CDR: Re: one time pad and random num gen

On Tue, 3 Oct 2000, Kevin Elliott wrote:

Actually if you can pull that off you've got yourself a darn fine real random number generator- any PRNG has to have some period after which it will begin to recycle (assuming no other randomness in introduced into the system), in which case you just set i>the period and read off future states using current state +1 = current state - period + 1.

True, but the period can be made such that the last star in the universe will die and grow cold first. If you have for example a 256-byte internal state, and your PRNG is a full permutation (ie, eventually every possible state is on the path of the "cycle") you don't really need to worry about it. Bear