Thinking more about the issue:
As said, the quality of a random number generator is more a matter of
taste than a subject to in-depth discussion (as nearly everything that
is influenced by the way infinity word).
Obviously a perfect random number generator (for integer numbers 0...n)
*needs *to be able to create a series of a million zeros. This is
(seemingly) neither a nice Equal Distribution nor *obviously* unpredictable.
IMHO a very decent random generator is just the simple process
r(n) = x(n) with x(n) = (a + b*x(n-1) ) mod c
Here c should be a (big) prime, as you will get "less random" sub-series
of the length of any factor of c.
OK let a and b be big primes, as well. That does not harm.
Equal Distribution is granted, as the sequence will completely cover all
the numbers 0..c-1 and then start from the beginning.
Of course it is perfectly predictable if you know the numbers a, b, and
c. and I suppose you can detect them from watching the series for a
rather short time.
You can reduce the predictability by doing a much smaller non-process
from the big cyclic process
maybe just
r(n) = x(n) mod d with x(n) = (a + b*x(n-1) ) mod c with d being a
prime several orders of magnitude lower than c (and a and b)
could work (I did not try a proof or disproof). Maybe d needs not be a
prime but just 2^n if you want an appropriately long key.
But for cryptology all this needs really large integer numbers. That
should not be an unsolvable problem. Finding a really large Prime is a
standard task, anyway.
Of course x(0) should be created using a nice entropy method.
-Michael
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