RE: RE: RE: Re: Random Numbers

| And its pretty impossible to get a "truely" random
| number from a computer

Actually, it is quite possible to do so and it is done quite frequently. A popular way is from timing events, such as a user's input into the keyboard. (It's generating the seed that is a real issue.) Using good old unreliable human input works quite nicely :).

Point taken that it is good enough for this example (as long as srand is used, of course!)

Comment on RE: RE: RE: Re: Random Numbers

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Re^5: Random Numbers by Bod (Parson) on Feb 10, 2024 at 22:30 UTC
A popular way is from timing events, such as a user's input into the keyboard. (It's generating the seed that is a real issue.) Using good old unreliable human input works quite nicely :) That reminds me of some Javascript I wrote nearly 30 years ago. I wanted to display one of 3 images randomly. So, the image was dependent on when the script loaded. 0-19 seconds past the minute for one image, 20-39 seconds for the next, etc. On the same site, we had a gallery of nearly 100 (probably uncompressed) images - how slow must that have been on 33k dialup!!! Because I figured people wouldn't scroll to the bottom, I arranged that every hour the bottom image got moved to the top to ring the changes.	[reply]

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Re^5: Random Numbers
by Bod (Parson) on Feb 10, 2024 at 22:30 UTC

A popular way is from timing events, such as a user's input into the keyboard. (It's generating the seed that is a real issue.) Using good old unreliable human input works quite nicely :)

That reminds me of some Javascript I wrote nearly 30 years ago.

I wanted to display one of 3 images randomly. So, the image was dependent on when the script loaded. 0-19 seconds past the minute for one image, 20-39 seconds for the next, etc.

On the same site, we had a gallery of nearly 100 (probably uncompressed) images - how slow must that have been on 33k dialup!!! Because I figured people wouldn't scroll to the bottom, I arranged that every hour the bottom image got moved to the top to ring the changes.

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