On Tue, 2 Oct 2001 19:52:42 -0000, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >However if it could be established that all the "missed" factors >reported were the work of one user, perhaps it would be worth fixing >the database to force rerunning of trial factoring for those factoring >assignments run by that user when the exponents are reassigned >for double checking (or LL testing).
Given the scale of the bad results (probably a fair bit over 60 exponents, at a rough guess), if I were king, I would just block the responsible user until I got a reasonable exponent. Many of the numbers listed in the original post, however, are already behind the "main front" of double-checking. Of course, we would only expect to be finding those that are, but I'd guess no more than 200-300 exponents are involved (and likely less). If it was a computer error of some sort, I wouldn't expect to see that many errors. That said, I vaguely recall reading somewhere that some versions of Windows always give the same memory range to the same program (the context was that what appears to be an error in a given program may cause major general problems under Linux). If that is the case, is it possible that every time Prime95 on a given system started up its executable was loaded on top of a bad range of memory in just such a way as to make it impossible to find a factor (say, by changing the expected output of the function when one is found). This is speculation on my part, of course, but I think it's worth mentioning.... Nathan _________________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
