getting more random

[Benjamin Kosnik]

> Anyway, give me a few hours to have a closer look to the patch: modulo
> the small changes already mentioned by Ed, I think we could certainly
> start from that code and then move from it. 

Cool. Same here.

> Personally, my higher
> priority would be replacing the algorithm for Gamma variables with "A
> Simple Method for Generating Gamma Variables" by Marsaglia and Tang (I
> mentioned in that thread in December). But in general, since we are
> talking about mainline, we can certainly work incrementally, no hurry
> to have something stable from the binary point of view too. 

Yep. 

> One last
> thing: I have some decent code implementing actual testing of the
> distributions, developed with a friend of mine (he wants to remain
> anonymous). I can pass it to Ed for further work (last time we checked
> one of the available distributions didn't pass a test and we suspected
> the testing infrastructure itself had some remaining glitches)

Hey hey! Great news indeed. (FWIW, FSF has anonymous assignments.)

Look forward to seeing this.

best,
benjamin