-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Tuesday, October 02, 2001 3:44 PM Subject: Re: FW: Mersenne: Re: Factoring Failure?
<snip> > > Either way, GIMPS > > has never considered missing a factor as a big deal. It only means > > some wasted effort running a LL test that could have been avoided. >True enough - though I'm concerned that the "no factors below 2^N" >database may be seriously flawed, from the point of view of GIMPS >it would seem to be a waste of time to go round redoing trial >factoring just to fix this problem. Yes, from the point of view of GIMPS (that is, searching for Mersenne primes) it's not a huge deal... but there also exists an effort to fully factor the candidates that are not prime, and this throws a big problem into that project. Someone could be trial factoring an exponent from 2^59 to 2^65 and find a factor in that range after a smaller factor had been missed, and it will go into the database as the smallest factor when it actually is not. Might be decades before the smaller factor is discovered. Oh well, Steve _________________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
