[NCLUG] Python v.s. Ruby, and PRNGs

Paul Hummer paul at eventuallyanyway.com
Thu Apr 10 11:14:41 MDT 2008


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> (Anyway, this is probably getting a little off-topic. Let me know
> if anyone doesn't want to hear about this any more...)
Actually, I find this quite on topic.  Programming languages aside,
the methods for generating random numbers is something every computer
person should understand (and definitely from a geek perspective).
Having discussed random and urandom differences, I'm quite interested
to see if there's a noticeable amount of difference when using entropy
as opposed to not.

For instance, when overwriting a hard drive, is it really necessary to
use /dev/random, or can /dev/urandom get close enough?

Paul
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