fwd: What good is this really going to be?

[James H. Cloos Jr.]

Is there any chance of using the code in the Math-Trulyrandom Perl
module for platforms w/o a /dev/random?  The license for the code in
question is:

/*
 *      Physically random numbers (very nearly uniform)
 *      D. P. Mitchell
 *      Modified by Matt Blaze 2/95
 */
/*
 * The authors of this software are Don Mitchell and Matt Blaze.
 *              Copyright (c) 1995 by AT&T.
 * Permission to use, copy, and modify this software without fee
 * is hereby granted, provided that this entire notice is included in
 * all copies of any software which is or includes a copy or
 * modification of this software and in all copies of the supporting
 * documentation for such software.
 *
 * This software may be subject to United States export controls.
 *
 * THIS SOFTWARE IS BEING PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED
 * WARRANTY.  IN PARTICULAR, NEITHER THE AUTHORS NOR AT&T MAKE ANY
 * REPRESENTATION OR WARRANTY OF ANY KIND CONCERNING THE MERCHANTABILITY
 * OF THIS SOFTWARE OR ITS FITNESS FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
 */

It goes on to say that you get about 16 bits of pseudo-entropy out of
each 32 bit return value, and to run it through a post-whitening
function like DES or MD5 to ensure uniform diffusion of said entropy.

Cf the truerand.c file in
<URL:http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/GARY/Math-TrulyRandom-1.0.tar.gz>.

-JimC
-- 
James H. Cloos, Jr.       <http://www.jhcloos.com/cloos/pgp_public_key.txt>
<cloos at jhcloos.com>      E9E9 F828 61A4 6EA9 0F2B  63E7 997A 9F17 ED7D AEA6