There are a variety of polyhedra that make fair dice, where each side has an equal probability of being thrown. These are known as isohedra. Some of these have 60 sides, which would be enough to imprint the letters of the alphabet, both upper- and lowercase, and the digits from 0 to 9 (well, not quite: you'd have to leave out two characters, so maybe two of the problematic ones, like O and 0 or 1 and l might go.)

This dice would be a true random password generator, unlike those deterministic PSEUDOrandom generators most people have access to on their computers.
-- AntiQuark, Jun 21 2005

Isohedron http://mathworld.wo....com/Isohedron.html
All the known isohedra. [AntiQuark, Jun 21 2005]

Better Isohedron Page http://www.advancin...ters.php/faq_item/2
Has more detailed explanations w.r.t. fair dice. Also mentions the d100. [AntiQuark, Jun 22 2005]

The Diceware Passphrase Home Page http://world.std.co...nhold/diceware.html
Diceware™ is a method for picking passphrases that uses dice to select words at random from a special list called the Diceware Word List. [joeforker, Jun 22 2005]

The other night, I had three dice in my hand, and I was saying to myself over and over again, "roll three 6's", and I was shaking the dice and trying to imagine three six's and how the little black dots would look.

Well, anyway, I rolled two 6's and one 1. but you know what? On the opposite side of that one is a six. Pretty cool, right? Anyway, is something purely random if its apparently random nature is only the result of complex initial conditions? I mean, cause those pseudo random number generators have some pretty complex initial conditions.
-- daseva, Jun 21 2005


Wouldn't the dice need to be fairly large to accomodate 60 sides?

<tr>I was listening to the radio the other day and there was a quiz question posed (I think it was on "Car Talk" which, when riding with my husband, is de rigeur programming) that asked what numbers need to be on two 6-sided die to be able to represent all of the days of the month. Dates below the 10th are shown with a leading zero. 12 sides available....</tr>
-- bristolz, Jun 21 2005


First die: 0,1,2,4,5,6 / Second die: 3,0,7,8,9,1

dammit! up through 30 days?

First die: 0,1,2,7,8,9 / Second die: 1,2,0,4,5,6

Impossible! Your leading zero rule must be abolished!
-- daseva, Jun 21 2005


No, not impossible.

Oooh. DrBob gets it below. Nice!
-- bristolz, Jun 21 2005


Well, after experimenting with roman numerals for a bit I finally cracked it.

Die one: 0,1,2,3,7,8
Die two: 0,1,2,4,5,6

There's a bit of lateral thinking required to produce three of the days!
-- DrBob, Jun 21 2005


Easy... in base six!
-- the_jxc, Jun 21 2005


Ahh, use the 6 for 9. damn! eye feil dom.
-- daseva, Jun 22 2005


Yup.
-- bristolz, Jun 22 2005


Yaay!
-- DrBob, Jun 23 2005


At work, I have to change my password every month,and have to have different passwords for each of the many different applications i use.
The theory is that makes these systems more secure, and if someone guesses a password, they are restricted to what can be accessed!
The reality is that my memory is crap, so i have to write all my passwords down or i forget them, compromising all that security.

I think my point is, you can come up with the greatest system for generating unbreakable passwords, however if you give it to me, you might as well leave everything unlocked!
-- MikeOliver, Jul 21 2006


All of my passwords are the same for all of my websites/logons/banks/credit cards/home equity lines. And they're all my usernames.

<font size="too tiny for idiots">(side note: I wonder how many people will attempt to log on as me only to be thwarted?)</font>
-- shapu, Jul 21 2006



random, halfbakery