Mersenne: General release of the FAQ
I think the FAQ is ready for "general" release. I have been working on it for 20 days, and it includes most of the FAQ's and some of the not-so-FAQ's. I have tried to make it as understandable as possible, though I am not a very good writer. Please send me any errors in it (technical, spelling, and gramatical). There were of course many contributers to it other than me, those were: Peter Montgomery Chris Nash Jud McCraine Chris Caldwell Brian Beesley Ken Kriesel Pierre Abbat Jay Hill Vincent Mooney Jr. I would like to thank them all. At many points, I directly quoted these people, so if any of you have problems with that, tell me. I will register the FAQ with the major search engines in the next few days. I really hope this FAQ reduces repetition on the mailing list. thank you all, Lucas Wiman Unsubscribe list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm
Mersenne: Sender: mersenne-invalid-reply-address@base.com
Why cant i get my peronell statistik? i use http://entropia.com/cgi-bin/primenet_user.pl?UserID=youraccountID an i changed my ID? It worked a couple of days ago! Unsubscribe list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm
RE: Mersenne: Sender: mersenne-invalid-reply-address@base.com
From: H Why cant i get my peronell statistik? i use http://entropia.com/cgi-bin/primenet_user.pl?UserID=youraccountID an i changed my ID? It worked a couple of days ago! I think you need a password in there somewhere. I can't imagine it working without it. Rick. - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.alienshore.com/ Unsubscribe list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm
Mersenne: The $100,000 award for 10,000,000 digit prime
Hi all, At the risk of opening Pandora's box, I'd like to bring up the possibility of splitting up the $100,000 award for a 10 million digit prime. I'm soliciting everyone's opinion before making a decision. First off, it is by no means guaranteed that GIMPS will claim the award. Some have speculated that a search for Proth primes would have a better chance for success given equal computer power. Furthermore, version 19 will take over a year to test a single 10,000,000 digit number - so claiming the award is years away. However, a policy needs to be in place before version 19 is released. Secondly, I suspect splitting the award will require setting up a non-profit corporation. If I accept the award personally, I'd have to pay taxes -- no thanks. If there is anyone with useful insights on alternatives or how to set up and run a non-profit as cheaply as possible, please send me a private email. What follows is a possible list of beneficiaries along with a few reasons for or against: 1) A charity. There are several GIMPSers that are against any monetary awards. People should search for primes for love of math not the love of money. However, an all charity award could defeat the orinial donor's desire of encouraging advances in distributed computing. 2) Me. Some would argue that I share some of the credit for any Mersenne discoveries. Be aware that I will donate any share to charity. 3) Scott Kurowski. He has real expenses in running the PrimeNet server that should be reimbursed and has been instrumental in GIMPS' growth. 4) The discoverers of any Mersenne primes between now and the 10,000,000 digit discovery. This will encourage an orderly exploration of the exponents and keep up interest over the coming years. 5) The discoverer of the 10,000,000 digit prime. 6) Save some for Mersenne primes discovered after the 10,000,000 digit prime. This would be especially useful if the prime is discovered with lots of untested exponents below it. 7) Anyone that makes a mathematical or algorithmic breakthrough that speeds up the search process. I'm talking about a doubling in search speed not a 1% speedup in assembly code. Suggested rules for discussion on the mailing list: If you'd like to make a specific proposal (such as "all to charity" or "$50,000 for the 10,000,000 digit prime and $10,000 for all primes between now and then"), then send me PRIVATE email. Hopefully, I can form a consensus from these suggestions. Please use the mailing list for discussions on the benefits and drawbacks of the different choices. I can easily see this discussion getting out-of-hand with a corresponding increase in mailing list removal requests! Best regards, George Unsubscribe list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm
Re: Mersenne: The $100,000 award for 10,000,000 digit prime
At 05:32 PM 7/17/99 -0400, George Woltman wrote: At the risk of opening Pandora's box, I'd like to bring up the possibility of splitting up the $100,000 award for a 10 million digit prime. 1/3 to George, or a charity of his choice 1/3 to Scott, or as he wishes, e.g. Entropia.com 1/3 to the discover(s) --Luke Unsubscribe list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm
Re: Mersenne: The $100,000 award for 10,000,000 digit prime
George Woltman wrote:
4) The discoverers of any Mersenne primes between now and the 10,000,000
digit discovery. This will encourage an orderly exploration of the exponents
and keep up interest over the coming years.
You have anticipated my idea, George. The EFF awards should have been
structured this way to start with. Even better would be dividing equally
between George, Scott, discoverers of Mersenne 10^10^7, discover of
the first prime 10^10^7, and me. [kidding on the last part {8^D ] spike
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Re: Mersenne: The $100,000 award for 10,000,000 digit prime
Hi all, At the risk of opening Pandora's box, I'd like to bring up the possibility of splitting up the $100,000 award for a 10 million digit prime. I'm soliciting everyone's opinion before making a decision. I propose we split it like this : 33% to the finder of the first 10,000,000 digit prime, 33% to Scott and George, for doing excellent work 33% to charity, deciding by vote by all the members of gimps, every doublecheck gives an extra vote over factoring and LL-testing. Just an incentive to catch up on the doublechecking... Otto. _ Unsubscribe list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
Mersenne: Primes for money
What do you call someone who searches for primes only because of the prize money? A mersennary. phma _ Unsubscribe list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
RE: Mersenne: Primes for money
From: Pierre Abbat What do you call someone who searches for primes only because of the prize money? A mersennary. I'd also suggest that they be called 'not too bright.' If someone wants money, there are lots of far more certain ways... Rick. - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.alienshore.com/ _ Unsubscribe list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
Re: Mersenne: The $100,000 award for 10,000,000 digit prime
George Woltman wrote: Hi all, At the risk of opening Pandora's box, I'd like to bring up the possibility of splitting up the $100,000 award for a 10 million digit prime. I'm soliciting everyone's opinion before making a decision. 1/4 to George or charity (his choice) 1/4 to Scott or charity (his choice) 1/2 to the discover(s) or charity* *The discover(s) get to chose only if there is orderly exploration of exponents. Otherwise, it goes to a charity of their choice. That would be changed to 20%, 20%, 40%, and 20%, with the last 20% going to the individual(s) responsible for increasing the search speed significantly, if such event occurs. This promotes an orderly exploration of exponents, yet allows those who want to find a 10M digit prime just for fun (and unorderly) to have the opportunity without being completely penalized. It also encourages the advancement and development of new algorithms. This is all, of course, assuming a GIMPser is the discover(s)... _ Unsubscribe list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
Re: Mersenne: The $100,000 award for 10,000,000 digit prime
On Sun, 18 Jul 1999, Otto Bruggeman wrote: I propose we split it like this : 33% to the finder of the first 10,000,000 digit prime, 33% to Scott and George, for doing excellent work 33% to charity, deciding by vote by all the members of gimps, every doublecheck gives an extra vote over factoring and LL-testing. Just an incentive to catch up on the doublechecking... Ok, but who gets the leftover 1%? (I would vote me of course). Just had to go there, given the focus here bad math is just funny. First Law of System Requirements: "Anything is possible if you don't know what you're talking about..." _ Unsubscribe list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
Re: Mersenne: The $100,000 award for 10,000,000 digit prime
The EFF of course, is offering the prize to help the advancement of just this sort of distributed computing (well, in a simplified nutshell). I don't think anyone should "profit" from GIMPS, but if we were to win a huge prize, I think we should use the money as it's intended. The idea of giving money for people who come up with speed improvements or large contributions to prime theory is a good one, and certainly anyone that incurrs expenses (Scott, George... anyone) should be reimbursed... this is a small part of these prizes. Here are a few other off the wall ideas... they should be taken semi-seriously; more as an exercise in lateral thinking than anything else. Beyond giving out the money in our own way, we could use it to increase GIMPs computing power in a few ways. If we started a non-profit organization, we could buy our own server farms with the money... Hell, we could double our speed right now by spending $50,000 on vanilla pentiums, a room, and a huge electric bill. I bet a few people on the group would volunteer time to keep it up. When the money runs out, donate the computers to a school or something; even then, the money then becomes well spent on continuing the computer industry, within parallel computing, and within education; a worthy cause. Or this... pay a computer manufacturer to subsidize computer sales to academia with the requisite that the Prime95 (or similar) software is installed ahead of time? Or just donate money to high-schools or colleges to buy computers with the requisite that they help the GIMPs project? Again, everyone wins, and noone feels greedy. OR... we could fund the production of sieving/LL testing hardware. I'd like to see a four inch square cube sitting on my desk running factor.exe all day. :-) Advertise... could you imagine advertisements for GIMPs in the Wall Street Journal? :-) Or a good spot on Cartoon Network or the Sci Fi Channel. Have a party... wouldn't YOU like to meet the other people working with GIMPS? Frankly, this wouldn't be THAT expensive, and we could even make it a symposium or something call for papers or research in the area of computational number theory. I could go on... but I imagine this is long enough, and people probably won't make it much further. Just some ideas. I admit, tho, that although I'm not completely sure what happend to the current prize money, everyone on the project should at least have a vote or a word in a discussion about what happens to it. Later, ---Chip \\ ^ // (o o) ---oOO--(_)--OOo | Chip Lynch| Computer Guru| | [EMAIL PROTECTED] || | (703) 465-4176 (w) | (202) 362-7978 (h) | _ Unsubscribe list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
Re: Mersenne: The $100,000 award for 10,000,000 digit prime
Chip Lynch wrote:
Have a party... wouldn't YOU like to meet the other people working with
GIMPS? Frankly, this wouldn't be THAT expensive, and we could even make
it a symposium or something call for papers or research in the area of
computational number theory.
Great idea Chip! I think there's a bunch of GIMPSers that hang out
in Santa Clara county or SF Bay area. We could do something that
wouldnt cost anything, like a potluck picnic at a local park, or a group
hike or just a social gathering. We could see if Scott wanted to come,
and if he showed up we could wax his car, or carry him off the field
on our shoulders, that sorta thing. {8^D Ideas? spike
_
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Mersenne: Setu for Dual processor NT
I am going to build a dual processor box running NT. How do I set things up so I get copies of Prime 95 running on each processor. I want to get maximum bang out of this combination. Terry Terry S. Arnold 2975 B Street San Diego, CA 92102 USA [EMAIL PROTECTED] (619) 235-8181 (voice) (619) 235-0016 (fax) _ Unsubscribe list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
Re: Mersenne: Primes for money
Pierre Abbat wrote: What do you call someone who searches for primes only because of the prize money? A mersennary. I wish I had said that. In fact, I may claim that I did, since it is such a perfect pun/whatever. Gerry, feeling uncharacteristically envious _ Unsubscribe list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
