Differences in random number generators

I was playing AP last night, and some one wrote that the different poker sites have different random number generators. Now I am not saying that this affects your "luck", but is this true? I thought this type of program was pretty straight forward. I am pretty sure I was supposed to write one once in college, but I dropped the class.

My question is, are the sites different in how the random card orders are generated? Not that I think it makes difference in win/loss %, but just curious.

[cardcounter0]

No, they are all the same. There is only one random sequence of numbers, and there is only one method to generate it.

[Rudbaeck]

Yes, they are.

The bad sites use software algorithms to generate the seed, based on some rather deterministic pseudo-random seed. These, while better than they were a decade ago, are still kinda bad.

The good sites use a completely random physical device as seed, usually thermal noise. Or if they are cool and spendy radioactive decay. Both are actually, physically, random.

Now this has little practical effect, as even the bad method is about a billion billion times as random as the best Vegas dealer. It's just a question of how many billion billion times as random they are.

(Unless, ofcouse, someone fubars badly and manages a rerun of the Planet Poker fiasco of half a decade ago.)

[waffle]

stars uses a physical device. party doesn't, they use sun's SeedGenerator which gets entropy from the machine's VM, i think

[waffle]

[ QUOTE ]
No, they are all the same. There is only one random sequence of numbers, and there is only one method to generate it.

[/ QUOTE ]

you don't know anything about computing.

[cardcounter0]

If (select sarcasm from waffle) is NULL then call displaygrin();

[img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[OrcaDK]

[ QUOTE ]
If (select sarcasm from waffle) is NULL then call displaygrin();

[img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

Syntax error. That should be

if(waffle.sarcasm == null) {
displayGrin();
}

[cardcounter0]

You mean there is more than one programming language???

SELECT A.RECNAME,
A.FIELDNAME,
decode(B.FIELDTYPE, '0', 'CHAR', '2', 'NUMERIC', '3', 'DECIMAL', '4', 'DATE', 'NA') as TYPE,
' x ',
B.LENGTH,
C.LONGNAME
FROM PSRECFIELDDB A, PSDBFIELD B, PSDBFLDLABL C
WHERE A.RECNAME in
('MASTER_ITEM_EC',
'INV_ITEMS_EC',
'ITEM_VENDOR_EC',
'ITM_VNDR_LOC_EC',
'ITM_VNDR_UOM_EC',
'ITM_VNDR_UMPR_EC',
'PUR_ITM_ATTR_EC',
'INV_ITM_UOM_EC')
AND A.FIELDNAME = B.FIELDNAME
AND C.FIELDNAME = A.FIELDNAME
AND C.DEFAULT_LABEL = 1
ORDER BY 1, 2

[Kablooie]

Let us all bow to the Lords of Kobol...

[krimson]

The RNG's used by poker sites may be different, but they all produce the same result...