CDR: Re: one time pad and random num gen

[Ray Dillinger]

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