[Haskell-cafe] ANN: RandomDotOrg-0.1

[Don Stewart]

mad.one:
> Hi,
> 
> I've just uploaded a package to hackage which is an interface to the
> random.org random number generator.
> 
> For those who don't know, random.org provides random data through the
> use of atmospheric noise rather than a PRNG that would typically be
> invoked if you were to use the System.Random module or somesuch.
> 
> As of current, it can only generate a list of random numbers. However,
> random.org also provides an interface to generate random strings,
> randomize an input list and a random sequence generator (the
> difference being that the sequence generator will not repeat itself,
> while the integer one may.)
> 
> Would anybody find these interfaces useful? I think the random number
> generator alone is pretty nice, but I'm thinking of expanding it in
> the future with these other things since they're nice to have if you
> want randomness anyway.
> 
> You can get it from [1] or just:
> 
>  $ cabal install RandomDotOrg
> 
> The development repository is tracked using git; you can get yourself
> a clone by doing
> 
>  $ git clone git://github.com/thoughtpolice/randomdotorg.git
> 

Can we expose it as a library, perhaps as a PRNG for System.Random?
Also, can I get the noise directly off the network as a bytestring
(maybe via download-curl ?)

-- Don