Hello Maurice Kinal!

 MK> Your suggestion is perfectly valid but to be honest I still
 MK> believe that a 32-bit hex value for the unixtime or rfc-868
 MK> (seconds since 1900) is the best choice for uniqueness over
 MK> the longest span which is much greater than the 3 year
 MK> period required by the current standard.

But what if two or more systems process messages at exactly the  
same time of the day?  A collision seems far more likely than if  
the respective systems produce random 32 bit strings.

 MK> Also it adds meaning to it beyond what is capable for a
 MK> randomly generated serial number.  Unfortunetly it has a
 MK> shelf life that is quickly running out whereas the random
 MK> one doesn't.

Right. Therefore, I see two +1's for the random [a-z]|[A-Z]|[0- 
9] version, and atleast one -1 for the time-serial version.

--
  ../|ug

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