Re: [Monotone-devel] Hash collisions resiliency

[Nathan Myers]

On Wed, Apr 13, 2005 at 03:22:14PM -0700, J C Lawrence wrote:
>   Consider a useful and popular household device, say a dish washer.
>   This particular version washes dishes very efficiently and well, but
>   has a 2^50 chance on any given dish in a wash cycle of going nuclear
>   and taking out your city block.

How about this: 

  Your car gets you around town quickly enough and at tolerable cost.
  However, with probability 2^-21, on any given day, you will die in
  a car accident.  With a Volvo and careful driving, you might
  conceivably get that down to 2^-31.  With probability perhaps
  2^-39, your whole family will die with you.

If this seems gruesome, a nuclear-exploding dishwasher is more so.

So, if you're a billion billion billion times more worried about a 
hash collision than about your whole family dying in a car collision, 
then maybe monotone isn't for you.

Nathan Myers
address@hidden