compressing randomly-generated numbers

[Damien Miller]

On Wed, 9 Aug 2006, Travis H. wrote:

> Hey,
> 
> I was mulling over some old emails about randomly-generated numbers
> and realized that if I had an imperfectly random source (something
> less than 100% unpredictable), that compressing the output would
> compress it to the point where it was nearly so.  Would there be any
> reason to choose one algorithm over another for this application?

What are you trying to achieve?

An ARC4 keystream derived from fixed key is 100% predictable and yet
cannot be compressed by anything you would normally call a "compression
algorithm".

-d


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