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Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2002 14:17:38 +0000
From: wli@holomorphy.com
To: "Richard B. Johnson" <root@chaos.analogic.com>
Cc: Andrea Arcangeli <andrea@suse.de>, wli@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk,
        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, riel@surriel.com, hch@infradead.org,
        phillips@bonn-fries.net
Subject: Re: 2.4.19pre2aa1
Message-ID: <20020312141738.D14628@holomorphy.com>
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	"Richard B. Johnson" <root@chaos.analogic.com>,
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In-Reply-To: <20020312135605.P25226@dualathlon.random> <Pine.LNX.3.95.1020312083126.14299A-100000@chaos.analogic.com>
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In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.95.1020312083126.14299A-100000@chaos.analogic.com>; from root@chaos.analogic.com on Tue, Mar 12, 2002 at 08:33:23AM -0500
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On Tue, Mar 12, 2002 at 08:33:23AM -0500, Richard B. Johnson wrote:
> This is a simple random number generator. It takes a pointer to your
> own private long, somewhere in your code, and returns a long random
> number with a period of 0xfffd4011. I ran a program for about a
> year, trying to find a magic number that will produce a longer
> period.
> 
> You could add a ldiv and return the modulus to set hash-table limits.
> ANDs are not good because, in principle, you could get many numbers
> in which all the low bits are zero.
> 
> 
> The advantage of this simple code is it works quickly. The disadvantages
> are, of course, its not portable and a rotation of a binary number
> is not a mathematical function, lending itself to rigorous analysis.

Would you mind explaining what the point of this is? AFAICT this is
meaningless noise inspired by the words "/dev/random".


Bill
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