Comment by bloak

The following isn't a serious contribution to the discussion, but somehow this reminds me of the people in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy unable to invent the wheel because they can't decide what colour to make it. Personally I just generate a reasonable number of random bits, encode them in a reasonably efficient manner, and move on to something more interesting. By ignoring "standards" I make my UUIDs just that little bit more "unique"!