Jim_from_Oz

Just a comment on random number generation. I was engaged by an entrepreneur to create an engine that would spit out random numbers for use in on-line gaming. Mathematical routines of themselves are unsatisfactory, because a hacker could read the sequence, work back to find the seed and then work forward again to forecast the upcoming numbers. The big thing, arising mainly from cryptographic research, is to use entropic generators (ERNGs) which rely on natural sources to provide genuinely random values. Sources which have been used include the output from geiger counters, electron fluctuations in various constructs such as transistors and so forth. My intention was to have a box with a number of loudspeakers tuned in to different radio stations, with a single microphone to pick up the mingled sounds and output a waveform that I could sample. I did a proof of concept program using .WAV files before my client ran out of money and disappeared into smoke. My program was written in C#. Incidentally, in the gaming industry, it is not enough just to write the generator. One must also write a series of monitoring and validation programs to satisfy the licensing authorities.

mebegaming

i dont know much about code (i signed up for the computer programming class this year in my school) but i do know a little about "batch" promts. this is a prank that i made for when i go back to school

what this does is it runs the shutdown command waiting 60 seconds, and it trys to connect to google (its just one that i found that worked) 30 times which takes roughly 1 second each, at this point it stops the shutdown and brings up youtube.com (this distracts them on what i will do next) i make about 40 icons on the desktop just saying random stuff. and then it waits about 40 seconds and then it makes about 40 message windows pop up saying more random stuff. and finaly after 35 more seconds it pops up the last window saying that i will probably do it agian and at the same time it plays a sound of homer saying "hmm all this computer hacking is making me thirsty"

this does not put any damage on the computer, because the computers have deep freeze at my school. they can just restart the computer and everything will go back to normal

i wont be putting the code here because 1-i dont realy think you would like looking at it 2-you would need the sound file of homer 3-it dosent work the same on all computers

i am just proud that one of the first peices of code i wrote was so cool

__________________
"Would you rather be outside bouncing around a ball? Or would you rather be inside on your computer, doing something that matters?" -Eric Cartman - Southpark, world of warcraft episode

MattBro

RNG has always been a problem. I've heard of the idea of using radio frequencies before, it's certainly feasable.

Oddly enough, I'm writing an online game server at the moment. But due to it's performance requirements I'm generating random numbers based on tick count / random memory word.