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xor: how come so slow?

Sion Arrowsmith siona at chiark.greenend.org.uk
Fri Oct 17 08:59:27 EDT 2008 
[I think these attributions are right]
Steven D'Aprano  <steve at REMOVE-THIS-cybersource.com.au> wrote:
>On Fri, 17 Oct 2008 22:45:19 +1300, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>> In message <010845d8$0$20638$c3e8da3 at news.astraweb.com>, Steven D'Aprano
>> wrote:
>>> ... why do you say that xoring random data with other random data
>>> produces less randomness than you started with?
>> blocksize <= number_of_blocks * blocksize
>I must be thick, because that looks like a non sequitor to me. I don't 
>see the relevance.

Lawrence originally said something along the lines of this just
being a way of taking some random data and producing "less random
data". You're reading it as "(less random) data". The intent (I
assume) is for it to be read as "less (random data)".

Maybe it should be "fewer random data". After all, each byte in
the block is discrete.

-- 
\S -- siona at chiark.greenend.org.uk -- http://www.chaos.org.uk/~sion/
   "Frankly I have no feelings towards penguins one way or the other"
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