20 Questions - round 6
 

The goal is to guess what the OP is thinking of, within 20 questions (as a group).

The current rule set:[list=1][*]The original poster will state the general type (for the item thought of): animal, vegetable, mineral, mixed (to be used only when the object is quite mixed), other. [*]Yes or No are the main answers. The OP will try to stick with those without explanation.[*]Questions will be taken in turn. i.e. The second question may not be asked until the first is answered.[*]If the answer is "yes", the asker of that question gets to ask the next question, they may not ask it before the previous question has been answered. If the answer is "no", someone else gets to ask the next question and the asker that got the "no" answer must wait 24 hours before they can ask another question.[*]The asker must mark their post with the question number.[*]There maybe a 21st question of "Is it....", provided that the 20th question was answered "yes".[*]If it is successfully guessed, the one that got it gets to think up the next item.[*]Except 'point of order' posts, recaps, and clarifications: side discussions are discouraged.[/list]See [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20_Questions[/url]

And here is the category for number 6:
[b][size="4"]Other[/size][/b]

Rather than PM someone with the answer and remove them from the game, I ran a string twice through the MD5 hash function. This will make for easy verification that the answer was not changed part way through:
8DBC859C1B82C4252AD1F920B9B5FA86

Obviously I'm not expecting anyone to guess the string exactly, but I will provide it at the end and it can be checked against the hash.

[QUOTE=Mini-Geek;236378]Obviously I'm not expecting anyone to guess the string exactly, but I will provide it at the end and it can be checked against the hash.[/QUOTE]

Oh man, I [b]so[/b] want to run one of these games with a hash collision for the MD5.

(1) Is it some type of action?

[QUOTE=CRGreathouse;236394]Oh man, I [b]so[/b] want to run one of these games with a hash collision for the MD5.[/QUOTE]Maybe this is one, he possibly ran it through twice because it is a known collision (and therefore googlable), possibly even the first collision.

It is a little strange to devolve from SHA-1 to MD5...

[QUOTE=retina;236404](1) Is it some type of action?[/QUOTE]

No.

I wouldn't know how to engineer an MD5 collision, especially when doing it twice! I switched from SHA-1 to MD5 since I've heard that each has been "broken" anyway, and MD5 was more convenient for me to calculate. The string is in the form of a sentence that is not likely to have been MD5'd before. I did it twice for slightly better security, and to lower the look of some shenanigans going on. As a reminder, side discussions (like: the sort of hashing used) are discouraged by the rules. It looks like SHA-2 hasn't been broken, so here it is encoded twice in SHA-512 (just so you KNOW I couldn't have made it a collision, with two answers):
9e5fe2179f32d5ddff290b52268eda043890b14acfc883d0a2af0ce48fa1efbe060065183652f8676ebb8df2f34ea30ac283a2dfba9c32d977785d053dd59492

(2) Does it consist of any form of matter/energy?

[QUOTE=Brian-E;236430](2) Does it consist of any form of matter/energy?[/QUOTE]

No. (Pedantically everything, including this thing, does as electrical/chemical signals transmitted/stored in a brain/computer. But no, not really.)

3) Is it something that would cease to exist within 100 years if humans suddenly ceased to exist?
(Assumes that cats or something would carry on collapsing wave functions for us (it's only fair), and that the universe would just get on with things!)

edit: I assume the 24hr sit-out only applies to the same round?

[QUOTE=Flatlander;236435]3) Is it something that would cease to exist within 100 years if humans suddenly ceased to exist?
(Assumes that cats or something would carry on collapsing wave functions for us (it's only fair), and that the universe would just get on with things!)[/QUOTE]

A difficult question for this thing, but I have to go with: No, it wouldn't cease to exist. But that might depend on your definition of existing.
[QUOTE=Flatlander;236435]edit: I assume the 24hr sit-out only applies to the same round?[/QUOTE]
I assume so, too.

4) Is it a mathematical concept?

[QUOTE=axn;236441]4) Is it a mathematical concept?[/QUOTE]

No.