spoon-discuss: dice server

[Joel Uckelman <uckelman@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

In case anyone needs one, there's a rudimentary dice roller now available 
at http://www.nomic.net/~test/cgi-bin/rand.pl, in case you need some random 
numbers. The input format should be familiar to anyone who's played a lot 
of wargames or RPGs. Dice are specified as qdn, where q is the quantity and 
n is the number of faces; e.g., 7d6 would be seven six-siders. I haven't 
analysed the data yet to test its randomness, but it uses /dev/urandom, and 
that seems to be a good source based on samples from it I've tested.

In the distant future, I'll probably spruce up the interface, add some 
error-checking (it doesn't complain about non-integer or negative numbers 
of faces or rolls), allow it to respond to mailed requests for numbers, and 
move it to dice.nomic.net on one of my DECstations (to give it something to 
do).

-- 
J.