Horton

Re: Random not so random

Marco Colombo <pgsql@esiway.net>

View thread View on postgr.es
From: Marco Colombo <pgsql@esiway.net>
To: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Cc: pgsql-general@postgresql.org
Date: 2004-10-06T17:01:11Z
Lists: pgsql-general 
On Tue, 5 Oct 2004, Tom Lane wrote:

> now.tv_sec, and it's perfectly portable.  No one in their right mind
> expects random(3) to be cryptographically secure anyway, so doing more
> doesn't seem warranted.

Tom, having a source of "real" random data isn't useful just for crypto
applications. No PRNG is perfect, when it comes to statistics.

> The various proposals to create a more-secure, less-portable variant
> of random() don't seem appropriate to me for beta.  But I'd not object
> to someone whipping up a contrib module for 8.1 or beyond.

Agreed.

.TM.
-- 
       ____/  ____/   /
      /      /       /			Marco Colombo
     ___/  ___  /   /		      Technical Manager
    /          /   /			 ESI s.r.l.
  _____/ _____/  _/		       Colombo@ESI.it