Re: 31 bit pseudo-random number gen in C, C++ & dsPIC assembly code

"Mike Amling" <nospam@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:pOW1f.476$Ql1.53@chiapp18.algx.net...
> John E. Hadstate wrote:
>>>
>>>It's not an unfortunate name collision, they're the same
>>>thing (if possibly scaled differently). There's a
>>>Richard Feynman book on the thermodynamics of computation
>>>that explains this, and other concepts that seem really
>>>twisted but really aren't after you think hard enough
>>>about them*.
>>
>>
>> They can't be quite the same thing since thermodynamic
>> entropy measures a property of physical systems while
>> information theoretic entropy measures a property of
>> something that is a figment of our imaginations (a useful
>> figment, to be sure, but "bits" have no physical
>> manifestation and are not constrained by the laws of
>> physics).
>
> Claude Shannon didn't pick the term 'entropy' by
> coincidence. Thermodynamic entropy and cryptographic
> entropy are both the same function of the probabilities of
> a system being in each of its possible states.
>

What does it mean for a continuous, physical system to be
"in each of its possible states"? So far as I know,
thermodynamics pre-dates quantum theory and, as such, views
the physical world as a continuum.
Received on Sat Oct 15 04:38:56 2005