title: seed random numbers in c
body: <p>I am currently trying to teach myself c programming.  I am stuck on learning random numbers.  Many of the websites I visit use the time() function as a method of seeding the random number generator.  But many posts and websites I have read say that using the system clock as a method of producing random numbers is flawed.  My question is "what exactly should I be using to generate truly random numbers?  Should I just manipulate the numbers with arithmetic or is there something else?  To be specific, I'm looking for the "best practices" that programmers follow to generate random numbers in the c programming language.</p>
  
  <p>Here is an example of a website I am talking about:</p>
  
  <p><a href="http://faq.cprogramming.com/cgi-bin/smartfaq.cgi?answer=1042005782&amp;id=1043284385" rel="nofollow">http://faq.cprogramming.com/cgi-bin/smartfaq.cgi?answer=1042005782&amp;id=1043284385</a></p>