“Re: The Incredible Non-Uniqueness of an MD5 Hash”

I actually removed that part of the original message (the second part that you quoted) shortly after posting it, because I figured it out and realized it was just as obvious as I feared. Too late, though, as it had already gone out via email.

The reason I used 16^32 instead of 2^128 is that most people here are not programmers. My explanation was based on 16 available characters filling 32 available spaces. Where programmers see bits, people see characters. :-)

Seth