From: tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)
Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 05:17:09 +0800
To: Tim Fulbright <100022.3167@compuserve.com>
Subject: Re: Truelly Random Numbers
Message-ID: <ad61c9a814021004ef31@[205.199.118.202]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 1:55 PM 3/5/96, Tim Fulbright wrote:
>Now I, a lurker for two months, am truelly confused!  L. Deitweiler must be
>right.   Surely one of you cyperpunk fellows could hack together a dongle with
>some kind of AD converter and buffer ram to gather a Truelly Random Bitstream
>off the environment every couple of milliseconds easier than this raindrop
>scheme or recording the fan, you're haviung me on!.  Let's go back fifty  years
>and get a  vacuum tube to  fitfully flicker?  I who know next to nothing about
>electronics suspect  there is surely enough noise present in electornic devices
>to gather a random bitstream that you could chop anywya you needed? Anyway,  y

Just because someone floats their idea does not mean it is the "list
consensus"! That "raindrops falling on my plate" idea was something I
deleted as soon as I saw that it wasn't a joke with a nice punchline. (Not
all flaky ideas get rebutted...though, as a matter of fact, I did see
several quick rebuttals of the raindrop idea as being impractical, too low
a data rate, etc.)

Johnson noise in semiconductors and alpha particle noise have indeed been
discussed _many_ times. Check the archives, or my Cyphernomicon FAQ.


--Tim May

Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software!
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
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