[R-pkgs] New package 'random' for non-deterministic random number

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

Dear useRs,

A few days ago, the initial version 0.1.0 of a new package 'random' was
uploaded to CRAN.

The random packages provides convenient access to the non-deterministic
random numbers provided by the random.org site created by Mads Haahr
(http://www.random.org).  

While certain hardware and software solutions that provide access to
non-deterministic random-numbers exist, few if any are portable across all
the hardware platforms R supports. Retrieving non-deterministic random
numbers may be beneficial to seed parallel simulations with independent
draws, to obtain portable initializations for other RNGs, to validate
simulation with non-deterministic RNGs, or simply for fun and
experimentations.

The package contains five simple functions 
     randomNumber	(random integeres between min, max w/ duplicates)
     randomSequence	(random sequences between min, max w/o duplicates)
     randomBytes	(in hex, dec, oct or bin)
     randomBufferStatus (to query the server status)
     sufficientBits	(boolean test of randomBufferStats vs rec'ed value)

Also included are two vignettes that can be accessed via
     vignette("random-intro", package = "random")
     vignette("random-essay", package = "random")

'random-intro' provides some background on the package as well as initial
test results using the dieharder suite by Robert G. Brown. I hope to expand
on these tests in the near future. 'random-essay' is a transcript of the web
essay at http://www.random.org/essay.html and provides some background on the
random.org service.

Some information is / will be at 
     http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/code/random.html will 

Comments or suggestions are more than welcome!

Regards, Dirk

-- 
Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something. 
                                                  -- Thomas A. Edison