Hi!
I posted a 'false' solution some time ago, because I didn't know that you  
all would make such a big problem out of randomness. Here my solution...
Record running water and mix it with tv noise. Then digitize this and use  
it to scramble the characters like this... ;-)
RANDOMIZE TIMER
OPEN "WATER.RAW" FOR BINARY INPUT AS #1 ' the sample e.g. 500.000 bytes
FOR I=1 TO 25
  F=0
  WHILE F=0
    X=INT(RND*1000)+2
    GET$ 1,X,B$                         ' get 'random' number of bytes
    X=ASCII(RIGHT$(B$,1)) AND 3         ' make byte 0-3
    Y=ASCII(LEFT$(B$,1)) AND 3          '      "
    IF X>0 AND Y>0 AND XY THEN        ' delete XY if you want ;-)
       F=1
    END IF
  WEND
  Temp$=MID$(Text$,X,1)
  MID$(Text$,X,1)=MID$(Text$,Y,1)
  MID$(Text$,Y,1)=Temp$
NEXT I
CLOSE#1
END
Maybe this is random (I'm not a mathe wiz), but IF... it would be an  
'overkill routine' just to scramble three characters! ;-)
Just to put some oil in the flames...
Marvin
--- Budweiser Write v3.11 R
---------------