The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.
—Robert R. Coveyou
hogewash
Never pick a fight with a man who buys pixels by the terabyte.
The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.
—Robert R. Coveyou
LOL!
Not all random numbers are equal. With some it is trivial to guess the next random number once you know a few of it’s predecessors. In encryption, in particular, it is often not impossible to get a few of it’s predecessors, so if your random number generator is flawed your encryption is useless. Thus you can’t randomly pick a random number generator. In particular, the default random number generators that come with most computer languages are generally predictable with enough information. Likewise, some random number generators favor certain classes of numbers over others, which means if your simulation relies on the the sequence of 1000 ones and the sequence of 1000 consecutive numbers up and down, and any other sequence having exactly the same probability (as it should) then your results will not be as desired. Thus again, you can’t randomly pick a random number generator… knowing the needs of the application is key.
But the quote does sum it up, even if it sounds weird. 😉