001101 11101000 10011000 10100000 01011111 10100101 01011111 01011010 11010100 01100010 11111001 00001000 01010010 01100000 01010001 10001000 11100101 00110110 01011000 01110111 11011101 00001000 11100110 11001100 11110011 10111001 10001000 00010000 10101011 10001101 00110100 01110001 00011010 00001011 10011100 11000111 11001110 01110010 10101011 01011001 11010110 11111001 10101100 10010000 10010010 00001111 01101100 01011100 01101100 00110010 10001010 01101101 01101110 00000010 00010110 10100011 11000100 01000110 01101010 11001011 01110101 10010111 00000101 00000101 11011111 11011001 10110101 11100011 11111111 01010011 01101001 00010100 00001010 01001011 00001101 00010010 01111011 11101010 11011010 10011000 11011000 01000000 01001001 11110010 00011101 01000111 01101110 01111111 10000111 01011000 01100111 00101010 00000010 11011011 11110111 11000100 00100011 00001111 01011011 01001010 11011011 10000111 01101000 00111101 00110111 01101100 00101100 00000101 00010000 11010011 10110001 11011010 00100011 01100100 01101111 10010000 11000110 01000011 00111000 11100100 00011001 10110101 01111001 01100101 10000111 00000001 00010000 11100100 00000001 00011010 01110000 00000100 00100100 11001001 10111110 00110110 00101001 00010010 11101101 10101011 11111001 11111010 00110000 10101101 10001001 01011010 01001101 00000001 01101010 11010101 10100110 10001101 0000101

Here's a simple guide to setting up WEP on your WAP:

1. Visit this page -- it will generate 13 random hexadecimal digits that you will use for a 128-bit key.

2. Copy the resulting digits into a text editor and strip out all of the whitespace between the characters.

3. Log into your WAP router and go to the Wireless configuration settings. Select the "128-bit encryption" option, and enter the generated key into the WEP key field.

4. The last step is OS-dependent... In OS X, you would log on to the WAP as usual, except that now it will ask for a password. Select the dropdown box labeled "password" and change it to "128-bit Hex", then enter in the generated key. I believe OS 9 users will need to enter a "$" before their hex key for it to work properly. It won't let you paste the key in, so you will need to type it carefully. I don't run my Linux box via WAP, so I'm not exactly sure how Linux users would do this -- feel free to reply to this post and add other OS instructions...

or imagine a giant P2P random number generator, something like Linux's entropy pool, but across many nodes. The problem with this is that you cannot trust external sources for input, but perhaps you could "cross the streams" and safely mix them?

It reminds me of Random.org, a web site/service that generates random numbers for you. I think they even sell CDs of random numbers.

1. Random numbers
2. ???
3. Profit!!!

Getting good-enough randomness is easy enough now-adays. I mean, heck, check out random.org .

There's a link at random.org: "For non-random numbers, try NoEntropy.net! "

From their site:

Generating deterministic numbers is a complicated business. NoEntropy.net uses a unique combination of tried and tested algorithms to provide you with the finest in deterministic numbers. After they are generated, the numbers are subjected to further filters to remove any remaining randomness. Finally, complicated, state-of-the-art statistical tools are used to check that the numbers you get are completely deterministic.

A mouthful, no? There's a form you can fill out to request deterministic numbers (up to 10,000). The default is 100.

The punchline: all the numbers are "1".

Random.org

They generate random numbers based on hardware, using the decay of radioactive elements.

Yeah, still hardware, but you're never going to get truly random in software. Something has to put in a bit of chaos into the system that you just don't get in a computer. Otherwise they'd just crash all the time.....wait a minute! Windows must have some super-secret random number technology!

There's measuring beta particles of decaying Krypton: Fourmilab Hotbits

Then, there's LAVALAMP randomness: LavaRND

Oh, and you could connect a radio to a sparcstation, and use broadcast noise at: Random.org

Hell, you could use a webcam pointing at a staticy TV.

Lots of possibilities. Amazing what you can find with ... google.

Their press release ends with the following fine print. Enjoy!

This press release may contain forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that such forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including, without limitation, financing, completion of technology development, product demand, competition, and other risks and uncertainties.

This sounds of course like complete hot air to me. I wonder what the guys at random.org think.

If the data was represented a different way (say, using bits instead of bytesize data) then patterns might emerge...

Shannon's work on information theory is over 1/2 a century old and has been re-examined by thousands of extremely well-qualified people, so I'm finding it rather hard to accept that ZeoSync aren't talking BS.

When I need true random, I simply go to http://www.random.org

The real-time statistics are computed on fairly small blocks of data (8 Kb). The more data you pull from random.org, the higher the accumulated entropy gets. (A new statistics module will be online in a couple of months and will feature accumulated entropy.) I therefore doubt that taking larger amounts of data will make it any easier to compress it. Compare the statistics for the 8 Kb blocks with those for the 1 Mb file mentioned in my essay.

When you look at such small amounts of data, entropy isn't a very good test for randomness. Even for large amounts of data, it is by no means exhaustive. For example, a typical gzipped file has a high level of entropy but is not very random. Other tests (such as chi square) can be used to reveal this.

(Note that I'm not involved in this challenge. I just operate random.org.)

The real-time statistics are computed on fairly small blocks of data (8 Kb). The more data you pull from random.org, the higher the accumulated entropy gets. (A new statistics module will be online in a couple of months and will feature accumulated entropy.) I therefore doubt that taking larger amounts of data will make it any easier to compress it. Compare the statistics for the 8 Kb blocks with those for the 1 Mb file mentioned in my essay.

When you look at such small amounts of data, entropy isn't a very good test for randomness. Even for large amounts of data, it is by no means exhaustive. For example, a typical gzipped file has a high level of entropy but is not very random. Other tests (such as chi square) can be used to reveal this.

(Note that I'm not involved in this challenge. I just operate random.org.)

The real-time statistics are computed on fairly small blocks of data (8 Kb). The more data you pull from random.org, the higher the accumulated entropy gets. (A new statistics module will be online in a couple of months and will feature accumulated entropy.) I therefore doubt that taking larger amounts of data will make it any easier to compress it. Compare the statistics for the 8 Kb blocks with those for the 1 Mb file mentioned in my essay.

When you look at such small amounts of data, entropy isn't a very good test for randomness. Even for large amounts of data, it is by no means exhaustive. For example, a typical gzipped file has a high level of entropy but is not very random. Other tests (such as chi square) can be used to reveal this.

(Note that I'm not involved in this challenge. I just operate random.org.)

The real-time statistics are computed on fairly small blocks of data (8 Kb). The more data you pull from random.org, the higher the accumulated entropy gets. (A new statistics module will be online in a couple of months and will feature accumulated entropy.) I therefore doubt that taking larger amounts of data will make it any easier to compress it. Compare the statistics for the 8 Kb blocks with those for the 1 Mb file mentioned in my essay.

When you look at such small amounts of data, entropy isn't a very good test for randomness. Even for large amounts of data, it is by no means exhaustive. For example, a typical gzipped file has a high level of entropy but is not very random. Other tests (such as chi square) can be used to reveal this.

(Note that I'm not involved in this challenge. I just operate random.org.)

I think in his post to comp.compression Mike wrote that his random data had come from random.org. Random doesn't use a PRN generation algorithm; they get random data from atmospheric radio noise (tune your AM radio to a non-station and you'll hear what that means.) To remove any bias in the data they postprocess the noise by removing high order bits, and the low order bits are shifted to normal using a bit discarding algorithm.

Mr Goldman is really pushing his luck here. He's bet, at 50:1 odds, that someone can't compress truly random data. That's great. Except Random.org -isn't- truly random data.

If you look at the stats, you'll see that the ent program suggests that the data being generated is at least superficially compressible, in the neighborhood of one quarter of one percent. All Mike said was that you have to compress it 1 byte. Given a large enough file, and a good statistical compressor, it's entirely possible that he'd have to cough up the dough.

It may still be possible to honestly 'trick the trickster', here.

-

Your CS professor was wrong:

radioactive decay random-number generator
atmospheric noise random-number generator

--Blair
"Nineteen billion bits can't be wrong!"

I bet this one's not in there.

(Actually that's a link to a pretty cool random number server. They also have links to some others based on radioactive decay, etc.)