On Friday 16 May 2008 05:52:33 pm Michael Watterson wrote:
> You don't need to know anything about quantum mechanics to make a USB
> key with zener and ADC in it. You can read it for the next 10,000,0000
> years (at 1G samples / sec) and never see a pattern nor predict what the
> next number will be. Does it matter how often you read it? Think of a
> dice thrown continuously. It doesn't make any difference when you
> look or how often you look, it has no memory. The odds of a six on any
> one throw are 1/6th. But you can never know what a previous or later
> throw is without actually viewing the event.
But how do you know?
Are you an expert on Zener diodes, or are you taking the word
of someone who is?
How do you know there is no pattern?
The point is, if you use a standard mathematical
pseudo random number generator
you can be sure it has been studied by hundreds if not thousands
of highly qualified people, who have tried and failed to find a pattern
in the output of the algorithm.
If you use some physical device such as you are speaking about
you are basically taking the word of one or two people
who have almost certainly never tested the device to see if
there is some obvious non-randomness in the output.
--
Timothy Murphy
e-mail: gayleard /at/ eircom.net
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland
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