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Physicist Uses Laser Light As Fast, True-Random Number Generator
MrKevvy writes
"An Ottawa physicist is using laser light to create truly random numbers much faster than other methods do, with obvious potential benefits to cryptography: 'Sussman's Ottawa lab uses a pulse of laser light that lasts a few trillionths of a second. His team shines it at a diamond. The light goes in and comes out again, but along the way, it changes. ... It is changed because it has interacted with quantum vacuum fluctuations, the microscopic flickering of the amount of energy in a point in space. ... What happens to the light is unknown — and unknowable. Sussman's lab can measure the pulses of laser light that emerge from this mysterious transformation, and the measurements are random in a way that nothing in our ordinary surroundings is. Those measurements are his random numbers.'"
Finally a reason for socially inept people to buy diamonds!
The world's smartest bug zapper www.zapstats.com/kickstarter
9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 ....
You don't KNOW it's not random...
Recycle PCs and build a wireless community network www.hillsborough.org.nz
I don't believe such a thing can possibly exist.
Of course they can. Here: 7, 3. I've just given you two *totally* random numbers.
I mean, what about a diamond in the middle attack? If you manage to replace it with well known and tweaked diamond, with known quantum effect (you see, i could use funny words too), then all the systems would be jeopardized.
I just use the rand() function in Excel. Way less hassle than firing a laser through a diamond...
Finally a reason for socially inept people to buy diamonds!
I dunno about that. Diamond video cards were okay.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Do not look at random numbers with remaining eye.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Shine on you random diamond.
Of course they can. Here: 7, 3. I've just given you two *totally* random numbers.
Nope. And I can prove it. Both of your numbers were between 0 and 9, inclusive. Counting only integers that makes ten possibilities. Now, between 10 and 999, inclusive, there are nine hundred ninety possibilities. Since random numbers are equally likely that means that it is ninety-nine times more likely for a random number to be between 10 and 999, inclusive, than it is for them to be between 0 and 9, inclusive. Successive probabilities multiply, so the likelihood that two numbers chosen at random will be between 10 and 999 inclusive are 8991 times more likely than that they will be between 0 and 9, inclusive. The only reasonable conclusion is that 7 and 3 are not random numbers.
~Loyal
p.s. I think if you search the literature you'll find that 3 is, in fact, a random number. Therefore you problem lies with the 7.
I aim to misbehave.
The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.
Ian Ameline
Herman Cain has come far in just 10 years.
Obligatory xkcd: http://xkcd.com/221/
That cartoon contains code for returning a single value, but the programmer came up with that value by rolling the dice.
On behalf of all the blind readers of Slashdot, thank-you.
I've looked at your post 8 times so far, and it always returns 7 and 3 as random numbers. It's not so random when it always returns the same predictable values.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
I can put away that cup of really hot tea.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
you just HAD to be "that" guy didn't you....