At 9:03 PM 4/29/94 -0700, Phil Karn wrote:
The easiest way to get true random numbers on a PC nowadays is with a sound board, preferably 16 bit. Just MD-5 hash some gibberish speech and/or background noise.
Great idea. Hell, you don't even really need random gibbirish; most sound cards have such poor analog audio front ends, you could just turn up the gain and look at the LSBs. I've mostly used the mid-level Mac products from Digidesign, and even they have analog noise that is easily detectable in the lower bits. And for MacPGP- most Macs now have a sound-in; you could either do the noise trick again (won't work as well in 8-bit, probably), or just base it on the backgroud sounds. Rusty H. Hodge, Hodge Productions <rustman@netcom.com> (714) 532-6800 GAT d--@ -p+(p---) c++ !l u++ m+(*) s+/++ !n(-) h* f+(*) !g w++ t@ r- y*