On 12 May 00, at 3:25, Shot wrote:
> 1) Where can I find some mathematical info on P-1 factoring
> (preferably everything, "for dummies")?
The mathematical background to the modern factoring methods is
distinctly non-trivial. However there are accessible explanations of
the ideas behind the algorithms in several standard works.
For a general introduction to factoring methods, try "Primes and
Programming" by Peter Giblin (Cambridge University Press (1993), ISBN
0-521-40988-8). This book is fairly accessible and very reasonably
priced, but the only reference to P-1 is to stage 1 only and is
presented as an exercise.
For a detailed explanation of the P-1 algorithm, refer to "Prime
Numbers and Computer Methods for Factorization" by Hans Riesel
(Birkhauser (1994), ISBN 0-8176-3743-5), which is expensive and by no
means easy going.
>
> 2) When I use Prime95's Vacation or Holiday feature, does the program
> assume that the vacation time should be treated as nighttime for the
> purpose of P-1 factoring?
>
Good point. My guess is that day/night setting takes no account of
vacation time. However, is this really a problem? If running P-1
stage 2 and daytime begins, the program will suspend P-1 & get on
with something else, resuming the suspended P-1 job when daytime ends
again. So the work gets finished up anyway, whether vacation time is
in effect or not.
> BTW: George, I think many people (myself included) surf the web using
> 800x600 resolution - new Mersenne page's menu is a little to wide for
> that setting. Not a big issue, but a little annoying.
>
Nowadays I tend to run in 1024x768 but with the browser window size
set a bit smaller than that (though not as small as 800x600). I think
1024x768 is becoming pretty well the default resolution. However, I
still believe that it's helpful to users to design web pages so they
can be usefully viewed when displayed at 640x480 - even if this means
preparing a differently formatted version of the page to suit users
with low resolution displays.
What about WAP mobiles with very small displays & very limited
graphics capability? What about an implementation of the LL Test for
WAP mobiles? Would be a good way of making sure that the battery on
the damn thing was always flat ;-)
Regards
Brian Beesley
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