Mersenne Digest Monday, July 26 1999 Volume 01 : Number 604
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 25 Jul 1999 12:40:27 -0400
From: "Geoffrey Faivre-Malloy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: Stepping out on a limb here
I'm rather new to much of the theory behind all of this so have mercy :)
I just finished reading Fermat's Last Theorem which is a fascinating book.
This introduced me to the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture and subsequent
theorem. I've noticed that there are algorithms based on Elliptic Curves.
The Taniyama Shimura theorem says that you can directly map each Elliptic
curve to it's Modular form.
Recently, a new theorem was proved that lets you solve Elliptic equations
easily with the Modular form - see
http://www.academicpress.com/inscight/07091999/grapha.htm for details.
So, based on all of this, would there be some way write a program that used
these details to factor faster?
G-Man
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Date: Sun, 25 Jul 1999 13:10:36 -0400
From: "Geoffrey Faivre-Malloy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: RE: Mersenne: Stepping out on a limb here
A couple of minor corrections :) Taniyama-Shimura has only been proven for
all semistable cases. And the book is Fermat's Enigma NOT Fermat's Last
Theorem as I said :)
G-Man
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Date: Sun, 25 Jul 1999 12:48:06 -0500
From: Ken Kriesel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: RE: Mersenne: Mp and E-Cash
An additional relevant point:
I think Duncan Booth's name at least ought to be considered when
discussing the $ split. He wrote the first version of primenet server
and client; Scott Kurowski continued from the starting point that
Duncan provided. I suspect that Scott has considerably more total effort
invested, but part of that is as a business venture.
At 11:46 AM 1999/07/25 +0100, you wrote:
>[Not in reply to any specific message - no names, no pack drill]
>
>Hey, guys, surely we don't want a war over this?
>
>Here are a few relevant points:
>
...
>If anyone really wants to start testing 10 million digit Mersenne
>numbers now, I would at least urge them to obtain exponents from
>George, in order to prevent unneccessary duplication of effort. [If
>George can't be bothered, I'll volunteer to do this task!]
Hear, hear.
The above point also applies to exponents below the 10-million-digit mark.
ALL exponents should be checked out.
Ken
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Date: Sun, 25 Jul 1999 15:22:27 EDT
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Mersenne: Evil, evil prize thread
Hello, everyone. Wow, there was a lot in the last digest that I thought
needed commenting on. This prize thread is _almost_ getting as bad, in my
opinion, as the other, recent, evil thread which I shall not name. I am, of
course, replying to many different people in this message.
<<P.S. Are archives available past February 1998? >>
The archives, from what I've personally seen, seem to be "broken", and I
don't think anyone has been running archives for the list since then. This is
Ptoo Bad for me, because I was depending on the archives to keep my post
about my 3 Mersenne prime conjectures (#1: That there's a prime around the 4M
range that we're missing. #2: That the discovered M38, which all we knew
about was that it was in the 6M range, was actually around 6.9M, which I was
correct about, and #3: A conjecture about the decamegaprime.), but I guess
I'll rely on everyone's memories and perhaps (!) their own personal archives.
I would keep my own, but the digests usually run over 20K, and AOL doesn't
like to store mails of that size in the regular fashion.
****
>What's wrong with having a panel (possibly consisting of previous
>Mersenne prime discoverers) to evaluate any contenders for this &
>judge how much, if any, of the fund should be awarded for each
>improvement?
Sensible idea. The panel could come up with their own set of rules.
I'm not sure I'd want to be on such a panel unless my vote was
anonymous ("Sorry, Heloisa, but I think your idea was worth only....").
****
I agree wholly with the other person who said that the prize is the
discoverer's and the discoverer's alone. GIMPS can't have a panel nor any
other thing to divy up the money. We can _suggest_ things that the winner
_might_ want to do with the money, but we can't _order_ her/him to do a
single thing.
<<Landon Noll is disqualified.>>
Why?
<<But they all won't get tested, not for another 20+ years. After the
10Mdigit prime, there will be the 100Mdigit prime, then the giga-digit
prime. GIMPS has been lauded for conducting an orderly search, even
more so for double checking. Jumping ahead, the search space will once
again become horribly fragmented -- a giant step backwards into the Cray
era.>>
Orderly checking is a MUST.
<<I don't know if that's fair or not, I won't get into that. But the
discoverer of a prime found using GIMPS and/or Primenet would receive all
the money him/herself and then it's up to him/her what to do with it;
whether sharing some with George/Scott is something they would do is
entirely up to them.>>
Correct.
<<Unless George/Scott set some legal mumbo jumbo that ties into use of the
program/source/services, they're simply not "entitled" to any prize money.>>
Avoiding legal mumbo jumbo is an equal must.
<<And it was mentioned before...if George and/or Scott setup such a legal
contract regarding software usage, there probably would be people writing
their own software, hoping to get the big cash all to themselves. And the
whole effort of coordinating who works on what exponents could get messy if
Scott says that using his Primenet database to check out/in numbers means
you agree to share prize money with him. People will start grabbing their
own numbers or setting up competing databases of their own or who knows
what.>>
This is my fear. Right now, GIMPS is the only major concerted effort to find
Mersenne Primes, and we ought to keep it that way. This has led to orderly
searching, and not a mad free-for-all. The prize money should (and must!) go
entirely to the discoverer, because any attempts to do otherwise will most
likely lead to this sort of dire fragmentation.
<<And again, the first deca-mega-digit prime may not be a Mersenne
anyway...who can say? :-)>>
It could be a Fermat prime! *chortle*
<<If that's the case, it is up to that "group" to decide, in some legally
binding way, how prize money is disbursed. I suppose it's too late to worry
about such things now, since the $50K prize-winner has been found, but it's
something to think about, if we choose to go down that perilous road,
sometime before the $100K winner becomes imminent.
As such, I think the EFF would have to award the money solely to the
individual since no prior stipulations existed between him and George/Scott
on how the money would be split.>>
And, as I've said, stipulations would not be a good thing.
<<I agree also...like I mentioned above, setting up legalities will only
muddle the entire issue and give rise to competing databases and programs.>>
Definitely.
<<Just my $0.02 worth (of course anyone who disagrees with me will be shot!)>>
I liked another thing I once saw. You know those little tags that say "These
opinions are not those of the So-And-So Corporation"? Peter Gutmann has the
following tag on his web page:
****
Disclaimer
Any opinions expressed on this page are not in fact mine but were forced on
me at gunpoint by the University of Auckland.
****
<<If someone read on George's page "running this software means that you
lose most of the prize money." They could do one of 3 things:
(1) Say "Oky-doky" and download/run George's program
(2) Say "Well, (sensored) you" and continue surfing
(3) Say "Where can I get another program?" and find the others>>
That would not be a good thing. It's amazing what money will do to people. In
a way, I almost wish that EFF had never come up with their prizes, so we
could have avoided all of this unpleasantness.
<<George is considering the creation of a non-profit corporation for
the purpose of dividing the prize money, so the legal issues
would be addressed. George asked for opinions on how to *distribute*
the money.>>
I don't think that such a corporation should be created, as it could lead to
Very Bad Things, including the downfall of GIMPS's long and happy reign over
Mersenne Primes. I _REALLY_ don't think that this corporation should be made.
<<My guess is that making participation to GIMPS/PrimeNet conditional
on agreeing to share the prize would be A Big Turn-Off.>>
Exactly.
<<At present we find approx. 1% of the LL
test results submitted are incorrect.>>
That figure seems a tad high. After double-checking, there would be a 0.01%
chance that BOTH tests had failed, which seems very high to me.
A summary of my opinions, so others don't need to respond directly to my
(unfortunately) long message:
1) Prize money should go to one person (or small team): The discoverer.
2) A non-profit corporation to divide any prizes must NOT be created.
3) Orderly checking of exponents is vital.
4) We must make all attempts to not entice others to create competing efforts
to check Mersenne primes, as it would lead to chaos.
5) We need new archives for this list, as the current ones seem to be
dead/broken/seriously outdated.
6) Legal mumbo jumbo must be avoided. I like GIMPS the way it was, before EFF
prizes, and nothing ought to be changed.
S.T.L.
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------------------------------
Date: Sun, 25 Jul 1999 13:09:23 -0700
From: Will Edgington <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: RE: Mersenne: Mp and E-Cash
Ken Kriesel writes:
I think Duncan Booth's name at least ought to be considered when
discussing the $ split. He wrote the first version of primenet
server and client; Scott Kurowski continued from the starting point
that Duncan provided. I suspect that Scott has considerably more
total effort invested, but part of that is as a business venture.
OK. Then what about John Sweeney? Jason Kline? Crandall & Fagin?
How about the people that wrote factoring code?
As others have noted, this is a big can of worms that's just
complicating things without really adding anything to the effort
itself.
Will
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Date: Sun, 25 Jul 1999 13:18:57 -0700
From: Will Edgington <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: RE: Mersenne: Mp and E-Cash
Lucas Wiman writes:
I'm forced to agree with Aaron, aparently at gunpoint :-) (and I
said this a while ago, BTW). Even if they (George and Scott) did
this, then there would still be MacLucasUNIX, or everything else in
the mers package, as well as Ernst's program, and good ol' lucas.c.
MacLucasUNIX, mersenne1, etc., of the mers package can indeed be used
to find such large Mersenne primes, right now, and someone out there
is probably already doing it. But, if they are, they haven't told me
and they are thus looking at exponents for which I have known factors;
noone but me - and I mean noone, not even George - has all of my data
for these large exponents.
Any of these could be used. We've really got to put our feet back
on the ground here. If we did put a license change on all of
George's program derivitives, we would still have to get Will and
Ernst to change their copyrights, and Richard Crandall.
It's actually worse than this. I never intended to copyright any of
the code I distribute, in part because some of it is already covered
by copyright and/or patent for commercial purposes. Is trying to
claim the EFF prize a commercial purpose? Don't ask me; I'm not a
lawyer.
Will
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Date: Sun, 25 Jul 1999 16:40:51 -0400
From: Jeff Woods <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: Evil, evil prize thread
At 03:22 PM 7/25/99 -0400, you wrote:
>This is my fear. Right now, GIMPS is the only major concerted effort to find
>Mersenne Primes, and we ought to keep it that way. This has led to orderly
>searching, and not a mad free-for-all. The prize money should (and must!) go
>entirely to the discoverer, because any attempts to do otherwise will most
>likely lead to this sort of dire fragmentation.
While I agree with this, if the effort does NOT fragment and jump ahead to
potential 10MM-digits, someone else is likely to find and claim that $100K
with a Proth prime, since checking those will take far less time than a
Mersenne test of the same order.
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Date: Sun, 25 Jul 1999 16:34:49 -0400
From: Chris Nash <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: Evil, evil prize thread
Hi folks
> Hello, everyone. Wow, there was a lot in the last digest that I thought
> needed commenting on. This prize thread is _almost_ getting as bad, in my
> opinion, as the other, recent, evil thread which I shall not name. I am,
of
> course, replying to many different people in this message.
Just a quick note to praise the 'common-sense' posters on this list - I hope
we all know who they are - it's much appreciated when one of them puts a
stop to a thread which was getting way out of hand. Many thanks to STL for
this one... in particular
>It's amazing what money will do to people. In
>a way, I almost wish that EFF had never come up with their prizes
I'll paraphrase another quote on this as well, "A *person* is intelligent.
*People* are irrational and dangerous". As individual human beings, we're
quite good at distinguishing what is important to us personally. The whole
EFF thing was supposedly to inspire advances in distributed computing - but
instead has encouraged mass mania and reduced the thing to a lottery. I'd
much rather the world factor the meager 200+ digits of 2^727-1, than find a
10M+ digit prime and fight over money. Isn't mathematics, science, human
knowledge in general above things such base and vile as money? Are we all
guilty of knowing the price of everything, but the value of nothing? Is
bigger necessarily better?
I've been good so far, and avoided adding my $0.02 until now. Feel free to
flame me off-list is you disagree. Otherwise, let's get some rationality in
here. We search on - and let's not let our areas of research and individual
interests be controlled by potential financial gain. Let's follow through
with STL's common-sense conclusions.
And above all, let's kill this thread.
Chris
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Date: Sun, 25 Jul 1999 17:10:53 -0400
From: Jud McCranie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: Evil, evil prize thread
At 04:40 PM 7/25/99 -0400, Jeff Woods wrote:
> While I agree with this, if the effort does NOT fragment and jump ahead
to potential 10MM-digits, someone else is likely to find and claim that
$100K with a Proth prime, since checking those will take far less time than
a Mersenne test of the same order.
Is that true? I thought that a LL test of a Mersenne was faster.
+--------------------------------------------------------+
| Jud McCranie |
| |
| 127*2^96744+1 is prime! (29,125 digits, Oct 20, 1998) |
+--------------------------------------------------------+
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Date: Sun, 25 Jul 1999 17:49:30 EDT
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Mersenne: Proth Vs. Mersenne (Grudge match of the century)
<<Is that true? I thought that a LL test of a Mersenne was faster.>>
Everything I've ever heard says that LL tests are faster than Proth, and in
fact the quickest test for primality versus other types of numbers. Hm.
S.T.L.
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Date: Sun, 25 Jul 1999 23:15:51 +0100
From: "Brian J. Beesley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Proth's Test (was: Re: Mersenne: Evil, evil prize thread)
On 25 Jul 99, at 16:40, Jeff Woods wrote:
> While I agree with this, if the effort does NOT fragment and jump ahead to
> potential 10MM-digits, someone else is likely to find and claim that $100K
> with a Proth prime, since checking those will take far less time than a
> Mersenne test of the same order.
Eh?
Proth's Test for n = k*2^m+1 says that there exists a such that
a^(n-1)/2 + 1 is divisible by n.
This takes m-1 squarings modulo n to evaluate, in the same way that
the Lucas-Lehmer test takes p-2 iterations. So the work volume looks
similar. (The LL test "subtract 2" step costs so little that we can
disregard it, for the purposes of estimating run time.)
But, it's harder to work modulo k*2^m+1 than it is to work modulo
2^p-1, and could certainly not be made cheaper computationally than
the "magic number" method in the DWT, which enables us to work modulo
2^p-1 essentially free of charge.
The other factor in evaluating this is that, in Proth's Test, a has
got to be an odd prime - if you pick the wrong prime, you're wasting
time, though fortunately this can usually be detected very early.
Regards
Brian Beesley
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Date: Sun, 25 Jul 1999 18:56:58 -0400 (EDT)
From: Lucas Wiman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: Evil, evil prize thread
><<At present we find approx. 1% of the LL
>test results submitted are incorrect.>>
>That figure seems a tad high. After double-checking, there would be a 0.01%
>chance that BOTH tests had failed, which seems very high to me.
Well, the likelyhood that a failure occurs may be 1%, but the likelyhood
that a double check will not catch it is much lower. This is do to the
fact that (barring bugs), the likelyhood that the numbers produce the same
64-bit residue is very, very low. Probably somewhere between 2^-64 and 2^-128.
- -Lucas
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Date: Sun, 25 Jul 1999 18:44:51 -0400
From: Chris Nash <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: Proth Vs. Mersenne (Grudge match of the century)
> Everything I've ever heard says that LL tests are faster than Proth, and
in
> fact the quickest test for primality versus other types of numbers. Hm.
Remember though you've only got one crack at the whip for a Mersenne number
of a given number of bits. Hajratwala's record took over four times as long
to test as a number of "precisely" a million digits - so, if the megaprime
was your motivation, the algorithm execution time is offset by the size of
the number. Proth searchers *could* have found the first megaprime before
M38 by focussing on k.2^(3.3 million and something), but of course, not as
many people were looking...
Chris
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Date: Sun, 25 Jul 1999 19:13:54 -0400
From: Chris Nash <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Proth's Test (was: Re: Mersenne: Evil, evil prize thread)
> Proth's Test for n = k*2^m+1 says that there exists a such that
> a^(n-1)/2 + 1 is divisible by n.
> The other factor in evaluating this is that, in Proth's Test, a has
> got to be an odd prime - if you pick the wrong prime, you're wasting
> time, though fortunately this can usually be detected very early.
That bit is virtually free of charge. Any quadratic non-residue will do just
fine. If a^(n-1)/2 isn't -1, then the number isn't prime (by Euler's
quadratic residue criterion). The algorithm does take longer, sure, but it's
the targetability that makes the difference. If the first 10^7+ digit prime
has 20 million digits, it'll be taking longer to test each one than a 10
million digit Proth candidate.
I'm playing devil's advocate here. If prize money is anybody's motivation,
we'd all be better off selling our PC's and buying lottery tickets, or
hitting the stock market.
Chris
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Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1999 02:06:23 +0200
From: "Steinar H. Gunderson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Proth's Test (was: Re: Mersenne: Evil, evil prize thread)
On Sun, Jul 25, 1999 at 11:15:51PM +0100, Brian J. Beesley wrote:
>The other factor in evaluating this is that, in Proth's Test, a has
>got to be an odd prime - if you pick the wrong prime, you're wasting
>time, though fortunately this can usually be detected very early.
Hopefully, considering that most primes are odd! ;-)
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Date: Sun, 25 Jul 1999 21:15:10 -0400
From: Jud McCranie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Proth's Test (was: Re: Mersenne: Evil, evil prize thread)
At 07:13 PM 7/25/99 -0400, Chris Nash wrote:
That bit is virtually free of charge. Any quadratic non-residue will do just
>fine.
But you don't easily know if a number is a QNR, do you?
+----------------------------------------------+
| Jud "program first and think later" McCranie |
+----------------------------------------------+
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Date: Sun, 25 Jul 1999 22:29:39 -0400
From: Chris Nash <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Proth's Test (was: Re: Mersenne: Evil, evil prize thread)
> That bit is virtually free of charge. Any quadratic non-residue will do
just
> >fine.
> But you don't easily know if a number is a QNR, do you?
Suppose the number you're testing is N. If we assume N is prime, then
quadratic reciprocity could be used to determine whether your base a is a
QNR. So pick your base a, do your test, which proves QNR and hence primality
(Proth's theorem basically states the Euler criterion for a QNR is necessary
*and* sufficient to prove primality). If you don't get what you expect from
the quadratic residue symbol, then it's composite. (Look up 'Kronecker
symbol' - basically, an excuse to use quadratic reciprocity whether or not
you know N is prime).
The LL test implicitly does the same for Mersenne tests - they only make
sense if 3 is a QNR. The start value S_0=4 is really
(2+sqrt(3))+(2-sqrt(3))... square that, and you'll see where the -2 comes
from :)
S_n=(2+sqrt(3))^(2^n) + (2-sqrt(3))^(2^n)
If the test proves compositeness, it doesn't matter whether 3 was *really* a
QNR or not, you've proved what you wanted either way. The final bit of glue
is that all Mersennes of odd exponent>1 are equal to 7 mod 12, and so 3 is
indeed a QNR for the prime ones.
Chris
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Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1999 03:51:12 +0200
From: "Steinar H. Gunderson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: Mersenne Trivia (was Re: p-1 algorithm)
On Fri, Jul 23, 1999 at 08:16:35PM -0500, Conrad Curry wrote:
>Too easy.
>From Monty Python's `The Quest For The Holy Grail' (or was King Arthur
involved in the title too?), in case anybody _didn't_ know. (`Look at
the beautiful telephøne system...')
>Here's more of a challenge, who wrote this about the
>perfection of the number six?
No idea, but I'm glad he/she didn't do the same with the perfect number
associated with M38! (`The parts are two, two, two, two...')
/* Steinar */
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Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1999 17:12:24 -0500
From: "David L. Nicol" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: Evil, evil prize thread
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> Hello, everyone. Wow, there was a lot in the last digest that I thought
> needed commenting on. This prize thread is _almost_ getting as bad, in my
> opinion, as the other, recent, evil thread which I shall not name. I am, of
> course, replying to many different people in this message.
>
> <<P.S. Are archives available past February 1998? >>
>
> The archives, from what I've personally seen, seem to be "broken", and I
> don't think anyone has been running archives for the list since then. This is
> Ptoo Bad for me, because I was depending on the archives to keep my post
> about my 3 Mersenne prime conjectures (#1: That there's a prime around the 4M
> range that we're missing. #2: That the discovered M38, which all we knew
> about was that it was in the 6M range, was actually around 6.9M, which I was
> correct about, and #3: A conjecture about the decamegaprime.), but I guess
> I'll rely on everyone's memories and perhaps (!) their own personal archives.
> I would keep my own, but the digests usually run over 20K, and AOL doesn't
> like to store mails of that size in the regular fashion.
I rigged archives on egroups since june 3
http://www.egroups.com/group/mprime/
> ****
> >What's wrong with having a panel (possibly consisting of previous
> >Mersenne prime discoverers) to evaluate any contenders for this &
> >judge how much, if any, of the fund should be awarded for each
> >improvement?
>
> Sensible idea. The panel could come up with their own set of rules.
> I'm not sure I'd want to be on such a panel unless my vote was
> anonymous ("Sorry, Heloisa, but I think your idea was worth only....").
> ****
>
> I agree wholly with the other person who said that the prize is the
> discoverer's and the discoverer's alone. GIMPS can't have a panel nor any
> other thing to divy up the money. We can _suggest_ things that the winner
> _might_ want to do with the money, but we can't _order_ her/him to do a
> single thing.
>
> <<Landon Noll is disqualified.>>
>
> Why?
>
> <<But they all won't get tested, not for another 20+ years. After the
> 10Mdigit prime, there will be the 100Mdigit prime, then the giga-digit
> prime. GIMPS has been lauded for conducting an orderly search, even
> more so for double checking. Jumping ahead, the search space will once
> again become horribly fragmented -- a giant step backwards into the Cray
> era.>>
>
> Orderly checking is a MUST.
>
> <<I don't know if that's fair or not, I won't get into that. But the
> discoverer of a prime found using GIMPS and/or Primenet would receive all
> the money him/herself and then it's up to him/her what to do with it;
> whether sharing some with George/Scott is something they would do is
> entirely up to them.>>
>
> Correct.
>
> <<Unless George/Scott set some legal mumbo jumbo that ties into use of the
> program/source/services, they're simply not "entitled" to any prize money.>>
>
> Avoiding legal mumbo jumbo is an equal must.
what if they set some clear contractual conditions? Mumbo jumbo isn't
strictly needed.
> <<And it was mentioned before...if George and/or Scott setup such a legal
> contract regarding software usage, there probably would be people writing
> their own software, hoping to get the big cash all to themselves. And the
> whole effort of coordinating who works on what exponents could get messy if
> Scott says that using his Primenet database to check out/in numbers means
> you agree to share prize money with him. People will start grabbing their
> own numbers or setting up competing databases of their own or who knows
> what.>>
No they won't, because the start-up marketing would be too difficult.
As
long as the GIMPS contractual terms are reasonable, there will be no
motivation
to compete.
> This is my fear. Right now, GIMPS is the only major concerted effort to find
> Mersenne Primes, and we ought to keep it that way. This has led to orderly
> searching, and not a mad free-for-all. The prize money should (and must!) go
> entirely to the discoverer, because any attempts to do otherwise will most
> likely lead to this sort of dire fragmentation.
>
> <<And again, the first deca-mega-digit prime may not be a Mersenne
> anyway...who can say? :-)>>
>
> It could be a Fermat prime! *chortle*
>
> <<If that's the case, it is up to that "group" to decide, in some legally
> binding way, how prize money is disbursed. I suppose it's too late to worry
> about such things now, since the $50K prize-winner has been found, but it's
> something to think about, if we choose to go down that perilous road,
> sometime before the $100K winner becomes imminent.
>
> As such, I think the EFF would have to award the money solely to the
> individual since no prior stipulations existed between him and George/Scott
> on how the money would be split.>>
>
> And, as I've said, stipulations would not be a good thing.
>
> <<I agree also...like I mentioned above, setting up legalities will only
> muddle the entire issue and give rise to competing databases and programs.>>
>
> Definitely.
>
> <<Just my $0.02 worth (of course anyone who disagrees with me will be shot!)>>
>
> I liked another thing I once saw. You know those little tags that say "These
> opinions are not those of the So-And-So Corporation"? Peter Gutmann has the
> following tag on his web page:
> ****
> Disclaimer
> Any opinions expressed on this page are not in fact mine but were forced on
> me at gunpoint by the University of Auckland.
> ****
> <<If someone read on George's page "running this software means that you
> lose most of the prize money." They could do one of 3 things:
> (1) Say "Oky-doky" and download/run George's program
> (2) Say "Well, (sensored) you" and continue surfing
> (3) Say "Where can I get another program?" and find the others>>
>
> That would not be a good thing. It's amazing what money will do to people. In
> a way, I almost wish that EFF had never come up with their prizes, so we
> could have avoided all of this unpleasantness.
what's unpleasant about speculative free speech?
> <<George is considering the creation of a non-profit corporation for
> the purpose of dividing the prize money, so the legal issues
> would be addressed. George asked for opinions on how to *distribute*
> the money.>>
>
> I don't think that such a corporation should be created, as it could lead to
> Very Bad Things, including the downfall of GIMPS's long and happy reign over
> Mersenne Primes. I _REALLY_ don't think that this corporation should be made.
Why? GIMPS becomes GIMPSnfp and George continues with his hobby and no
longer
need worry that he will become an accidental tax pauper.
> <<My guess is that making participation to GIMPS/PrimeNet conditional
> on agreeing to share the prize would be A Big Turn-Off.>>
>
> Exactly.
Are you In It For The Money currently?
I've got an idea -- let's set up a fake seti@home client that runs
a randomized seti@home graphical lookalike display but secretly connects
to
entropia for assignments -- Ha!
> A summary of my opinions, so others don't need to respond directly to my
> (unfortunately) long message:
> 1) Prize money should go to one person (or small team): The discoverer.
> 2) A non-profit corporation to divide any prizes must NOT be created.
> 3) Orderly checking of exponents is vital.
> 4) We must make all attempts to not entice others to create competing efforts
> to check Mersenne primes, as it would lead to chaos.
> 5) We need new archives for this list, as the current ones seem to be
> dead/broken/seriously outdated.
> 6) Legal mumbo jumbo must be avoided. I like GIMPS the way it was, before EFF
> prizes, and nothing ought to be changed.
>
> S.T.L.
points one and six seem contradictory. I think we need LMJ to
properly cope with the appearance of the EFF awards, and keep GIMPS
a just-for-fun activity.
________________________________________________________________________
David Nicol 816.235.1187 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"All the E-mail you write is copyrighted" -- Brad Templeton
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Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1999 18:34:18 EDT
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Mersenne: Evil, evil prize thread
<<Are you In It For The Money currently?>>
Absolutely not! I joined before this money kookiness, and do it for the fame.
:->
S.T.L.
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Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1999 18:37:12 -0400
From: "R. Kevin Moore" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: Size of Mersenne Primes - 3 Questions
OK - I'm not a math guru, and am new to the list. I can't find a
recent archive so I hope this isn't a repeated question. Perhaps
there is someone out there that could help me get some answers to the
following basic questions & ideas. Feel free to send me email
directly. Thanks!
My questions:
1) What is the approximate P-90 computing time to test for primality
for a 1, 10, 100 million (& 1 trillion!) digit Mersenne Primes?
2) What are the approximate N's that correspond to the beginnings of
these areas?
3) Assuming the continued (exponential?) growth of GIMPS, when will
GIMPS begin to assign work in each of these areas?
Why I'm asking:
I suspect that the ranges for N that GIMPS is searching are far from
the next eligible EFF prize for 10 million digit primes. I was
wondering if anyone knows what the smallest N is that gives a 10
million digit prime might be. (I have no way to calculate it myself.)
Of course I understand that there is a higher purpose to GIMPS than
the money - and that it would be better to "fill in the tables" of N
than just skip to the area that would yield prize money.
I further suspect (perhaps someone agrees?) that GIMPS will run out of
steam when it starts reaching the values of N that might yield 10
million digit Mersenne primes... This is because the average home PC
will no longer be able to complete a primality test in a reasonable
amount of time. People might be silly enough to sign out 1000 or
10,000 days worth of work to check a large N, but it's unlikely that
any results would ever be completed or returned to GIMPS.
Or perhaps there are future plans to sub-divide work for large N's?
Or perhaps people feel that home computers will catch up in power with
the added work of larger N's and won't be a problem in future years?
I'd be curious to hear anyone's thoughts on this.
- -Kevin
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1999 19:30:31 -0400 (EDT)
From: Lucas Wiman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: Size of Mersenne Primes - 3 Questions
> OK - I'm not a math guru, and am new to the list. I can't find a
> recent archive so I hope this isn't a repeated question. Perhaps
> there is someone out there that could help me get some answers to the
> following basic questions & ideas. Feel free to send me email
> directly. Thanks!
Check the FAQ, mentioned at the bottom of every message,
www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
> 2) What are the approximate N's that correspond to the beginnings of
> these areas?
See the FAQ, Q5.3.
> 3) Assuming the continued (exponential?) growth of GIMPS, when will
> GIMPS begin to assign work in each of these areas?
I think it is parabolic. I seem to recall that someone said we should
reach 20.5 million by spring 2005. I don't know when we are projected
to reach the deca-mega-digit range. I think the stats are available at
http://entropia.com/ips/ though I'm not sure.
> I suspect that the ranges for N that GIMPS is searching are far from
> the next eligible EFF prize for 10 million digit primes. I was
> wondering if anyone knows what the smallest N is that gives a 10
> million digit prime might be. (I have no way to calculate it myself.)
We are searching far from that range. I imagine that a number of people
would begin testing in that range after V19 becomes available.
- -Lucas
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------------------------------
Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1999 20:56:26 -0400
From: "St. Dee" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: Evil, evil prize thread
At 18:34 7/26/99 EDT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
><<Are you In It For The Money currently?>>
>
>Absolutely not! I joined before this money kookiness, and do it for the
fame.
>:->
I too joined well before any "moneybusiness"...I'm in it as a justification
to keep building bigger and faster computers to add to the little "silicon
farm" I have at home. :-)
K
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------------------------------
End of Mersenne Digest V1 #604
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