From: thealmightydaev@... (Dave Dembinski)
Date: 2003-06-27T08:40:34+09:00
Subject: Re: Inconsistent rand() results with MySQL Ruby (long)

Paul DuBois <paul@snake.net> wrote in message news:<p05210624bb20cc97d5c0@[192.168.0.34]>...
> At 5:26 +0900 6/26/03, Dave Dembinski wrote:
> 
> [summary: ORDER BY RAND() * 10 doesn't seem very random]
> 
> 
> 
> What's your version of MySQL?  A change was made in 3.23.56 to intialize
> the randomizer better.

Aha!  I've 3.23.55.  Well, I guess that explains part of the problem. 
I want to thank everyone for helping, and it's now working somewhat
the way I want it.  Instead of relying on rand() by itself I'm passing
it a seed composed of a number generated by ruby's rand() and the
current system time in seconds, and that's giving me some comfortably
random results.

_dave