Shorter checksum than MD5

[Dan Bishop]

Paul Rubin <http://phr.cx@NOSPAM.invalid> wrote in message news:<7xllfjfe9m.fsf at ruckus.brouhaha.com>...
...
> Where are the updates coming from?  Note that if you use a 32-bit
> checksum, with 100000 records you will probably have some records with
> the same checksum by accident.

Only if you use a checksum algorithm with really bad clustering
problems.

If all 2**32 checksums are equally likely, the probability of a
collision is only about 0.0000232828.