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