Steven D'Aprano <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >On Fri, 17 Oct 2008 20:51:37 +1300, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote: > >> Is piece really meant to be random? If so, your create_random_block >> function isn't achieving much--xoring random data together isn't going >> to produce anything more exciting than less random data than you started >> with. > >Hmmm... why do you say that xoring random data with other random data >produces less randomness than you started with? > >I'm not saying that you're wrong, and certainly it is pointless since >you're not going to improve on the randomness of /dev/urandom without a >lot of work. But less random?
For those who got a bit lost here, I'd would point out that Knuth[1] has an excellent chapter on random numbers that includes a detailed discussion of this effect. His net takeaway is that most of the things people do to increase randomness actually have exactly the opposite effect. ----- [1] Knuth, Donald. The Art of Computer Programming, Volume 2, Seminumerical Algorithms. -- Tim Roberts, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
