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not random enough?
in an ironic inversion of precedent, today i was informed by senior management that i was not random enough.
...the TSP install uses the system's /dev/random device. This generates a random number based on keyboard/mouse/network/etc interrupts. So on "quiet" systems there may not be enough randomness available, and as it would be insecure to return something that wasn't random, the call blocks. Hence the "hang".
so, sure, there is a sound technical explanation for this accusation, but the sublime implications remain relatively disturbing. that an authority figure could find jack, an ex-skate punk, class-clown type of kid, to be lacking in random is daunting indeed; clearly, i've been doing the 8-5, 401k thing for waaay to long.
actually, i guess one might craft a reciprocal technical foundation for this too...
per the above statement, if the system call() blocks [ed. halts forward processing] whilst waiting for more units of a finite resource, it implicitly defines both importance and scarcity of that resource. observing this, one might then realize that they musn't waste their random.
there goes my quota for the day....