[Q]:Generate Unique ID's

[Erik Max Francis]

Steve Holden wrote:

> That little word "probably" is problematic, of course. The probability
> that
> the *apparently unaltered* texts are generated before the random
> number
> generator produces its list of a billion zeroes would be what,
> exactly?

Much higher.  The probability that a XORing a random sequence of bytes
to a cleartext will result in a cyphertext that is valid ASCII and
happens to represent readable text (albeit completely unrelated to the
cleartext) is necessarily much higher than the probability that the
random sequence happens to be all bits zero.  In fact, there are as many
possible sequences that will take the cleartext to some other
apparently-readable text as there are posible readable texts that can
fit in the same size as the cleartext.  But there's only one that's all
bits zero.

-- 
   Erik Max Francis && max at alcyone.com && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
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