Re: wierd random number behavior

[Paul Box]

Sven N. Thommesen writes:
 > Paul,
 > 
 > a couple of comments:
 > 
 > 1. Swarm was not designed to run on the old Pet computer ;-) 
 > (Commodore is long gone!)
 > 
 
This is the same computer that I had at swarmfest.  It's a compaq with 
many windoze-specific optimizations, and not the greatest thing in the 
world for a linux user.  I had a few choice words in private with
people there about compaq laptops!

> 2. You must be aware that if all you want is doubles uniformly distributed
 > over [0.0,1.0) you don't need to call the distribution object at all; any
 > generator will give you that with
 > 
 >      randNum = [randomGenerator getDoubleSample];
 > 
 > or, if you don't need full precision, 
 > 
 >      randNum = [randomGenerator getThinDoubleSample];

Heh, I guess there's some advantage to reading documentation...  No,
that code was swiped directly from Barry MacMullen's hello world
code.  I will try that generator tonight when I have time to
dink aroun^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H investigate  the problem some more.

 > 
 > 3. Beyond that, the behavior you describe is troubling. Please tell us more
 > about the hardware and software environment provided by your laptop.
 > 
 > Sven
 > 

I have plenty of praise for your random number generators, and I would 
very much like to find out what is happening here.

Equipment:  Compaq presario 1625 laptop, p100 chip (AMD), 32M RAM, 3 gig HD

Software:  Slackware linux 2.0.34, gcc 2.8.1

(you ask for the environment *provided* by the laptop-- I had to
purchace a copy of partition magic to get the HD to partition in a way 
that accepted a linux partition somewhere, as Compaq's Windoze
distribution makes it pretty much impossible otherwise.  I also had to 
get some precompiled binaries for the video card since it's a neomagic 
card that keeps its driver code proprietary- the driver completely
breaks if you recompile the kernel using gcc 2.8.1, and has some
bizarre aversion to projecting through an LCD projector.  Oh, and the
internal modem is useless with anything except windoze, so i had to
purchase another one.  This information is probably not helpful to the
discussion at hand, but I felt like venting...  There, I feel much better!)

 > 
 > 
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 > 
-- 
//////////////////////////////////////////////////
// Dr. Paul Box
// Dept of Geography and Earth Resources
// UMC 5240
// Utah State University      http://www.nr.usu.edu/~sanduku
// Logan, UT  84321           Phone: 435-797-2546
//////////////////////////////////////////////////

*  If Elvis was so great, why was he buried in the back yard like a
*  hamster?

                  ==================================
   Swarm-Support is for discussion of the technical details of the day
   to day usage of Swarm.  For list administration needs (esp.
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   with "help" in the body of the message.