Quantum Random Numbers For Download

PSUdaemon writes "The University of Geneva has produced a website that allows you to download truly random numbers generated from an Optical quantum random number generator. They will also be releasing a client API that you can use directly in your codes to download random numbers."

Comments

Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool

Uh-oh

[bobthemonkey13]

In other news, the Slashdot effect causes a 500-lightyear radius of spacetime to disappear into an Infinite Improbability Field.

w00t!

[pradeepe]

now i can finally get decent approximations for my future physics grades!

Re:w00t!

[DigiShaman]

Screw grades. I want this to generate my nightly lotto ticket numbers.

Truly Random Number ?

[Ray D. Noper]

Hmmz... would it be something like taking a full sack of numbered blocks and picking them ?

Anyway, there cannot be a TRULY random number. There is nothing random. For everything there is an equation.
_____________
http://www.rate.ee/useri nfo.php?id=44769
Just for testing...

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyway, there cannot be a TRULY random number. There is nothing random. For everything there is an equation.

Read Here

It's only one click away from the first page.

According to Nicolas Gisin, professor at the Group of Applied Physics, .Quantum physics is the only physical theory predicting that the outcome of certain phenomena is random. It is thus a natural choice to use it to generate true random numbers..

Next you'll be telling us you know more that he does.

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[Experiment 626]

At the macroscopic level, that's true, but at the quantum level the type of determinism you describe ("For everything there is an equation") breaks down. Consider Heisenberg's uncertainty principle: the more precisely the position is known, the less precisely the momentum can be known. Even with instruments advanced enough to measure one of these values with infinite precision, the other would be unknown, and no equation could be created to describe the particle's state. It could be anything, and there is no way to predict what its exact value will be.

This is very useful for true randomness, unlike the sack of blocks. If you measured the state of the blocks, you would find that they obey Newtonian mechanics, and you could predict which block was on top, given enough information about their state at some point and the forces acting upon them. With quantum particles, gathering that much information about the state is precluded by the laws of quantum physics, so the answer is effectively random.

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[fredrikj]

There is however no way for us to know whether quantum randomness is true randomness or just apparent randomness, as if coming out of a pseudorandom number generator. And only one case can be proven (hypothetically, that is) - the lack of randomness - by finding a formula whose output is identical to that of the observed apparent randomness.

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[AuMatar]

IT doesn't even hold up in macro worlds. Take a simple 2 body gravitational problem. Solvable since Newton's day. Add in a third body. Unsolvable. The fact that there are unsolvable macro occurences is the basis of chaos theory.

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[polyp2000]

If you take a look at this page it explains how it works.

How they do it

At the bottom it explains about the semi transparent mirror system for generating the numbers. The article suggests that the mirror is 50% transparent/50% not transparent. This seems to me to be the point where a bias may be introduced. Surely its physically impossible to manufacture such a mirror to guarantee it is exactly 50/50 either way. It might be a very small bias, but ill bet there is one there. You'd just need a lot of numbers to prove it.

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[Too Much Noise]

There is. Google for Bell's inequality or the Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen paradoxfor a starting point. It does involve some more than skin-deep knowledge of quantum mechanics though.

The bottom line is there's no theory of 'local hidden variables' that would make quantum mechanics a deterministic theory in the 'classical' sense.

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[Matchstick]

That's not quite the same sort of "there is no equation". There are equations that describe perfectly the time evolution of the 3-body problem. There is just (in general) no closed-form solution for the state of the system.

That said, even assuming a perfect integrator there's no way to measure the initial state precisely, so there are limits to how far you can evolve it computationally. However, similar arguments hold for the 2-body problem; so you'll have to find a more clever way of "macro-fying" quantum uncertainty effects.

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[sabNetwork]

Just because it's unpredictable doesn't make it random. Quantum physics follows equations and patterns as with everything else in the universe.

The randomness is only true to the observer.
--

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[Too Much Noise]

that's a different kettle of fish. N-body problems are not analytically solvable. That does not make them 'random'. More to the point, you have a case in which accumulated imprecisions will lead (eventually) to a complete prediction failure. However, the equations of the theory are still deterministic - given the initial conditions with enough accuracy, you can predict (with some required accuracy) the final ones, at least for a given time interval. It's just that the more precision and longer time you want, the more precise your initial conditions have to be.

In quantum mechanics, there's no such 'eventually'. Example: set up an atom in an excited state and try to predict whether it will be in the same state after 1 minute - all you can say is "will be with some probability", hence no mechanical determinism here. You can also make the time interval as short as you like.

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[Ray D. Noper]

Next you'll be telling us you know more that he does.

No, I'm not. I surely do not know more than almost any of Physics professor you can name here.

I just believe that for everything there is a formula and that there's a kinda metaformula, which describes EVERYTHING in this world.
Everything else is simplification.

Maybe my theory is wrong. But then again - nothing is wrong unless proved so.

(pardon my English, it's almost 3am here, I'm having a bad flu and it's not my first language.)

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[fredrikj]

But the point is, we don't know that quantum mechanics is correct.

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[Ray D. Noper]

If you measured the state of the blocks, you would find that they obey Newtonian mechanics, and you could predict which block was on top, given enough information about their state at some point and the forces acting upon them.

So ? OK, now we know which block was on top. Now, how to we know WHICH BLOCK IS TAKEN ? Becomes more random, eh ? Now presume that the person who takes blocks out of the sack is clinically unpredictable. Now, is this TRULY random ?

Heisenberg's uncertainity principle is as much simplification as Newton's Laws of Mechanics.

My point is:
If you know what the starting qualities of each undivisible particle were in the very beginning of the existence (call it Big Bang or gnab gib or whatever), and also the Equation of the World (as I like to call it), you could predict everything in the universe (if you had enough computing power, of course).
Of course, it's hard to get the knowledge needed for such prediction, but in principle it's not impossible...

(again, pardon my english.)

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[Too Much Noise]

The EPR paradox, as modified by Bell, is actually a test of Quantum Mechanics - on the level of some basic assumptions, including the lack of classical determinism. It was tested (mostly in the '60-'70) and found to hold w.r.t. this issue (see Phys Rev Lett 49, 91) - were Bell's inequality to be found true, it would have meant the QM assumptions were wrong, making all QM wrong. Guess what, it didn't hold true ...

So, at least the general principles of QM are correct. What this means is that there are non-local effects embedded in the theory, which make a deterministic (and thus predictable, i.e. non-random) description impossible.

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[pediddle]

Did you read the other part of the article about the mathematically-sound ways in which the bias is removed?

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[Anonymous Coward]

"My point is:
If you know what the starting qualities of each undivisible particle were in the very beginning of the existence (call it Big Bang or gnab gib or whatever), and also the Equation of the World (as I like to call it), you could predict everything in the universe (if you had enough computing power, of course).
Of course, it's hard to get the knowledge needed for such prediction, but in principle it's not impossible..."

Not necessarily true when you apply the current concept of the particle to your use of the word. Quantum effects that happen through time from the Big Bang(or whatever moment of time) would still be unpredictable if you knew every position and speed(every property) of every "particle".

Now theoretically, these quantum effects are explainable if you could measure the properties of the waves(or strings, or whatever theory you want to take up) through higher dimensions. But current scientific research(which is described as fairly stuck with measuring properties of the universe in terms of 3D -- things that are described as properties of the 4D are what could be called "superficial", perhaps) is not capable of such.

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[FrankoBoy]

I just believe that for everything there is a formula and that there's a kinda metaformula, which describes EVERYTHING in this world.

Sounds fair alright. But tell me, how could such "metaformula" be else than from some metametaformula ? Etc. etc. etc.

These Sisyphean endeavours are much fun, but peeps have to learn when to stop when determinism's the issue :)

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, nice theory, but it was proven wrong a long time ago. Look up something called "Bell's Theorm". On a side note, it's amazing how many people still ponder things that have been discovered decades earlier.

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[firewrought]

I just believe that for everything there is a formula and that there's a kinda metaformula, which describes EVERYTHING in this world.... Maybe my theory is wrong.

It is wrong. Godel said so. The problem is that your metaformula describes all truths, but there are more truths than there are possible descriptions.

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[Anonymous Coward]

So what? We don't *know* whether any apparently non-random phenomena are really non-random or do they just happen to look that way to us. This kind of physics by gut-feeling is bullshit. Quantum mechanics have random properties as far as we know, and until someone proves otherwise, it doesn't make any sense to assume anything else.

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[Ray D. Noper]

Unless truth is the description.

Just think of the world as a great computer.

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[Ray D. Noper]

As much as I know, quantum mechanics are still just a theory. A nice theory indeed, and proven logically, but I as much as I recall, practically improvable - you cannot know the starting properties of testing objects without ruining your base idea of test.
___________________________________________ _____
"Seeing is believing.
Doubting is heresy."
Al F. Nero, 1998

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[noodler]

"Consider Heisenberg's uncertainty principle: the more precisely the position is known, the less precisely the momentum can be known"

this only exists because we have limited ability of measuring.,
any measurement on that level will influence the thing you are measuring.,
so we invented the theory of quantum mechanics to describe this phenomenon.,
but in fact we don't know for sure what's beyond this because we have no instruments to measure it.,
it's our own inability to not interact with a sample that shapes quantum mechanics! never forget that.,

this whole has led to many many proposterous theories including the collapsing states theorie and multiverse theory.,

heisenberg talks about propabilities but propability is inherently an abstraction of large quantities of things.,
there is always a system underneath propabilities wether we are able to see it or not.,

you also need to remember that all science is an APPROXIMATION of truth., our perception of truth will ALWAYS be limited by the quality of our measurements.,

since our measurements are imperfect so will our understanding of the truth be imperfect.,

i'm not saying that quantum mechanics does not work, just that it cannot describe the whole truth., in fact quantum mechanics 'works' because it limits itself to what we ARE capable of measuring., but there is no reason whatsoever to assume that what me measure is complete.,

the fact is that we are quite uncapable of describing every aspect of the universe we live in.,
live with that., :)

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[xoran99]

Guess what, it didn't hold true ... So, at least the general principles of QM are correct.

Well, that's a leap there. In the propositional calculus, a implies b and not a does not imply not b. The law of gravity would be proven incorrect if someone is going to be levitating above their desk at 10:00 am tomorrow. If that DOESN'T happen, the law of gravity may still be incorrect, but it doesn't prove it.

Another point I'd like to make is that quantum mechanics is merely a theory, as in a way of understanding and predicting occurences in the universe. It is not necessarily HOW the universe works, merely a model that seems to work well. Therefore, these "random numbers" may still not be random... But they're as good a model as any!

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[benhaha]

So, at least the general principles of QM are correct. What this means is that there are non-local effects embedded in the theory, which make a deterministic (and thus predictable, i.e. non-random) description impossible.

No, not quite. It makes a local, deterministic description impossible. It does not make it impossible that the outcome of each measurement event was determined by the quantum wavefunction of the universe as a whole, only that it can't be predicted by a quantum wavefunction involving only the measured particles.

The further experiments done involve specifically tackling whether the quantum state of the detectors can explain the outcome of the experiment. This would remove the faster-than-light element of the paradox, since the detectors have been sitting there a sufficiently long time for any putative communication to travel between them and the particle source.

The latest experiment switches the state of the detectors using another quantum event using a single photon so that it is done randomly. This proves that the results of measurements cannot be predicted by a theory which doesn't include the quantum state of the switching photon. It does not prove that the universe as a whole is not governed by a deterministic wavefunction. In fact, to my mind, the more non-local the alternatives get, the more plausable it looks.

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[Too Much Noise]

It makes a local, deterministic description impossible.

I was only trying not to repeat 'local' too many times. (that being the initial problem, the non-locality of QM). Yes, Bell's inequality only contradicts QM on a local level.

But once you have to take 'the Universe as a whole' into account you're done. There's no possible description anymore, since you do not have access to all the controlling parameters. All you can do is approximate and thus make a global theory a moot point, since it's pretty much unprovable.

Next comes the issue of randomness. On a completely global model you have an infinite (for all practical purposes) number of degrees of freedhom. That would make it the best example of a statistical limit and we're back to the statistical interpretation of QM that the randomness is based upon.

Thus the problem with the argument for non-locality is that experimentally you can only do so much - push the unknown parameters one level up. You can never remove them completely. The ideal experiment would have to be in an environment completely out of this universe (and presumably with few participants, so you can describe them all in a non-statistical manner). So, while philosophically it is nice to say things like 'the wavefunction of the Universe', that is as unknownable sd 'the wavefunction of God'. All you see in practice is randomness.

And yes, you have then the field theories, where everything is pretty much excitations of an unknown number of global fields with an infinite number of degrees of freedhom for each. Again, back to statistics (and one usually reads "random' in connection to 'infinite degrees of freedhom')

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[Too Much Noise]

oh well, there were unstated elements ^_^

to make it formally correct: Bell's Inequality would have shown that QM is incomplete (and actually wrong) in the non-local assumptions. It being false, the non-local assumptions (with which it is formally incompatible) hold. That dows not prove QM. But the point was not to show QM is wrong (that would have been a bonus). What it says now is QM can be an incomplete theory - and it actually is. Notice that, this way, it's still correct at some level, while incomplete/incorrect at others. All you need is some type of 'non-local hidden variables' (or fields) ^_^ and you're done. The assumption of non-locality is the principle that was proven, and on a local scale that's the reason for quantum randomness.

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[benhaha]

Agreed.

The distinction is between random meaning not deterministic and random meaning not predictable.

The second is about the availability of information and the ability to process it. It is certainly true that quantum fluctuations provide a source of numbers which is not predictable in practice, and it can probably be proved that it can't be predicted, given reasonable assumptions about the availability of information about the quantum state of the generator.

For the first, I'm not sure any experiment could prove that it was nondeterministic, even if it were given that quantum mechanics offers a complete description. Which is to say that I suspect it can be proved that a quantum mechanics with non-local copenhagen interpretation is indistinguishable from a deterministic quantum mechanics.

Randomness is typically defined either as Kolmogorov algoritmic randomness, or as "from a random source". What we have been discussing is the meaning of the second, and I think we have shown that there are two possibilities. Actual nondeterminism, and unpredictability. For the second, we can divide again into provable unpredictability (based on the amount of information required to predict it, for example related to the capacity of a thermal reservoir providing thermal noise) and practical unpredictablity (based on the availability of information, for example the fact that the thermal reservoir is packaged inside your CPU, and therefore the information is unavailable).

I am not sure computing applications, even cryptography, ever require anything better than practical unpredictability.

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[Kid_Root]

But how can you create a program to generate truly random numbers if in the code you have to make starting and ending point?

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[FuzzyDaddy]

But the point is, we don't know that quantum mechanics is correct.

In the sense that we know anything in science, we know that quantum mechanics is correct. If you want to go down the path of "all science is just the current best guess", that's true, and we'll all end up talking about whether we're just brains in a lab somewhere being fed artificial stimulation to simulate reality.

The nature of the true randomness of quantum phenomena is about as well known and verified as anything in science.

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Godel said no such thing,
he was talking about formal logical systems.

the poster, I presume, was talking about mathematical descriptions of the universe.

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[sploxx]

Which IMHO also makes the World in the Film 'Matrix' impossible.

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[Mr. Slippery]

"Consider Heisenberg's uncertainty principle: the more precisely the position is known, the less precisely the momentum can be known"

this only exists because we have limited ability of measuring.

You're reasoning in circles. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle says exactly that "we have limited ability of measuring". It just makes it clear that, after a certain point, this isn't because we're not clever enough, but that the limits are part of the nature of the universe.

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[noodler]

i dont agree, our limit of measurement will always be a limit of our tools, whatever they may be.,
it's not the universes fault that we try to measure it with bits that are highly reactive to the bits that we try to measure.,!

what heisenberg described was just that with conventional tools we cannot cross this boundry and stuff will 'seem' random.
that's why we need statistics to describe at least a part of what's happening., but everyone seems to forget that this statistics represents many many measurements an not just one. it is not the property of what we measure, it's the boundries of the information we CAN extract from such experiments.
it's not as if one electron spreads itself out around a nucleus in a statistical fashon.,
it also doesnt take away the possibility that there is some underlying principle that makes individual subatomic particles behave in a particular way.., ie not behaving random

to put it short, just becaue we are incapable of seing it doesnt mean that there is nothing there.,!

heisenberg proposed a principle to describe our measurements and not the property of what's behind the thing we are trying to measure.,
(just putting it in a different way)

seing the history of man kind we have overcome multiple limits of measurement., i dont see why this is not another one of those limits/.

if you think i'm hopelessly wrong here then please direct me to an experiment which proves that this universe is random at it's heart.,

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[Mr. Slippery]

i dont agree, our limit of measurement will always be a limit of our tools, whatever they may be.

And since you always have to measure with tools, there's a limit. Or are you planning on using your ESP to "sense" where the particles are going?

it's not as if one electron spreads itself out around a nucleus in a statistical fashon

According to our best, most successful theories, yes, it is exactly like that. The universe appears "fuzzy" at small scales.

heisenberg proposed a principle to describe our measurements and not the property of what's behind the thing we are trying to measure.

That is the nature of scientific theory. It organizes, models, and predicts measurements. If there's a property of reality that does not cause observable effects, as far as science is concerned it doesn't exist. (Indeed it's hard to say what it would mean for something to have a property that does not have observable effects.)

if you think i'm hopelessly wrong here then please direct me to an experiment which proves that this universe is random at it's heart.

Google for "Bell's Inequality" and "EPR paradox". (Or for more complete introduction read John Gribben's book In Search of Schrodinger's Cat.)

Back in the 30's, Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen (EPR) argued that the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics - the idea that things exist in a superpositioned "wave" state until an observation is made, and then collapse to a fundamentally random "real" value - had to be regarded as incomplete. They argued (somewhat like what you seem to be) that particles had "hidden variables" that kept things deterministic.

Their argument was this: imagine that two particles, A and B, interact with one another, then fly apart and don't interact with anything else until we decide to look at one of them. Each particle has its own momentum and position. We can't know both the momentum and position of either particle precisely (the uncertainty principle), but we can know the total momentum of the pair, and the original distance between them.

If we measure the momentum of A, we can figure out the momentum of B (since we know the total momentum). We haven't messed with B, so presumably we can measure the position of B, and knowing the original position of A and the momentums we can figure out the position of A. So we know both position and momentum of A and B, in violation of the uncertainty principle!

So either the uncertainty principle is bunk and there are hiddern variables, or (and here's the really weird part) measuring the momentum of A somehow instantaneously - not at lightspeed, but instantaneously - affects B and disturbs its position so that uncertainly is preserved. "No reasonable definition of reality could be expected to permit this," said Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen.

However, the universe is not bound by our notions of reason. Bell's inequality shows a way to actually put this to the test. In the 60's he figured out a mathematical statement (actually about particle spin rather than position and momentum, but the same reasoning applies) that would be true if EPR were right and there were hidden variables, and false if the particles were in superposition and the instantaneous weird action-at-a-distance thing were the case.

It's been tested. Bell's inequality is violated. While the question is not completely settled, our best evidence to date is that the universe is random, reality is fuzzy, and entangled particles can instantaneously affect one another over distance.

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[noodler]

"And since you always have to measure with tools, there's a limit. "

to our measurements, not nessesarily to the universe.,

"Or are you planning on using your ESP to "sense" where the particles are going?" :)

"According to our best, most successful theories, yes, it is exactly like that. "

that's what newton said about his gravity formulations., :)

"That is the nature of scientific theory. It organizes, models, and predicts measurements. "

yes, i agree, but what heisenberg had also done is explicitly exclude anything not measured.
he went even further and denied EXISTANCE to everything not measured.,
extrapolating from that i can safely say that you and all other /. readers do not in fact exist since i cannot measure either your location or spin :)
see where i'm getting at?

i understand that within the boundries of quantum mechanics we can produce good predictions., but it doesnt mean that there is nothing beyond those boundries.,., it's just that heisenberg and the copenhagen interpretation decided that it would be better not to think of anything beyond that because we cannot measure it,.
i'm with einstein about his one.,., even heisenberg didnt exclude the possibility that there is more .,. he just excluded it because current measurement techniques do not alow us to make better assesments that we currently do.,
but those are just assumptions.,
and i agree with them that the copenhagen interpretation is at least incomplete, especially because i would deny everyone their existance.,
i'm a social person :)

"If there's a property of reality that does not cause observable effects, as far as science is concerned it doesn't exist."

that what we observe can easily be the compound effect of properties that are much finer in structure than we are able to detect.,.,
just look at the scale between 'normal' structures in this universe and atoms.,., the universe tends to jump quite far in terms of scale before the next workable structures emerge., in other words there seems to be no continuity in the scale of structure., at least not in our circumstances.,
so one could easily argue that what heisenberg proposes is in fact only a barrier that we havent broken .,

actually, i'm a bit tired now so i'm not clear enough to reason well, :)

to finish up a bit., i have read about entanglement and i'd go for the hidden parameters side of the story., but that's just a gut feeling., not much reasoning there except that i think heisenberg is not describing reality.,
i've heared that the reprouced the instantanious bit., but wouldnt you agree that if something can change position faster than light speed that there is something more that we don't know?.

and i still can't cope with the implications of the copenhagen interpretation and i belive in solid cats., ;)

i will take a look at your recomended reads and just hope it doesnt throw too many formula's at me., altho i doubt that because heisenbergs relations is mostly philosophical imho.., (that's why i'm able to understand it at least partially :)

as you said it yourself : "our BEST evidence to date is that the universe is random"

Pffft

[Anonymous Coward]

C:\>echo %random%

Not bad, not bad...

[Vaevictis666]

Just ran it through two tests of 1000 numbers with the following result counts:

Array
(
[0] => 505
[1] => 495
)

Array
(
[0] => 108
[1] => 95
[2] => 99
[3] => 92
[4] => 119
[5] => 87
[6] => 105
[7] => 101
[8] => 80
[9] => 114
}

Not too terribly bad of a distribution to my eye.

Re:Not bad, not bad...

[Artifex]

I thought that if they were truly random, you could get all 505s... it would just be a huge coincidence, right?

If their random number generator precludes repetition, it's progressively less random, right? Because the randomness becomes infinity (or highest number) - n, n being the number of answers it's taking out of circulation.

Or am I just on crack?

Re:Not bad, not bad...

[MerlynEmrys67]

of course I just asked for 1000 random numbers between 1-100. I got 1000 50's, I wonder how many bits/sec they can generate - and what happens if they have to "reuse" a little bit of that quantum state ???

Inquiring minds want to know

Re:Not bad, not bad...

[AuMatar]

You could, but its highly unlikely, to the point where you could run the program every second for the rest of your life and you'll be unlikely to come close.

A good way of figuring out if a pattern is likely to be random or not is to run a chi squared approximation, which will show how far off the spread is from expected values.

Re:Not bad, not bad...

[Anonymous Coward]

But of course the probability of getting 500, 500, 500, 500, 500 is the same as probability of getting 134, 3, 247, 385, 96 :)

Re:Not bad, not bad...

[image]

> Not too terribly bad of a distribution to my eye.

It's hard to tell.

Here's a simple perl script to demonstrate:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

my ( $count, $low, $high ) = @ARGV;

defined $count and defined $low and defined $high or
die( "USAGE: rand.pl count low (inclusive) high (exclusive)\n" );

my $x = 0.5;
my $r = 3.6;

for ( $i = 0; $i < 256; $i++ )
{
$x = $r * $x * ( 1 - $x );
}

for ( $i = 0; $i < $count; $i++ )
{
$x = $r * $x * ( 1 - $x );
my $bits = ( $x * 1000 ) - ( int ( $x * 1000 ) );
print int( ( $bits * ( $high - $low ) + $low ) ) . "\n";
}

Try saving that as rand.pl and running it like this:

$ ./rand.pl 100 0 10

Seems like a very random distribution, doesn't it?

However, in reality, it's merely chaotic. It is based on the logistic function over a known chaotic region (discarding the first few significant bits to adjust for the range of x). The point being that it is very difficult to know when something is truly random or not.

You can read more about the logistic function here and random numbers here.

Re:Not bad, not bad...

[minusthink]

Yeah! this works great!

Array
(
[0] => 134
)

Looks pretty random to my eye.

Re:Not bad, not bad...

[Anonymous Coward]

very funny.

Use VIA cpus for good random numbers instead

[Anonymous Coward]

Nehemiah and higher VIA cpus have a really good hardware entropy source, and it's supported in all recent linux kernels.

Re:Use VIA cpus for good random numbers instead

[Anonymous Coward]

Nehemiah and higher VIA cpus

Pshaw. Intel chipsets had a hardware random number generator years ago - the ICH0/ICH1/ICH2 series, IIRC - which sampled thermal noise within the die to get a random number seed.
Still, now that Via are approaching the performance of a 500MHz Intel Pentium III, I suppose it's nice that they're trying to approach the feature set of it too. Imitation as the sincerest flattery, and all that..

is this really random?

[glen604]

Are they actually running the "Optical quantum random number generator" every time you click submit, or are they just pulling the numbers pre-generated from a database?

Re:is this really random?

[orkysoft]

Yeah, I thought the same thing. How would it stand up to a slashdotting?

In the interest of preserving entropy, I urge you not to RTFA ;-)

How do they know ?

[polyp2000]

How do they really really know for certain, that these numbers are truly random?

And what kinds of applications might they be used for?

Why does it need to be a quantum random number generator? How come you cant use an aerial and pick up white noise?

nick ...

Re:How do they know ?

[astroboscope]

How do they really really know for certain, that these numbers are truly random?

There are statistical tests (see Knuth), like spectral flatness and incompressibility, but complete "certainty" has to rest on the theoretical underpinnings of QM, with testing by Bell's inequality (discussed elsewhere on this page).

And what kinds of applications might they be used for?

Secure communications, ignoring for now the problem of distributing the random bits.

Why does it need to be a quantum random number generator? How come you cant use an aerial and pick up white noise?

That "white noise" is contaminated by a jumble of deterministic TV and radio signals, that potential attackers could also detect or predict. It would be better to detach the aerial and amplify the output from a warm resistor, which is I think what the VIA motherboards do. Conceivably, though, somebody with far too much time and money on their hands could watch (or have watched) the molecules in your resistor unreasonably closely, and attempt guessing what they'll do. Using smaller particles is better, since observing them perturbs them so that their behavior can't be predicted, but that's QM by definition. You (and VIA) could also argue that warm resistors already include lots of quantum noise.

Re:How do they know ?

[jfern]

Here's how a quantum random number generator works. You start with a qubit, which could be the polarization of a photon, or the spin of an electron. You put it into the state (1/sqrt(2)) |0> + |1>, where |0> and |1> are orthogonal vectors. Then you measure 0 or 1 with probability of 50% each, and if the axioms of quantum mechanics are correct, then it is truly random.

Single point of failure

[kapella]

As anything other than an academic exercise, this is silly if not outright dangerous.

Want to compromise any cryptographic system that uses this "pure" RNG? Man-in-the-middle the data connection, or just spoof DNS/IP addresses. Suddenly, you're in control of session key generation...

Re:Single point of failure

[tolan-b]

They will also be releasing a client API that you can use directly in your codes to download random numbers.

I suspect that will be encrypted and involve public key swapping to avoid man in the middle.

Re:Single point of failure

[kapella]

And where do you get the random numbers to generate your (ostensibly secure) session keys for the public key transaction, huh? ;)

Re:Single point of failure

[tupshin]

rfc 1149

The only man in the middle attack is going to be some guy in Alabama with a shotgun. I think I'd know if it were intercepted.

Re:Single point of failure

[Just Some Guy]

Want to compromise any cryptographic system that uses this "pure" RNG? Man-in-the-middle the data connection, or just spoof DNS/IP addresses. Suddenly, you're in control of session key generation...

Using this as the sole random source is criminally negligent, but I see know reason at all why you couldn't use it an yet another input source for a local PRNG. Even if this source were completely 0wn3d, it wouldn't decrease that amount of entropy in the user's pool - it just wouldn't add to it.

In much the same way, someone monitoring my network could theoretically predict the stream of information that my FreeBSD server is pulling from one of its interface's interrupts. That doesn't make my PRNG less secure than if I weren't using that interrupt as an entropy source.

Randomness is good. Compromised randomness as a discrete entropy source to a well-designed PRNG is not bad for the system, it's just less good.

Re:Single point of failure

[tolan-b]

I knew some smartarse would say that :p

So how many slashdotters will it take...

[kenthorvath]

So how many slashdotters will it take to submit a request for 1000 numbers between 0 and 1 before it generates the binary code for Windows? What about the source code?

This is SOOOOOO Bad

[MerlynEmrys67]

Ok, let me get this right - you are expected to "trust" a source of randomness to be purely random, and to correctly destroy all of the information between here and there.

Plus I just asked for 1000 (the most allowed) numbers between 1 - 100. I was scared by what I got back.

50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 (repeated quite a bit - cut to pass the poster comment compression filter)

I was amazed. Any sane person will NOT outsource the generation of their source of randomness - it is WAY to critical.

Re:This is SOOOOOO Bad

[JabberWokky]

I would imagine that it's suffering from overuse right now. Top story on Slashdot and all.

However, yes... you can trust this to be random, and no, you can't trust it to "correctly destroy all of the information between here and there".

I don't believe that the intent of this is to do realworld crypto nor games (which is what other people are claiming the other "major" use of random numbers are). A set of purely random numbers is really only useful to people testing mathematic theories or other high math science work. For crypto, decent pseudo-random sequences (or the old "pull from an analog source" trick) is perfectly fine. This is overkill for realworld crypto (not to mention broadcast via the internet), which means that this is primarily useful - to math scientists.

--
Evan

Re:This is SOOOOOO Bad

[Kelerain]

Plus I just asked for 1000 (the most allowed) numbers between 1 - 100. I was scared by what I got back.

50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 (repeated quite a bit - cut to pass the poster comment compression filter)

Wow, I'd be scared to, I mean.. what are the chances?!?

Re:This is SOOOOOO Bad

[MerlynEmrys67]

Well spoken Mr Coward.

You are correct - I did not correctly say that there was a 100^1000 chance that the result page that I was presented would be generated randomly. This is such a huge percentage that I gladly bow to your superior knowledge of statistics and probability.

Swings the cluebat for the fences

Re:This is SOOOOOO Bad

[NegativeK]

For crypto, decent pseudo-random sequences (or the old "pull from an analog source" trick) is perfectly fine. This is overkill for realworld crypto (not to mention broadcast via the internet), which means that this is primarily useful - to math scientists.

Say _WHAT_? I sure as hell hope not. I'd rather not have some half-assed pseudo-random sequence for a OTP used on extremely sensitive corporate documents. If you're a huge company (say, IBM), and you have documents that could be feasibly worth one billion dollars, are you going to entrust them to a pseudo-random generator?

Yes, I know that there are weaker links (namely people), but it's probably best not to have one of those links be something that's preventable, and cheap.

Re:This is SOOOOOO Bad

[JabberWokky]

If you're a huge company (say, IBM), and you have documents that could be feasibly worth one billion dollars, are you going to entrust them to a pseudo-random generator?

Yes, and I have (as in, I have been the admin for finance companies dealing with information worth more than a billion dollars). In fact, pretty much all crypto out there uses less than truly random sequences.

Truly random numbers are exceedingly difficult to get. I'm talking mathematically pure random numbers that math geeks go gaga over. Even the hardware random number generators have a "randomness factor" that indicates how random they get. Most data flows through systems that use software only (or software + somewhat random input) pseudo-random streams. I'm including the hardware RNGs in this category... they produce generally non-deterministic numbers and statistically random numbers that suffice for most purposes, but are still not *really* *completely* random like this produces.

--
Evan

Re:This is SOOOOOO Bad

[guile*fr]

million-to-one chances always crop up. Well-known fact. (Terry Pratchett)

Interesting, but not that useful

[Chris_Jefferson]

WHile this is cool, on the other hand we mainly need random numbers for two things. The first is to make algorithms which require random numbers to run correctly work and to make games interesting to play. For that kind of purpose this is overkill :)

The other reason we need them is for secure encryption purposes. If you felt paranoid enough to need quantumly generated random numbers, would you really get the numbers over the internet from an untrusted source?

What would be much more interesting would be if intel/AMD started including a random number generator directly on processors which allowed you to get some random numbers via some random process on chip.

Re:Interesting, but not that useful

[MerlynEmrys67]

What would be much more interesting would be if intel/AMD started including a random number generator directly on processors which allowed you to get some random numbers via some random process on chip.

Don't know about AMD, but this has been in Intel's chipsets since at least the 815 (I am pretty sure it was in the 810 chipset). They use a noisy diode and read the the value across it. I know it is certified, but I have never seen the operating range of the certification (I assume it is between x & y degrees Celcius - and at some point the diode starts to read more 0's than 1's or the other way around)

Many 3rd party crypto companies have other RNGs built into their hardware - it is rather important for various security purposes.

Re:Interesting, but not that useful

[zulux]

If you felt paranoid enough to need quantumly generated random numbers, would you really get the numbers over the internet from an untrusted source?

Even if this source of randomness is compromised, adding it to your already existing sources of randomness coulden't hurt. It's best to layer sources of randomness on top of each other - so if one source or two isen't random, the whole stack of randomness isen't compromised.

Re:Interesting, but not that useful

[antiher0]

Even if you trust the source, how do you guarantee that your data isn't compromised or sniffed before getting to your application? You could use SSL or IPSec, but if you're paranoid enough to want "truly random" numbers, you probably wouldn't be satisfied with the security those technologies afford.

Re:Interesting, but not that useful

[QuMa]

First order bias isn't a problem, most systems use something similar to von Neumann's bias elimination: pair the inputs up, and discard 00's and 11's. If the input is 01, output 0, if the input is 10, output 1.

Re:Interesting, but not that useful

[twistedemotions]

Yes, this nifty hardware was built into Intel's 82802 Firmware Hub(EEPROM+RNG hardware). It was used in early 810 and 815 chipsets.

Most mobo manufacturers chose to use others plain-jane flash chips as they were cheaper and they could use them over their entire line of mobo's (VIA, SIS, etc). This and lack of support by software companies for the RNG resulted in intel discontinuing the "firmware hub".

Datasheet available here

Re:Interesting, but not that useful

[N8w8]

Don't forget the RNG on VIA's Nehemiah CPU core. I've heard it's very fast and very random.

Re:Interesting, but not that useful

[Hegestratos]

Don't know about AMD, but this has been in Intel's chipsets since at least the 815 (I am pretty sure it was in the 810 chipset).

Intel discontinued this feature some time ago. See these pages for details.

Cheers, Alfred

Re:Interesting, but not that useful

[Anonymous Coward]

That's interesting. Does anyone know if the noise is classical (i.e. a function of statistical properties like heat etc. of the diode) or quantum mechanical?

If the former, it's not truly random, it's just a approximately random process that results of the unsystematic combination of many complex underlying processes.

The interesting thing about quantum noise is that it is, to the best of current understanding, "intrinsic" to the physics of our universe.

WHy might this matter? If your random source is only approximately random the fraction of 1's (versus 0's) may deviate from 50% as a function of temperature etc. (bias), or worse, depend on earlier values (not independent, which is different).

Bias is easy to fix statistically, dependence is not. Just a random observation.

How to listen to real random noise.

[polyp2000]

generate a few screens of random numbers, use a range of 0-255 and generate 1000 numbers.

open up a text editor and paste the results in, repeat the process several times till you have a nice big file of random numbers. Then simply

%> cat randomnumbers.txt /dev/dsp

its an interesting noise , i think you will agree ...

nick ...

Re:How to listen to real random noise.

[Anonymous Coward]

whoops, that should be ...

%> cat randomnumbers.txt > /dev/dsp

nick ...

Re:How to listen to real random noise.

[BillyBlaze]

There's a simpler way...

cat /dev/urandom > /dev/dsp

Re:How to listen to real random noise.

[Anonymous Coward]

but it sounds different! try it you will see.

Re:How to listen to real random noise.

[AdamMil]

It won't really be all that random because the file would likely just contain ASCII characters 10 (LF), 32 (space), and 48-59 ('0' through '9'). And even the characters won't be randomly distributed, as there'll be a significant bias towards '1', and to a lesser extent, '2'.

But anyway I guess I'm not disputing that it'll sound interesting! :-)

I think I'll try that when I get home, out of curiosity.

Re:How to listen to real random noise.

[bloo9298]

but it sounds different! try it you will see.

Isn't that just because you have created files consisting entirely of digits (so only containing bytes in the range 0x30 to 0x39), whereas catting /dev/urandom to /dev/dsp will use bytes over the entire range 0x00 to 0xff?

<unwarranted-sarcasm> If that amuses you, try 0x70 to 0x7f. Or, you could be really cool and use 0xa5 to 0xb5 (don't tell anyone else though, it's top secret!). </unwarranted-sarcasm>

here's what they really want

[morelife]

use Net::RandomNumbers.info qw(:all);

my @firstgroup = connect('arraysize' => '90',
'range' => '1 1000',
);

foreach $linein ( @firstgroup ) {
print "$linein \n";
}

exit 0;

# Please wait ... connecting to your PayPal Account, please have your password ready

This is stupid

[BalkanBoy]

Unless one can control the actual mechanism for generation of random numbers, then they cannot guarantee that some 'man in the middle' will generate the 'random' numbers for you.

Re:This is stupid

[BalkanBoy]

Pardon - they cannot guarantee that some 'man in the middle' will _NOT_ generate the random numbers.

Re:This is stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Still doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
I think you meant "transmit", not "generate" in your first post.

And, obviously, this isn't intended for everyone to hook their 37337 little crypto apps into. It is primarily of use to scientists who either 1) study entropy in its own right and thus need these prima facie, or 2) do hard statistical computations which are potentially even more demanding of "pure" randomness than crypto is.

Cool!

[lightspawn]

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?

Reason: You can type more than that for your subje

[madoptimo]

now my life is complete, completely wasted

State of Sin

[jefu]

Always remember the Wisdom of Von Neumann :
"Anyone who uses determininstic methods to generate random numbers is living in a state of sin."

But if the equation is longer(in bits) than the random number, it is random in a very nice way.

For equation, read "Turing Machine" to be a bit more careful. To be even more careful, read the papers on the process. Google for Chaitin and "Kolmogorov complexity".

Note that I'm carefully not saying to use such things in cryptography.

Where are the LavaLamps ???

[mendepie]

This may have lots of physics geeks saying wow ...

But where are the Lava Lamps to get the mundanes interested????

Oh my god!

[Anonymous Coward]

I am such a geek! Im getting all excited about random numbers.

What about Hotbits?

[FooAtWFU]

Last I checked HotBits was still in the random number business, using some radioactive sources.

Re:What about Hotbits?

[ed_g2s]

Yeah, Hotbits have been serving up random numbers from a Krypton-85 source for years, also truly random. This is no Big News.

Re:What about Hotbits?

[daniel_yokomiso]

I read that as "What about Hobbits?". For a second I was like "WTF what the fine Shire folk has to do with random numbers?"

They need SSL with a published certificate

[Steven Reddie]

In order to make the random numbers useable for security, they need to offer a service via an encrypted channel with a published certificate so that applications can ensure that no man-in-the-middle is occuring. You'd still want to mix in some entropy of your own gathering, but this would be a good way to prime prngd or egd. Of course there is still the question of trust of the source. If a few independent services like this sprung up around the world a secure source of entropy would be the combination of the output of several.

Re:They need SSL with a published certificate

[psyconaut]

So you're advocating taking a truly random number scheme and using that as the seed for a non-truly random number generator.

Good one, Einstein! Using truly random numbers for a traditional RNG does NOT make the output more random.

-psy

Re:They need SSL with a published certificate

[Steven Reddie]

No, you're missing the point. BTW, thanks for the Einstein complement.

PRNGs cycle, and there are things you can do get around that, such as restarting them every so often or mixing in more entropy, but it is the initial entropy used to seed that is important.

PRNGs being deterministic means that it's very, very important that you start the sequence from a random point each time; an unguessable point in the sequence. Using pure random data to seed a PRNG will make it's use more secure.

Think of the digits of pi as being a pure random source. If I can guess at which digit you are going to start reading then it really makes no difference what the actual digits are. Conversely given a poorer random source but with no idea where in the cycle you will start reading it is much harder for me to guess the sequence.

See the paper written by Peter Gutmann for further details on this subject. It is required reading for anyone working with PRNGs for use in security applications.

Re:They need SSL with a published certificate

[psyconaut]

And, again: it doesn't make a PRNG *more secure*....it merely makes the chance of guessing the starting point harder.

-psy

Re:They need SSL with a published certificate

[Steven Reddie]

So explain to me why using purely random data is a bad idea for seeding a PRNG.

As far as making something harder is concerned, isn't this the whole point about security, both physical and digital? If a door lock is harder to pick, is it not more secure than one that is easier to pick? If a password is harder to guess, is it not more secure than a password that is easier to guess? So then why is a PRNG whose sequence is harder to guess not more secure than a PRNG whose sequence is easier to guess?

Yes, it is the same thing. If you don't know the starting point of the sequence and all you see is a stream of pseudo-random data then the best you can do is to find that sequence somewhere in the stream. However with typical PRNGs having extremely large cycle lengths, to do a search would require a massive amount of resources. This is the whole point, it makes it harder -- the same premise behind asymmetric crypto such as RSA. If I know your starting value, and I know the algorithm (good chance that it's one of several well known PRNGs) then I know your stream of pseudo-random numbers.

Again going back to the digits of pi. If I choose to start at the 36,344,636,842,575th digit of pi, which lets say for arguments sake is the start of the stream 5, 2, 6, 3, and you see this 5, 2, 6, 3 go across the network then you will have no choice but to do a brute force search through all digits of pi up to at least the one that I started from. You may well find millions of copies of the same sequence along the way. How do you know which it is? On the other hand, if you knew that to pick a starting point I took the current time, added in the process id (a 16-bit number), etc, etc, then you can work out a much smaller subset of positions to commence your search from.

Why do you think that OpenSSL can be configured to use daemons like prngd and egd to initialise it's PRNG? It's because the PRNG is typically considered secure enough (yes, it's not pure, but short of putting a quantum number generator in your PC it's the best that we can do) but it is critical to initialise the generator with high valued entropy. Read that Gutmann paper that I mentioned.

Good for WEP keys

[stienman]

I got a hexidecimal random file a few years ago and randomly selected a passage of characters for my 128 bit wep key. Much stronger than "DonotHACKME" as a passphrase. Still as weak as WEP, but since it's a low data rate network, and a fairly secure key then it's going to take weeks for someone to collect enough info to crack it. Then all they have is access to the internet and an XP computer with no ports open.

But in general this type of resource is only good for small one off uses, research, and testing. They are providing it to see how good their distribution is, find problems with this type of setup before rolling out a for-pay service where you can have your own remote RNG. It would be good for laptop users who need an RNG that's more powerful than the dinky ones you can carry with you.

-Adam

Re:Good for WEP keys

[joeljkp]

That's a cool idea... where'd you get the random hexes?

Re:Good for WEP keys

[stienman]

Aren't you the one hiding in the white van outside my house?

I don't remember where I got them now. It's not hard to convert numbers from the website of the subject of this article into hex. Just ask for a bunch of numbers 0-16, then convert each number to its hex equivilant:

15 2 15 14 13 3 14 10
F2FED3EA

-Adam

Re:Good for WEP keys

[stienman]

0-15, I should have said. Get 26 of them for a full WEP key. In case you're wondering why a 128 bit key requires only 104 bits, here's a tidbit found through a quick search:

To form the encryption key, 3 bytes (24 bits) are used from the 802.11b header for initialisation, with the remainder supplied by the user. So:
64 bit key - user gives 40 bits = 10 hex digits or 5 characters
128 bit key - user gives 104 bits = 26 hex digits or 13 characters
256 bit key - user gives 232 bits = 58 hex digits or 29 characters
source

-Adam

Re:Good for WEP keys

[photon317]

If you did that, the key is nowhere near "random". A better adjective might be "meaningless in terms of dictionary attacks".

On a side note, it really doesn't matter what your WEP key is. Even if you used a quantum random number generator for your WEP key, it's pretty trivial for your neighbors to break it, sniff your traffic, inject traffic, etc. The code is out there for download, has been for a long time.

Slashdot OS Progect (with RNG)

[yletelpmoc]

So how many slashdotters will it take to submit a request for 1000 numbers between 0 and 1 before it generates the binary code for Windows? What about the source code?

Much longer than it would take for a request for 1000 numbers between 0 and 8191 (2^13), but I digres into a useless rant. The executables generated from the RNG would work better than Windows, maybe.

Even better, use the RNG to create random code, then use it in conjunction with genetic algorithims (RNG for determining mutation) to create software for some random purpose. How long would it take to make a useful OS this way?

Re:Slashdot OS Progect (with RNG)

[bloo9298]

You know that people have used genetic algorithms to improve some kinds of program? Probably nothing very complicated because the fitness tests would take far too long to run (perhaps the Timex 1000's operating system would be possible!). There was an article in Byte or Dr Dobbs about 10 years ago.

That is NOT random

[Anonymous Coward]

How to listen to real random noise...

That is not random noise. Do you think /dev/dsp is expecting ASCII data?! It's not, but that's what you are feeding it, so you've introduced a massive bias.

The noise may be interesting, but it's faaaar from random.

okay that was freaky...

[Shaheen]

i asked for one random number between 0 and 10000 and i got back my base rate salary.

Re:okay that was freaky...

[Just Some Guy]

my base rate salary

For what unit of time? If per week, give me a call. If per year, how's that Ramen taste?

Re:okay that was freaky...

[Brandybuck]

You misunderstand. That's per year, and he's my replacement in Bangalore...

Re:okay that was freaky...

[Just Some Guy]

Hah!

Simulation

[bsd4me]

Digital communication simulations need very good RNG sources, especially when simulating concatenated codes that result in very low BER. I have lost weeks worth of work because of bad and misrepresented generators.

Re:What about Hobbits?

[Bonewalker]

Peter Jackson already built a random hobbit generator.

It worked ok for a while, then it started repeating..which made it clear it was not truly random. Altough, Elijah tried to fake it by saying random lines from the script whenever he forgot the real lines. Peter just left them in anyway.

"Sam, don't you miss the Shire?"

"I sure do, Mr. Frodo...I sure do."

Interesting...

[Jorkapp]

Such an infinite sequence does for example contain the Microsoft Windows source code...

I wonder what Bill Gates would do if he saw that.

Re:Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Aw, crap. Since all versions of linux are contained in there, too, then SCO is going to "take back" quantum dynamics, thereby blocking any attempts at a grand unified theory.

Let's get Einstein to kick Darl's ass at a distance.

(/funny)(/troll)(/ot)

Whoa, dude

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these...oh, wait...

Business plan...

[Dr. GeneMachine]

1. offer source of random numbers 2. keep local copy 3. crack each OTP generated by users 4. ... 5. PROFIT!

otp

[drDugan]

one time pad systems, baby. tell the snooping feds thhthththbbbbbbbtt

just need the client api to generate bits fast... plus a few other social steps

Who needs it?

[ninja0]

Why bother making random data available for download when there's already plenty of slashdot posts?

Re:Who needs it?

[benhaha]

+1 Funny, methinks.

LavaRND

[Frans Faase]

If you want to have your own "real" random number source (not pseudo-random), have a look at LavaRND, which make use of a simple webcam as a random noise source.

AMD Has Random numbers, too

[nikkoslack]

AMD's chips also have random number generators, but they don't go into too much detail on how they are generated. I'd assume randomly, but that's just a guess.

Re:Truly Random Number ? Think again.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Next you'll be telling us you know more that he does.

Okay you're on.

Although nobody may yet understand the equation, nontheless it has been proven that even so-called "Truly Random" quantum systems will be subject to statistical skewing by influences from conscious minds. Yes, I am talking about psychokinesis at the quantum level, which has been rigorously demonstrated at the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research laboratory.

They've been around for decades. Their methods have withstood all scientific scrutiny. Despite high visibility, they have never been successfully debunked.

Obligatory Dilbert Quote (approximate)

[Anonymous Coward]

Finance Department
__________________________

Accounting Ogre: "And here's our random number generator"
Other Accounting Ogre: "9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9......"
Dilbert: "Those are random numbers?"
Accounting Ogre: "That's the trouble with random numbers,- you can never really be sure."

People unclear on the concept.

[blair1q]

From the Generating Random Numbers page:

Contrary to the case where classical physics is used as the source of randomness and where determinism is hidden behind complexity, one can say that with quantum physics randomness is revealed by simplicity.

Anyone who's studied Quantum Physics and doesn't see that the innate quality of the randomness is a presumed conclusion just wasn't paying enough attention.

first web RNG from quantum origin? no way

[tuc]

Their web sie says:

The University of Geneva and the company id Quantique team to launch the first web site offering the possibility to download random numbers from quantum origin.

but HOTBITS has been generating random numbers from quantum origin for years.