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SubjectRe: How can Emacs get a unique ID per Linux reboot?
On Thu, Jun 03, 1999 at 06:48:07AM -0700, Tim Smith wrote:
> On Tue, 1 Jun 1999, G. Allen Morris III wrote:
> > How about generating a 32bit random number at boot time. There
> > is a 1 in 2**32 of getting the same number after a reboot, but
> > that should not be a large problem.
>
> That 1 in 2**32 is the chance of duplicating any specific number in the
> sequence. The chances of *some* member of the sequence being a duplicate
> is much higher. This is called the "birthday paradox" because if you
> pick ~30 people at random, it is highly likely that two of them will
> have the same birthday.
>

but we do want the chances that the specific value that BOOTID had when
emacs crashed last time around is duplicated when emacs is run again on that
file. ought to be quite small.

-- arvind

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