As I finished reading Gordon Spence's latest post, I was startled by his last paragraph.
Gordon Spence wrote: > And before you go off and waste hours trawling through > all the masses of data on the project files to try and > work out if I have ever poached any numbers, I'll save > you the bother. Yes I have. How many? - can't remember, > less than 20 or so. Will I do it ever again? - don't know. So I checked digest #1038. There, Gordon Spence wrote, in response to an earlier question of mine: >>Is there any particularly _special_ relationship between >>being a Mersenne prime discoverer and being trusted not to >>poach? >> >>Unless there is some such special relationship, I imagine >>that thousands of non-discoverers could also be trusted not >>to poach. > >Well in actual fact, there *is* now that you come to >mention it. As a Mersenne Prime discoverer I am given >immediate notification of any new MP immediately it is >reported, ie *before* it is verified. We are trusted to >keep it quiet.....because when we discovered ours we >proved that we were capable of _discretion_ Back to Mr. Spence's latest post -- in item 11, just four paragraphs above his last one which I quoted above, he wrote: >My point is that there are a small number of people who we >know for 100% certain can be trusted to act with >discretion when "sensitive" information is involved. Now, to me, until I got to the final paragraph, it seemed that Mr. Spence had been claiming in this discussion that Mersenne prime discoverers could be _more_ trusted not to poach than other people could. But let's look at that final paragraph again: > And before you go off and waste hours trawling through > all the masses of data on the project files to try and > work out if I have ever poached any numbers, I'll save > you the bother. Yes I have. How many? - can't remember, > less than 20 or so. Will I do it ever again? - don't know. In other words, the man claiming that he could be especially trusted admits _having already poached, perhaps up to "20 or so" times_. I suppose I should commend his honesty. So, maybe only 80% of Mersenne prime discoverers during the GIMPS era can be trusted not to poach, instead of 100%? Richard Woods _________________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.ndatech.com/mersenne/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers