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American Heritage Dictionary - Cite This Source - Share This

ran·dom       (rān'dəm)  Pronunciation Key  adj.   Having no specific pattern, purpose, or objective: random movements. See Synonyms at chance. Mathematics & Statistics Of or relating to a type of circumstance or event that is described by a probability distribution. Of or relating to an event in which all outcomes are equally likely, as in the testing of a blood sample for the presence of a substance. [From at random, by chance, at great speed, from Middle English randon, speed, violence, from Old French, from randir, to run, of Germanic origin.] ran'dom·ly adv., ran'dom·ness n.

WordNet - Cite This Source - Share This

randomness
noun
1.	(thermodynamics) a thermodynamic quantity representing the amount of energy in a system that is no longer available for doing mechanical work; "entropy increases as matter and energy in the universe degrade to an ultimate state of inert uniformity"
2.	the quality of lacking any predictable order or plan

Free On-line Dictionary of Computing - Cite This Source - Share This

randomness
1. An inexplicable misfeature; gratuitous inelegance.
2. A hack or crock that depends on a complex combination of coincidences (or, possibly, the combination upon which the crock depends for its accidental failure to malfunction). "This hack can output characters 40--57 by putting the character in the four bit accumulator field of an XCT and then extracting six bits - the low 2 bits of the XCT opcode are the right thing." "What randomness!"
3. Of people, synonymous with "flakiness". The connotation is that the person so described is behaving weirdly, incompetently, or inappropriately for reasons which are (a) too tiresome to bother inquiring into, (b) are probably as inscrutable as quantum phenomena anyway, and (c) are likely to pass with time. "Maybe he has a real complaint, or maybe it's just randomness. See if he calls back."
[The Jargon File]

Jargon File - Cite This Source - Share This

randomness

n.
1. An inexplicable misfeature; gratuitous inelegance.
2. A hack or crock that depends on a complex combination of coincidences (or, possibly, the combination upon which the crock depends for its accidental failure to malfunction). "This hack can output characters 40-57 by putting the character in the four-bit accumulator field of an XCT and then extracting six bits -- the low 2 bits of the XCT opcode are the right thing." "What randomness!"
3. Of people, synonymous with `flakiness'. The connotation is that the person so described is behaving weirdly, incompetently, or inappropriately for reasons which are (a) too tiresome to bother inquiring into, (b) are probably as inscrutable as quantum phenomena anyway, and (c) are likely to pass with time. "Maybe he has a real complaint, or maybe it's just randomness. See if he calls back."

Despite the negative connotations jargon uses of this term have, it is worth noting that randomness can actually be a valuable resource, very useful for applications in cryptography and elsewhere. Computers are so thoroughly deterministic that they have a hard time generating high-quality randomess, so hackers have sometimes felt the need to built special-purpose contraptions for this purpose alone. One well-known website offers random bits generated by radioactive decay (http://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/). Another derives random bits from images of Lava Lite lamps (http://lavarand.sgi.com/). (Hackers invariably find the latter hilarious. If you have to ask why, you'll never get it.)