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Mogens Heller Jensen wrote:

> "Alvin" <> wrote in message
> news: oups.com...
>
>>Well, I'm developing a Tetris game in SDL, but when it comes to
>>deciding the next block, I'm stuck. It's random, but when I try
>>something like seeding the randomizer with the time,
>> ...
>
> The ideal solution (which, however, requires an internet connection) is to
> connect to www.random.org and download some random bytes...
>
> They are truly random, since they come from *sampling backgound noise in the
> atmosphere* (how cool is that?!).

Practically speaking, a reasonable PRNG would be more suitable. If you
needed secrecy (such as for high-stakes gambling), you wouldn't want to
connect to an external source with a non-secure connection, and even if
you secured the pipe, you would need reasonable assurances that the data
wasn't leaked (intentionally or otherwise) on the other end.

--
Thad

Jordan Abel <> wrote:
>
> And it is marginally on-topic, because the code of a PRNG with IIRC
> characteristics like those you describe appears in the text of the C
> standard.

No, the code in the standard generates a result whose low-order bits are
just as random as the high-order bits (its internal state has 16 more
bits than its return values).

-Larry Jones

Why is it you always rip your pants on the day everyone has to
demonstrate a math problem at the chalkboard? -- Calvin

On 2005-12-07, <> wrote:
> Jordan Abel <> wrote:
>>
>> And it is marginally on-topic, because the code of a PRNG with IIRC
>> characteristics like those you describe appears in the text of the C
>> standard.
>
> No, the code in the standard generates a result whose low-order bits are
> just as random as the high-order bits (its internal state has 16 more
> bits than its return values).

IIRC even though the shifting makes the low-order bits sufficiently
random to be useful, the higher ones are even more random - i.e. the
"randomness" [specifically, the length of the repeat period] is a
continuously increasing function as you go from lower to higher bits.

I don't know much about this, this is just how it was explained to me.

> -Larry Jones
>
> Why is it you always rip your pants on the day everyone has to
> demonstrate a math problem at the chalkboard? -- Calvin

writes:

> Jordan Abel <> wrote:
> >
> > And it is marginally on-topic, because the code of a PRNG with IIRC
> > characteristics like those you describe appears in the text of the C
> > standard.
>
> No, the code in the standard generates a result whose low-order bits are
> just as random as the high-order bits (its internal state has 16 more
> bits than its return values).

My tests[*] show the low-order bits to be significantly less
random than the high-order bits.
[*] Based on a version of the simplified poker test given in
Knuth volume 2.