2.9-2.11, due on September 17

1. (Difficult) While my eyes saw many of the words in the Linear Feedback Shift Register Sequences section, not much of it was comprehended.  I found the notation to be somewhat difficult (although I have confidence it would be correct and comprehensible with more effort).  To me it makes more sense to have x_n on the left hand side of the equation than, for example x_{n+4}.  That way you think of "yourself" on the left-hand side, and how "you" are defined based on other numbers.  Maybe it's just the way my mind works from years of programming and using "=" as an assignment operator?  Also thinking of addition and subtraction mod 2 is less intuitive to me than thinking of XOR, but I appreciate the alternative perspective on the same idea.
2. (Reflective) I've come across the idea of one-time pads in security before.  The way I had thought about them was, why not just use the same safe courrier to deliver the message as who delivered the one-time pad.  The example of the hotline between Washington and Moscow made sense though.  The one-time pad was delivered previously, then the message, who's delivery would presumably was more time sensitive was delivered later.
   The section on Pseudo-number random number generation makes me curious about how modern operating systems and programming environments generate pseudo-random numbers.