[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > 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.
I read about this on the mailing list archives. The info was scattered over several posts, hopefully I recall everything correctly, and that all the story bits belong to the same Mersenne prime! I hope George will correct me if I'm wrong. David Slowinski contacted George, asking him wether Prime95 could test numbers >1 million bits. He had just discovered that M1257787 was prime - when George's own computer was only a few days from finishing that very exponent! David also asked for an independet verification of the prime, so suddenly the LL run on George's computer that had almost discovered GIMPS' first prime was no more than a double check for David's success. To make matters worse, Slowinski delayed the announcement of the prime as he "was out of town" for a while - which turned out to be the better part of half a year. I think I would have flipped. Living for half a year with such a freak incident on your mind and not even being able to tell anyone. OTOH, it's an impressive example of how to keep a secret. Alex _________________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.ndatech.com/mersenne/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
