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VIA C3 Random Number Generator Reviewed
An anonymous reader writes "VIA has added a hardware
random number generator to its Nehemiah C3 CPU. I found a recent review
of its security. Interesting how it's done at the instruction level as opposed to
the chipset level used by the i810 RNG (also reviewed there)."
Hell, I couldn't even predict what would come next
Oh wait...
In Canada, we don't fancy things like socks
...generating huge cryptographically strong random numbers. I wish more companies would add hardware like this because a good source of entropy is becoming increasingly important in the world. Weak random numbers can reduce the strength of most crypto systems and we need all the privacy we can get in the US today.
Why bother.
If a machine can not generate a truly random number (not seed based), and is not turing complete, can it be called Artificially Intelligent?
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
A Floating point co-processor. There was a review of a laptop built on the VIA, ran linux, priced for $700.00. Good for anything but compiling, cad, etc. The chip could not handle floating points efficiently.
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
Was just some guy they trained to sit there and yell numbers at them.
Developer: Hey! Gimme a number!!!
Idiot in corner: uh Seven boss!
---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.
VIA Launches Seventh Generation 'Nehemiah' CPU Core, the First x86 Processor to Market with Embedded Security Features
Combining an integrated PadLock(TM) Data Encryption Engine with a wealth of enhanced performance features, the new generation VIA C3(TM) provides the lowest power native x86 platform for the fast-growing market of connected PCs and home entertainment centers
Taipei, Taiwan, 22 January 2003 - VIA Technologies, Inc., a leading innovator and developer of silicon chip technologies and PC platform solutions, today announced its new generation VIA C3(TM) processor integrating the 'Nehemiah' core. With its powerful PadLock(TM) Data Encryption Engine, this next generation VIA C3 is the first native x86 processor on the market with embedded security features that enhance the protection of sensitive corporate and personal data.
Available now at a speed of 1GHz, the new processor core is based on an advanced new CoolStream(TM) processor architecture that delivers all the necessary performance for running even the most demanding digital media applications while maintaining ultra low levels of power consumption and heat dissipation.
"The launch of the seventh generation VIA C3 processor extends our leadership in enabling the development of secure, quiet-running small form factor system designs for a rapidly growing number of exciting new lifestyle and productivity applications such as home digital media entertainment and connected computing," commented Paul Hsu, Executive Assistant to the President and Head of VIA's CPU Business Unit. "Integration of embedded security features in the processor provides the most robust and cost-effective solution for addressing the increased demands among individuals, businesses, and government organizations for enhanced authentication and protection of their data in today's connected world."
PadLock(TM) Data Encryption Engine
The PadLock Data Encryption Engine has been integrated into the new generation VIA C3 processor to ensure greater confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity of electronic data either stored in the computer or transmitted over a network or the Internet, and enables a host of powerful new security applications, including heavy-duty data encryption and safer online transactions.
At its heart is an advanced Random Number Generator (RNG) that uses random electrical noise on the chip to securely produce random number values, and features a direct application level interface through a new x86 instruction. Developers can obtain random numbers directly from the hardware without having to use separate software drivers, thereby providing an inherently more secure and efficient solution than combined hardware/software RNG architectures. The RNG includes several operating modes, offering performance from 750K bits per second to as high as 6 million bits per second.
"VIA's incorporation of a hardware random number source on the processor die is exciting for developers, since it provides a simple and effective way of obtaining high quality randomness. This is particularly important for security and cryptography applications, since it is notoriously difficult to generate random numbers of adequate quality without a hardware random number generator," said Paul Kocher, President of Cryptography Research, Inc. and co-inventor of SSL 3.0. "I am enthusiastic about the benefit to applications such as secure web browsing, cryptographic key generation, and protocols where randomness is required."
CoolStream(TM) Architecture
Based on the advanced CoolStream architecture, the new generation VIA C3 processor has a highly efficient design that, when coupled with the VIA Apollo CLE266 chipset, delivers performance increases of up to 20% over the current version of the VIA C3 processor in mainstream productivity applications and up to 73% for 3D graphics applications, while continuing to deliver the same benefits of low power and minimal heat dissipation.
New performanc
I'm playing around with bittorrent.
As a test, I put the PDF file of the review of the hardware RNG up here (The summary is here).
If you have bittorrent installed, feel free to try to download from me.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"At its heart is an advanced Random Number Generator (RNG) that uses random electrical noise on the chip to securely produce random number values" If you keep inputting the same electrical signals (thus the same paths are taken) can you deduce the algorithm and thus crack the encryption scheme it supplies?
ok, i couldnt find the original strip, but here goes from memory:
.. and maybe that holds for your calculator too :-)
accounting troll: this is our random number generator
troll: 9
troll: 9
troll: 9
dilbert: are you sure that's random?
accounting troll: thats the problem with randomness, you really can't be sure.
mats
One man's ceiling is another man's floor.
The ideal source for random numbers has always been physical sources, such as the white noise you see on your television screen when tuned to an unused channel. The noise is generated by remnants from the big bang, and is cryptographically unusable (since the numbers are recordable by anyone). But is a good test for statistical algorithms such as evolutionary computation (which depend on randomn initial states).
The idea of using electrical currents secured on a chip is much sounder - since the noise is locally generated and very difficult to tap. I project that as quantum mechanics become more mainstream, the random quantum effects of electrons will be tapped to generate even sounder and accessible random signals.
Isn't it interesting how much importance we place on quote unquote "true" randomness of numbers? We expect (or at least hope that) a computer can generate random numbers time and time again without fail...
But any human being would prove horrible at such a task... In fact, if you ask a human being for 3 random numbers, odds are very good that they will give you at least two sequential ones...such as 7 6 2...or 5 9 8...
I guess that's the point of computers though...if we could all calculate as fast as a computer, process data as fast as a computer, and perform other tasks as fast and as well as a computer, we wouldn't need computers, now would we?
Random number generation is an interesting topic though because it is often seen as a fault of computers... People claim that computers are "incapable" of generating random numbers. So are human beings... I can understand a computer not being able to store a floating point number with a hundred digits after the decimal point being considered a fault, because FEASIBLY a human being COULD perform the operations and have the value exact out to a hundred decimal places. But with random numbers...a human couldn't do it even remotely as well a computer can, so why is it considered such a weakness of computers? Maybe the power of computers to break their own codes because numbers aren't truly random is the reason they are sought after in the first place.
would be to use radioactive decay to generate random numbers. Very easy to implement using existeng technology, one of the few things that is completely random, and it's infinitely scalable to boot. A system I envision would simply moniter a radioactive sample for 1000 milli or micro seconds. Every sample time, it would record the number of fission events and if even, turn a bit on, if odd, turn the bit off. Then withing the space of a second you have a 1000 bit-long number that is COMPLETELY random.
With this system perhaps it's possible to emulate the electric fields that generate the random number. Admittedly, with any complexity at all (as in a chip) this becomes impractical to do, but hey, why go for almost random when you can have truly random?
That laptop was running the old (Ezra-T) core with a half-speed FPU. This is the new (Nehemiah) core that has full-speed floating point. It's yummy :-)
To the good old days of RISC processors? I'm tired of all these random additions that are cluttering up modern dies...
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
Man, you know you're hardcore when you get excited about a built in random number generator.
Sample convo after purchase:
[girlfriend] Honey, what is that?
[you] (with great awe) The Vee-Eye-Aye Nehemiah C3 CPU with-
[girlfriend] How much did that cost?
[you] Wait, lemme finish-
[girlfriend] Rent. Where is it.
[you] But it has a-
[girlfriend] You are not going to tell me that you spent our next month's rent on that *censored* piece of plastic.
[you] (correcting happily) Silicone!
You stare off. Slowly, you speak.
[you] But it has a...random..number...generator. For strong...uh...crypto. You know, cryptography? Big numbers? Random?
*the sound of footsteps trail away from you*
[you] Honey?
I don't understand what your post means...
... and is not turing complete
> If a machine can not generate a truly random number (not seed based)
That's true, a deterministic machine can't generate a "truly" random number by definition. On the other hand, we can generate numbers that are cryptographically strong (infeasible to distinguish from "true" random numbers) on a deterministic machine, and we can build nondeterministic machines. This is about a nondeterministic machine.
>
"Turing complete" refers to the computational power of a language or programming model -- that it can express any program that a turing machine can express. A turing machine can compute anything that we know how to compute, so saying that a machine is turing complete means that you can code any computable task on it. No machine is truly turing complete, because all machines are finite, but we think of basically everything that can compute (including humans) as turing complete.
So, what does this have to do with artificial intelligence? Do you mean turing test?
> can it be called Artificially Intelligent?
Probably not, since nobody has written a computer program yet that we would think of as "intelligent."
This is awesome, but I feel it kind of skews one of the great things about CPUs. Presently, the same piece of code, run a million times, will always produce the same outcome, and follow the same path of execution (providing it accesses no hardware - ie, no io instructions). With the addition of this instruction, you no longer have this fixed execution path.
Still, with IO this 'problem' exists anyway (although only at ring 0 -intel). It just makes it difficult for heuristic anti-virus progams, and debugging etc, when the path of execution can be arbitrary. Nonetheless, I think its a cool concept, and great its being done at ring 3.
I.O.U One Sig.
1. A good hardware built-in RNG introduced ...
2. Everybody starts using it
3. Some guys in a CPU company change it to not so good
hardware RNG (for example f(x)=exp(sin(x)) etc)
4.
5. Profit?!
I've got your random number RIGHT HERE...
5,246,549!
I am a filthy pirate.
Despite my best efforts at randomly naming folders and subfolders, and randomly placing permissions on them, and then randomly naimg the files without any type of extension on them, my girlfriend is able to quickly locate and identify my porn - even though she barely knows how to operate a computer in general, let alone Linux. She is a natural at breaking encryption.
I don't know if this is logical or psychological, but I notice 20+ occurences of the integer 42 daily. 9/10 that I look at my watch it's xx:xx:42, the lunch bell rings at xx:42:xx, it shows up in my Physics 2 book, etc.
/dev/random and /dev/urandom aside from timing? Is one more secure? Does one use more possible bitvalues while the other sticks to text ones? Is one present in more unix flavors?
Just to keep this on topic, what's the difference between
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
John Walker, the founder of Autodesk, has made a system like that, from which offers random bits:
HotBits/Styx
Atom-Age made a hardware box that produced 64K of random numbers with /amplifier. There was no whitening or other tricks played
every character entered in the serial port. They spent a lot of time
isolating each stage to ensure no noise got to the thermal noise
generator
to make the numbers 'more random' There were 3 sets of batteries,
a 9V for the noise source, C Cells for the microprocessor, and D cells
to run the serial interface. The whole thing was encased in a steel box
with sheilding around the connector and indicator lights. Analysis of
the numbers showed very good randomness.
Unfortunatly at $200 it never really sold well.
They did release the code in the processor for inspection,
I'm not sure about the schematics, probably not.
Starman97@Gmail.com (bring it on spammers)
When will Microsoft support this chip feature in Quickbasic?
I'm tired of RANDOMIZE TIMER ing, dammit!
Perhaps you are referring to "Benford's Law". I'm not quite sure of the link between his theorem and coin tossing, but it's interesting nonetheless. The strangest thing is the number of triples, quadruples, and even higher strings that can be expected from a 200 flip session. I remember this in the context of the SAT, because apparently they purposely avoid have multiple strings of the same answer precisely so people have one less way of guessing the right answer. If I were to fake a coin toss session, I would put in at least one string of six, two strings of five, several strings of four, a bunch of strings of three, and many strings of two.
392! 3892! 7489!
feel free to use any of those if you're short on cash and cant upgrade just yet.
THEY ARE ALL OPEN SOURCE - FREE AS IN I'LL SUE YOU WHEN YOU GOT MONEY TO PAY!
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
This VIA chip is producing 30-50 million bits per second.
Also, each radiological decay event would have more potential to cause bit rot in your normal CPU, memory or other chipset's operations.
John Walker is already doing exactly this, producing random bits with a system he calls HotBits. Take a look at this page for his system and a good explanation. Of course I also think it may help to live in a castle with a 1-meter-thick-concrete-lined cistern located three-basement-levels-down to stick your Krypton-85 source in...
And while using nuclear decay would raise the geek factor so high as to be measurable on a geiger counter, the manufacturing and disposal licensing and other handling problems that would accompany any usage of nuclear materials would be more than onerous for any company that had an economical alternative.
John
I remember when Cyrix had it's 100MHz CPUs with huge fans and everybody tweaked them to 133MHz, every long-term calculation on that involving FPU would give random numbers as the result... ;-)
So, where is the novelty?
iThink iHate iMod
You know, when you're able to use quote marks (" for example) in a written medium, you really don't need to spell out quote unquote as well. It really just doesn't make any sense - we can see the quote marks you used, spelling that idiom out doesn't add anything. People sometimes say "quote unquote" because you can't see the quote marks in their speech. Even this practice is ill-advised as it makes one sound like a drooling marketdroid (e.g. "At the end of the day, we need to quote unquote actualize profits by exceeding expenses with net income in order to meet quote-unquote business objective. Take an action quote-unquote item").
This is the most bizarre thing I've seen all day. Please don't do it again. Thank you.
XML causes global warming.
It's the Ezra core that has a 1/3 speed coprocessor. The newer core doesn't have this feature. Besides, if you aren't running CAD or playing 3D games, you don't use the math co that much.
I like my beverages with warning labels!
A good RNG sounds nice and all, and there's no doubt good crypographic benefits to these features.
I can read the good features well enough. I mislike parts of the language, however...
Does this impliment any of the subversive elements of the architecture formerly known as Palladium? [now called "next-generation secure computing base", because "Palladium" is far too easy to get a linguisticly-controlled mental handle on]
The C3 processor has had my interests in the form of EPIA. However, I'd sooner burn in hell than put a Canadian penny towards Palladium, as proposed by the TCPI and Microsoft.
In more particular words, I've been unable disect from the market-lingo if this architecture contains the "protected execution space" and such features that could deny cryptographically unsigned activity, instead of giving me the tools of verification.
I'm as mimsy as the next borogove but your mome raths are completely outgrabe.
Everyone should use the same random number.
I think 23 is a good one, nice an prime, and close to 21 too!
Actually, the random number generator is the math coprocessor. And they are not even the first to think about this: such techniques were pioneered by Intel in the first Pentiums
Surely you meant 5,246,594.
Infuriate left and right
You have a fridge, right? Chuck it in there or the freezer (not too long with that LCD) and see how it works after a good cooling.
If you're using KDE, click on the little gear icon (generally in the lower left corner). Then selected the item "Recent Documents."
Do you suppose that might be how she does it?
-- MarkusQ
It's too bad that, outside of a few people in the scientific community (such as those running Monte Carlo simulations and statistical thermodynamics calculations), no one uses random number generators (RNGs).
And the worst thing is, the aforementioned people who do use RNGs undoubtedly will want to run their own generator that is most likely superior.
For example, I run Monte Carlo simulations of polymer networks. The algorithm I use is the Mersenne Twister algorithm, which has an enormous period of 2^19937 - 1. This is much superior to VIA's built in RNG, and much faster than the standard rand() function in C.
So I'm sorry, but I fail to see the utility of VIA's RNG. It's a cool little toy, and I'm sure it's going to get VIA some publicity, but I'm betting that it will be a hard sell to most people.
Paul Kocher is one of the well-known experts in the practical crypto field. As you can see from his web site, he's done some innovative mean nasty approaches to cracking cryptosystems (mathematical proofs are a fine thing, but if you can figure out the state of the CPU by measuring its response time or detecting the power consumption, your system isn't as secure as you thought :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Does anyone know when VIA intend to release an EPIA MiniITX motherboard with a Nehemiah-cored C3 CPU? Apparently the M10000 they released recently was supposed to be so equipped, but turned out to only have a 1GHz version of the older Ezra-T C3 core. Since the Nehemiah core has a lot of improvements, this random number generator amongst them, I'd rather hang out for it than buy an M10000 now.. but how long must I hang?
Someone should ask Wolfram how the universe generates random numbers...
The Beatle random number generator:
number 9
number 9
number 9
The monty python random number generator:
6, no 8...AAAAaaahhhhhhh
the ask a person to guess a number between 1-10 random number generator
7
3
the Slashdot random number generator
3.14, 1701, 2001, 69, 1337
The Microsoft Random number generator
7,7,7,7 yes its random, says so in the eula
the pepsi random number generator:
1
the buffy random number generator:
"you dare insult buffy? you are stupid AND you suck."wait, that was the "angery buffy fan response to a minor critque of the show generator"... my bad.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I remmeber going to the university science library when I was 14 to try to find out how to write a program to generate random numbers...found a big yellow book about pseudo-random number generators and thought, no, I want a real random number generator...of course I opened the book and discovered that it is impossible inside a deterministic system...you have to stick an antenna into an external universe...then I thought where the fuck did the universe get noise? Why isn't the universe one big symmetric crystal?
Now I sit here looking at a 2 billion year-old hypernova and no one here can answer this question (There are at least 5 cosmoligists within spitting distance of me right now)...
We have electron microscopes. The technology will
get more refined. We'll eventually be able to track
the movements of an atom and find a pattern in
relation to what's going on around it.
Ok, fast forward 100 years. At this point computers
are a ridiculous combination of DNA, and some sort
of fastening mechanism that attaches it to your
body for either voice or (hopefully) some sort of
direct thought connection. This is the computer
you can plug into the machine that blasts an
enormous amount of some particle that passes
through matter into a collection sensor on the
other side that looks for the subatomic equivalent
of doppler shift, then charts the path of every
particle in that substance. Something powerful
enough to translate the slight change in that
particle passing through the substance into an
interception vector and plot speed and movement.
All this outputed to a 3d model that you can
zoom in on and automatically record to some
sort of database for more thorough data analysis.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
In fact, if you ask a human being for 3 random numbers, odds are very good that they will give you at least two sequential ones...such as 7 6 2...or 5 9 8...
What do you mean by "very good" odds? If you ask a TRNG (true random number generator) for 3 random numbers, odds are quite good (40%) that it will give you at least two sequential ones. This is just rough math (supplied upon request) off the top of my head with the assumption that 9 and 0 are considered to be adjacent; odds would be slightly lower if we reject this. My point is that your example has fairly significant odds, even by a TRNG.
But with random numbers...a human couldn't do it even remotely as well a computer can, so why is it considered such a weakness of computers?
Humans can toss a coin or roll a die or spin a wheel. Those are actually decent ways to generate numbers. It's an ability to interface with entropy that humans have (and computers don't, unless you want to stuff a natural/mechanical/chaotic process into a hardware RNG). And the sequences generated by humans in those ways are not easily recreated or predicted and a seed value doesn't really exist to weaken the scheme either (as it does with software RNGs). Assuming you give the wheel/die/coin a really good spin!
I can stop getting 10 times Undead in a row when playing Random in Warcraft III!
Trolls dont like to be Flamebait, because they burn so well. Protect our Troll heritage!
And you are wrong. Uncertainty principle holds with just a single particle. You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. If you know the position 100% accurately, you don't know the speed, and vice versa. This is a simple, provable, and unescapable rule of the universe.
So what's new?
Alan Turing designed the random number generator instruction for the Ferranti Mark 1 around 1950.
(Or is this an entry for the oldest Slashdot reposting competition, just 53 years late?)
Andrew Yeomans
Consider a deterministic pseudorandom number generator that's highly sensitive to its initial conditions. Maybe that's the universe and we don't know it because we can't determine the initial conditions with absolute certainty nor can we even determine its current state with sufficient accuracy.
... a computational process that defines how the universe operates. This process is only (universally) taking us toward increasing entropy, so it's a randomizing process by nature. Really I think that order is the oddity ... not randomness.
What if space and time are discrete (Ed Fredkin and so on)? Of course, space couldn't be a rigidly even lattice (it could be a network of loosely connected nodes), but in this sense you have a rigorous foundation for modelling the evolution of the universe from one state to the next
___
The ends are ape-chosen, only the means are man's. -- Aldous Huxley
If a discrete dynamical system as simple as (2 state, 1 dimensional, 1 nearest neighbor) Rule 30 can generate 'pseudo'random numbers, it's not hard to believe that the universe can too. Fredkin has also answered this at his digital physics website.
___
The ends are ape-chosen, only the means are man's. -- Aldous Huxley
Similar to what Douglas Adams suggested as a random number generator, 25 years or so ago, I guess. This implementation is a little more convenient - although slightly less tasty - than a fresh really hot cup of tea.
I'm sure you're so dumb that you posted this by hand instead of using the new VIA processor!
That was the other half of my joke. Not only does the prototype suck but being a human all he ever does is give you "Seven." Glad to see a few people picked up on the not-so-random number generator.
---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.
without knowing the algorithm or source code used, the problem with software RNGs is that they all cycle. So if you use one to generate its full list of output, you can predict any program's random number stream after just a few samples.
Your mathematician annecdote sounds a little far fetched. There is only a few widely used algorithms for software RNGs, so I guess it is possible to guess at the core algorithm, guess at straightforward software manipulations of the RNGs, and then test against the stream of keno numbers to find where in the cycle it is.
I rate this random number generator a... (rolls dice) 4 out of a possible 10!
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
He says so himself:
Even if he isn't, what's to stop anyone of the route between you and him, from saving a copy, or altering the numbers enroute?
But if you need numbers you can really trust, he also shows you how to build your own.
/Styx
in progress. Your limited thinking is common. I
think it's ludicrous to think we'll hit a glass
ceiling at any point. Most of the arguments against
my way of seeing this is the uncertainty principle
example of an electron being shot at a plate with
two holes in it and going through both at the same
time. That's great but an electron isn't the only
particle. Think about that. I'd be more inclined
to believe that our current science is fundementally
flawed like it turns out to be every hundred years
or so than to think we won't eventually be able
to find patterns and signatures in everything.
From the shape of the chambered nautilus to the
orbits of atoms and galaxies. Something leads to
something else and it gets unraveled and
understood with increasing levels of certainty.
Cause and effect. If you think that any science
we have now will be applicable in a thousand
years, you are kidding yourself. I'll put my
money on time.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
Love the sig.
Further discussion is bound to appear on sci.crypt.random-numbers before too long.v al uation.pdf
.85-.99 bits of entropy per bit, .5, probably closer to .3. .1 e-bits/per bit so .3 isn't bad.
.sig
First, the best paper I've been able to find is this one;
http://www.via.com.tw/en/viac3/via_c3_padlock_e
This HRNG is based on sampling a high speed oscillator with a low speed oscillators XORed together.
The output is run through a "von Neumann
Corrector Register" before finally being output.
(The corrector can be bipassed.)
Both oscillators and Von Neumann's method of correcting for bias have a bad history in HRNG,
so this particular HRNG doesn't give me that warm glowy feeling of having been designed by someone who knew what they were doing.
The output of this generator is biased, even in the "corrected" mode.
This isn't damning by itself, but it shows that as usual,
the raw bits are not independant, so the Von Neumann corrector doesn't, and it's IMO overall a waste.
Not a big waste, it has some good properties,
but there are much better things that could have been built out of the realestate.
The interdependance of the bits is typical of an oscillator design,
and we can expect all the usual failures.
In particular, if they ever do a shrink of this chip, they need to redesign the oscillator portions.
Although I'm not particular impressed with this design, and the output needs to be processed before being used,
it's still way better than nothing.
With a raw output of over 3 megabytes a second,
what it lacks in unbiasedness can be more than made up with oversampling.
In the processed mode, it's only 1/8 the speed
so it wouldn't be an acceptable replacement for statistical programs even if the output were acceptably unbiased.
Despite the claims of the paper of
Clearly the amount of entropy in the raw mode is far less than
(If it were as high as claimed, then the corrector wouldn't be as slow as it is.)
The bad entropy estimate is really a failure of the paper though, not the HRNG.
Many HRNG designs produce less than
-- this is not a
Lava lamp cluster!
Why did GEAR crush RDP?
I know of one story where an wily engineer exploted an imbalance in a casino roulette wheel. Basically, an error in the alignment meant that one side of the casino wheel came up more often than the other. It still wasn't possible to predict any one number coming up, but you could say, *statistically*, that certain numbers came up more often than the odds paid for betting on them. If you make enough bets, then after a while the difference will result in profit. Casinos actually *encourage* the punters to write down the past numbers, but without some heavy-duty analytic software to back it up, this won't help anyone -- and you can't bring your PC into the casino, that's for sure. This engineer has some kind of transmission system built into his shoe, as I recall. But roulette wheels are regularly checked for balance for exactly this reason, so don't try this at home, kids.
When RNGs are used instead of physical systems, there are other ways to exploit the system. I remember one time when the government of my home state in Australia introduced an early form of on-line gambling: a Keno system (like lotto -- draw 10 numbered balls from 100, and try and guess all 10) with drawings every five minutes. It was all computer-controlled, with displays in pubs and bars around the state. You could place bets at an online terminal at the bar. The government got a statistical consulting business I was involved with to help set the odds and work out what the expected payoff would be (so they'd have enough mony to cover winnings in the early days -- the jackpot was a significant amount -- early payoffs were to be backed by insurance).
Unfortunately, the jackpot was won on the first game of day three, which caused some embarassment all round. (They'd predicted a miniscule chance of it being won within a month -- there was a chance of this, of course, but the insurance premium paid didn't cover this eventuality.) A bit of investigation revealed what had happened though. On the first drawing of day 1, the numbers were (say) 16 19 22 27 30 49 58 65 74 97. On the first drawing of day 2, the numbers were again, 16 19 22 27 30 49 58 65 74 97. Someone noticed this and placed a bet for the same numbers for the first game of day 3, and won the jackpot. As it turns out, the programmer had reset the "FOR day IN ..." loop, meaning the first results of each day were the same. (The RNG was used between games in the ticket issuing process, so it didn't affect later days, which was why it wasn't noticed in development.) Just goes to show the importance of good QA when dealing with RNGs.
> Someone noticed this and placed a bet for the same numbers for the first game of day 3, and won the jackpot. As it turns out, the programmer had reset the "FOR day IN
Were "someone" and "the programmer" by chance the same person?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
BTW, I meant to say: "the programmer had reset the RANDOM SEED WITHIN THE "FOR day IN ..." loop ...
MS Word :)
you try to do the same thing
at different times and get a different result each time
www.princeton.edu/~pear
i found this research to be quite shocking. the jist of the research is that your conscious thoughts can influence truly random events.
Agreed. I hate those so-called "Rabbit Ears". (reader invited to visualize fingers making rabbit ear gesticulations during previous sentence's quote marks.)
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
if I wait for 42 to come up.
Do you really think that the Hitchiker's Guide contains 42 for no specific reason!?
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.