Motivation

One of the key features of modern computational systems is their ability to generate random numbers. Mathematicians and engineers have been and are still working out complex algorithms and hardware extensions to improve the entropy of random number generators (RNGs) by adding incalculable momentums to the deterministic chain of computer processing. On Linux systems, unpredictable hardware interrupts like HID events are fed to an entropy pool inside the kernel, which serves as the source of /dev/random and /dev/urandom. Quantum physicians have even manufactured PCI cards to allow the use of real physical randomness by analyzing radioactive decay or sending photons to a semi-transparent mirror and detecting the through-passing particles, as a further stage in this basic principle.

Especially in cryptography, indeterministic random numbers are needed to guarantee an adequate security. Predictable encryption keys undermine every attempt in creating a trustworthy environment inside the wide and rude spheres of the internet.

But still, there are circumstances in which it just doesn't matter. This is the point, where hrng steps in.

Idea

The main principle of the Humanoid Random Number Generator (hrng) is the absence of randomness. Masses of human beings cannot act randomly, with "randomly" meaning "unpredictably": they tend to imitate and do whatever The Others do. The imitation of third-party behaviour is unreasonable and with reason being the fundamental part of every scientific research that aims at being reproducible, absence of reason leads to irreproducible and therefore random results. Oh, wait a second. We just found out that unreasonable behaviour actually IS random. So is imitation.

If imitation is random, one can simply take the behaviour of another human being and imitate it to generate a random event. To you, I am one of these other humans, and I advise you to take 255 as your preferred random number.

Concept

The Humanoid Random Number Generator always returns 255.

Download

• hrng-1.0 (2008-03-28)

Installation and usage

Before using hrng, you have to unzip and compile it.

$ tar xzvf hrng-1.0.tar.gz
$ cd hrng-1.0/
$ make hrng

If you want to, you can copy the binary in a folder inside your $PATH (e.g. /usr/local/bin/).

# cp hrng /usr/local/bin/

That's it! You can now enjoy the possibilites of the Humanoid Random Number Generator by running

hrng [-h] [N]

    -h    Prints the usage information
     N    Specifies the amount of random numbers to generate
          (default: infinite)

Have fun!

Last change: Sun, 27 Jul 2008 01:45:11 +0200

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