From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Sam To: <9fans@cse.psu.edu> Subject: Re: [9fans] Interesting research possibility? In-Reply-To: <20020625151353.4093B19A2C@mail.cse.psu.edu> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 10:54:01 -0400 Topicbox-Message-UUID: b8107bde-eaca-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 Right, I should have seen the pseudo-ness of this approach. I'm thinking out loud here and those who've thought through this will likely say it's obvious, but it seems that the only true random generators are those whose inputs are based on something in nature we have yet to find a formula for. A friend suggested watching patters of raindrops as an input. That is, until we figure out how to calculate that. Don't smirk, it wasn't *too* long ago that people would have said, "why not just use the position of the planet Mars as your input. He's all over the sky." Cheers, Sam On Tue, 25 Jun 2002 rog@vitanuova.com wrote: > > What's left on the screen after the galaxies collide is a *very* > > random assortment of colors. Suppose we take a quadrant sample of > > that and generate a number out of it. Would this work as a very > > simple random number generator? > > sounds like a fairly elaborate random number generator to me! > > however, i guess this isn't so far removed from Wolfram using a > cellular automaton as the basis for the pseudo random number > generation in mathematica... > > rog. >