Windows
Microsoft Windows releases newer than 95A feature the CryptoAPI (CAPI) API that gathers entropy in a similar fashion to Linux kernel's /dev/random.
Windows's CryptoAPI uses the binary registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Cryptography\RNG\Seed to store a seeded value from all of its entropy sources.
Because CryptoAPI is closed-source, some free and open source software applications running on the Windows platform use other measures to get randomness. For example, GnuPG, as of version 1.06, uses a variety of sources such as the number of free bytes in memory that combined with a random seed generate the desired randomness it needs.
Programmers using CAPI can get entropy by calling CAPI's CryptGenRandom, after properly initialising it.
Read more about this topic: Entropy (computing)
Famous quotes containing the word windows:
“The house of my body has spoken
often as you rebuild me like blocks,
and promise to come visit
when Im finally adjusted on safe land,
and am livable, joist to joist
with storm windows and screens ...”
—Anne Sexton (19281974)
“The frost was on the village roofs as white as ocean foam;
The good red fires were burning bright in every longshore home;
The windows sparkled clear, and the chimneys volleyed out;
And I vow we sniffed the victuals as the vessel went about.”
—Robert Louis Stevenson (18501894)
“I came on a great house in the middle of the night
Its open lighted doorway and its windows all alight,
And all my friends were there and made me welcome too;
But I woke in an old ruin that the winds howled through;
And when I pay attention I must out and walk
Among the dogs and horses that understand my talk.”
—William Butler Yeats (18651939)