No doubt wondering WTF was taking the officer so long...

More like a signal that he was out of toilet paper (which explains why he was "lingering outside" prior to the foot tapping).

A lot of us here on /. are IT workers, why not just ask us?

How has the current economic landscape affected your employer?

1. We're hiring!
2. No layoffs, but hiring's on hold.
3. We're "upgraded" a few members of our staff.
4. We've laid off <= 5% of our staff.
5. We've laid off <= 10% of our staff.
6. We've laid off <= 25% of our staff.
7. We've laid off <= 50% of our staff.
8. No one left but me.
9. I've been sacked you insensitive clod.

It might actually provide some useful insight. #6 applies to me.

I'm using my 1984 Atari Touch Tablet you insensitive clod; one 535 x 383 resolution picture per page is a lot to ask for.

The first question that came to my mind after reading the article was are these laser generated random numbers suitable for cryptography? The article just states that random numbers are "vital" to cryptography, not that this method generates cryptographic grade random numbers. Certainly the brief explanation on how it works leaves a lot of room for question.

BTW, CryptMT is a simple stream cipher based on the Mersenne Twister. Sadly, the last time I looked at it it lacked any solid proofs. Nonetheless, Mersenne Twister is an excellent pseudorandom number generator.