Edit: tachyon updated to fix. Leaving my comment for posterity, but it no longer applies.

Sorry Tachyon, but you're wrong. In roughly 2^16 tries, you've got 50% odds of finding a collision - not 50% odds of finding a collision with a given result. So you have 50% odds of two numbers in the 2^16 tries colliding, but you do not have 50% odds of a number in the 2^16 tries colliding with the result of one specific output.

You've mistaken "collision with a given point" with "collision between any two points." ++ for bringing up the birthday paradox, anyways.

In reply to Re^2: On showing the weakness in the MD5 digest function and getting bitten by scalar context by danderson
in thread On showing the weakness in the MD5 digest function and getting bitten by scalar context by grinder

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.