00481 Day 18, Dice or no Dice?

So what's it to be?

Well it's not as simple as it sounds.

See, I've only just gone and cracked the whole "electronic" dice thing when in comes the devil's advocate.

"Alright?" says I.

"Not bad," says he. "What you got there?"

"This? Oh, this is just an array of LEDs hooked up to a PICAXE 8 microcontroller with a bunch of resistors, sunk in resin, all wired up to a small bank of coin cells, hidden in a matchbox and triggered by the opening the tray to produce a random dice throw as indicated by the pattern of the lights. See:"

"Is that all?" says he.

"Not quite," says I. "The dice will re-randomise every time the box is opened and closed and there's also a compartment where I have secreted a small die, just in case of electronic failure."

"Nice touch," says he.

"Thanks," says I, warming nicely by the heat of my awesome.

"Of course, it'd be nice if it really was random," says he, smarming.

"It is random," says I, still basking in the glow of my brightly burning pride.

"Nuh-uh," says he.

"Says who?" says I, beginning the concern.

"You want to listen to Marcus, Colva, Timothy and Melvin, is what you want to do. They'll point out that your 'random' dice are nothing but a bunch of deterministic, instruction-following, dressed-up-as-chance-but-being-anything-but, fall-short-of-an-unpredictable-outcome farce of a failure."

"Oh."