Series of minor questions about OpenPGP 5

[Avi]

>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Ingo Klöcker <kloecker at kde.org>
> To: gnupg-users at gnupg.org
> Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2009 21:09:38 +0100
> Subject: Re: Series of minor questions about OpenPGP 5
> On Wednesday 28 January 2009, Robert J. Hansen wrote:
> > Peter Thomas wrote:
> > > I've read about special hardware devices that (claim to) give true
> > > random numbers, some based on thermodynamics some even on quantum
> > > mechanics.
> >
> > True randomness exists in nature, but so far we're unable to detect
> > it. (Seriously.)
> >
> > Imagine you have a Geiger counter and a radioactive sample.  Over
> > each time frame, the Geiger counter reports how many decays it
> > measures. That number becomes your random value.  So far, so random,
> > right?
> >
> > But a Geiger counter has a reset time.  Once it clicks, there's a
> > small time window in which it's unable to detect new decay events.
> > This has the effect of introducing a bias into your random number
> > generator: some decay events will be transformed into non-events.
> >
> > There are some tricks of physics and mathematics you can use to get
> > very high quality values out of this kind of radioisotope setup, but
> > the basic problem remains: even when measuring a totally
> > nondeterministic event, determinism in the detection mechanism will
> > undercut you.  You can get really, really close to truly random
> > numbers, but you can't get there.
>
> See http://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/ for a random number generator using
> radioactive decay.


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That still suffers from Robert's point about the deterministic
effect of resetting the detector.

- --Avi
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