On 14 Nov 2001, at 10:09, Henk Stokhorst wrote: > Prime, VERIFIED : 1 > Prime, UNVERIFIED : 1
Yes, I saw this in the report produced at 07:00 GMT this morning. Certainly wasn't there yesterday am! Last week I joked "of course, we could find two tomorrow". I have no knowledge as to what has triggered this report but the "obvious" explanation - that two primes have been found on the same day, and one has already been verified - sounds implausible. Assuming that a single prime has been found, there could be a problem with the (automatic) PrimeNet status page generation: after all, this situation doesn't often arise... Case 1) A prime is reported; the user gets excited and reports it again using the manual testing page. Could the PrimeNet automatic report generator consider this to be a double-check, and therefore verified - but also keep the "unverified" record? Note, normally double-check verification is done be George using the PrimeNet server transaction logs when he updates the database - usually on a Saturday - George's method eliminates multiple notifications, which will have the same offset when one of the Prime95 family of programs is used, or the same program, user & computer ID otherwise. Case 2) Rather simpler - a prime is discovered during a double- check; the report generator "knows" there is no prior notification that the exponent yields a Mersenne prime (so it must be unverified) yet the result "must be a verification" because the assignment is a double-check. So it gets counted twice, once in each category. Case 3) No primes have been discovered, but someone has discovered how to insert false data into the server. As I said above, I have no knowledge as to which of these possible explanations (if any) is true. Yet congratulations are obviously in order to anyone who really has discovered a new Mersenne prime (or primes!) - we've waited long enough! Please remember that, if the new prime is in the EFF prize range, publicity pending verification could jeopardize a claim on the prize, so it is understandable that any information which might be released in the near future may be incomplete to the point of sketchiness, just as it was during June 1999. Regards Brian Beesley _________________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.ndatech.com/mersenne/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
