On 4 Dec 2001, at 17:59, George Woltman wrote: > >Case 1: I finish first, find a prime and announce my discovery. I did > >the work but the exponent is assigned to you! Who gets the > >credit??? > > You, get the credit. User b will be mighty disheartened. I know first hand. > Slowinski's Cray beat my own Pentium-90 by just a few days in the discovery > of M#34.
Ooof. I didn't know about that. > > As to legal issues, the disclaimer section of the download page states: > > We are not responsible for lost prize money, fame, credit, etc. should > someone accidentally or maliciously test the number you are working on and > find it to be prime. The case I describe might not fall under the legal definition of "accidental" or "malicious". It would be possible for one or other of the parties to argue that they have been assigned the work by PrimeNet and that PrimeNet was therefore liable for lost prize money. On the "belt and braces" principle I think that the wording should be reinforced. As to people working independently - I don't see how you can cover that one, since the independent party will not be covered by the disclaimer if they never downloaded any variant of Prime95. In that case it _is_ accidental that PrimeNet should assign work which is being replicated elsewhere without its knowledge. Nowadays it's at least a reasonable assumption that people with interests in this field _would_ obtain assignments through PrimeNet. In the early days it would be much more likely that people were replicating each other's work without knowing it. Presumably such a situation is what led to your disappointment. Regards Brian Beesley _________________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.ndatech.com/mersenne/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
