So, I'm sorry we beat you up over the summary rather than the actual article, but this is Slashdot. The summary had better be good, because no one ever reads the article.
Fair:) I'll just have to be more careful in future.
I'm going to reply to just the one poster, as explaining this to each/.'r would take rather a long time!:)
First and foremost, Slashdot (as you know) unfortunately chooses the URL for your particular story. "Truer[sic] Randomness" is not in fact what I'm going out to somehow magically solve (with my absolute non-background in cryptography etc.). As to why they chose to enter the title of the story as such - I don't know. A bit of sensationalism, perhaps? In any case, I'd originally titled this "Musical Network Captures" - no more, no less!
Why not use/dev/random? It's not random per se which is required - it's a pseudo-random source which can still be directly influenced by those in the immediate environment. For installation purposes, for example, it's a quick (unorthodox, convoluted, fucked-up, whatever-you-wanna-call it) way of generating an input that can be used to further modulate other inputs/sounds. For this, a stream of random numbers alone is not good enough. There's a million and one ways this could have been done - it just so happens that this is how I decided I'd go about doing it.
Finally, I'm a bit overwhelmed by the whole Slashdot thing. As it's all worked out, it seems that on my first 'go' at adding something that I thought a couple of people would be interested in, it's seemed to hit the front page - and so at least, next time, I'll know to not be so trigger-happy when I'm 'submitting' something to here! Apologies for all of you who seem to have fallen out with one another and spent half your time bickering over nothing.
Slashdot Mirror
So, I'm sorry we beat you up over the summary rather than the actual article, but this is Slashdot. The summary had better be good, because no one ever reads the article.
:) I'll just have to be more careful in future.
Fair
I'm going to reply to just the one poster, as explaining this to each /.'r would take rather a long time! :)
/dev/random? It's not random per se which is required - it's a pseudo-random source which can still be directly influenced by those in the immediate environment. For installation purposes, for example, it's a quick (unorthodox, convoluted, fucked-up, whatever-you-wanna-call it) way of generating an input that can be used to further modulate other inputs/sounds. For this, a stream of random numbers alone is not good enough. There's a million and one ways this could have been done - it just so happens that this is how I decided I'd go about doing it.
First and foremost, Slashdot (as you know) unfortunately chooses the URL for your particular story. "Truer[sic] Randomness" is not in fact what I'm going out to somehow magically solve (with my absolute non-background in cryptography etc.). As to why they chose to enter the title of the story as such - I don't know. A bit of sensationalism, perhaps? In any case, I'd originally titled this "Musical Network Captures" - no more, no less!
Why not use
Finally, I'm a bit overwhelmed by the whole Slashdot thing. As it's all worked out, it seems that on my first 'go' at adding something that I thought a couple of people would be interested in, it's seemed to hit the front page - and so at least, next time, I'll know to not be so trigger-happy when I'm 'submitting' something to here! Apologies for all of you who seem to have fallen out with one another and spent half your time bickering over nothing.
--R