Date: Wed, 29 Apr 1998 10:56:52 -0700 (PDT) From: Nick Moffitt To: svlug@svlug.org, balug@balug.org Subject: Random numbers... Someone at USF recently asked me about random number generation. Not wanting to go through the first few chapters of Knuth with him, I simply answered "Oh, that's easy, Linux just pulls them out of /dev/ass!". A little confused, the little kidlet logged into zork.net and did a 'cat /dev/ass'. Lo and behold, he got random characters! Stunned, my boss (a solaris man, mostly) decided to investigate. [zork(~)] ls -l /dev/ass lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 Apr 22 20:48 /dev/ass -> /dev/urandom Maybe one of these days I'll tell that kid a real algorithm. -- "Photons have neither morals nor visas" -Dave Farber