Re: real random

In article <b048de57-aaad-4cb4-b144-a61a4e573183@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> websnarf <websnarf@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
....
Look. People crack DVDs, HDMI, etc, even when there is little
monetary incentive. The reason is because there is no way to keep the
debugger out of a mainstream system -- i.e., they can't hide the
details, as much as they would want to.

That is, complete information on how it works is available.

Yet poker sites; where there is a *LOT* of
monetary incentive remain relative unhacked (I won't claim totally,
but certainly many have been in long term operation, and are
profitable and "fair".) How could that be possible if you can't
generate random numbers?

By not showing the process that generates numbers? For those sites to
work it is sufficient if the numbers already generated give insufficient
information to predict the next number. Whether it is a true random,
a pseudo random or not a random sequence at all. I think a Mersenne
twister with long enough perdiod would be suited perfectly. Moreover,
I do not think the individual players on such sites even get sufficient
information about the numbers generated so far (in many of those games
distributed cards remain hidden).
--
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