Random numbers

[Joep L. Blom]

On 03/11/10 20:09, Kent Borg wrote:
> C de-Avillez wrote:

<snip>

> Cut-to-the-crash, bottom line: /dev/urandom is great.  If you
> roll-your-own embedded system, make sure your entropy sources are turned
> on.
>
> After that you are free forget about issues surrounding /dev/urandom,
> but make sure the rest of your system is secure.
>
>
> -kb, the Kent who has build RNGs (in Python and a physical box) but
> always out of established cryptographic primitives.
>
Kent & C,
It's very interesting to see what has happened in the field I was 
sideways involved in (in the mid-eighties) when we used Kalman Filtering 
to describe EEG-signals in the time domain (of course we used FFT to 
decribe it in the frequency domain) and we used pseudo-random generators 
as noise source to reconstruct the EEG. We then encountered many 
problems due to the pseudo-nature of the noise for which we developed 
various countermeasure algorithms. Apparently this development goes on 
until the current time.
If I remember correctly C., the Knuth you mentioned had already written 
several articles on the subject in my time (we're getting old!!). But 
I'm not a mathematician so most of it went over my head even then.

But it is a nice discussion althoguh grossly OT.
Joep