Something I've been wondering about since entering this project - How much are the people who are trying to find a 10 million digit prime contributing to the search? They stand less than a tenth the ordinary chance per unit time, and any prime they find will take at least four or five years to definately place in sequence. I do understand that GIMPS' share of the prize money, if any, will go a long way towards maintaining the PrimeNet server, paying developers/porters of the client and so forth, but I just can't help wondering whether the people (It's only about five percent of the userbase, is stats is any guide) who are doing this are contributing. I'm not trying to flame anyone. Currently I am myself about a fifth of the way through two exponents in the 9.3 M range (with a p3-600 win98, if anyone cares), but I do respect that others may have different goals. If I succeed in finding a prime, I will have set a record that will likely stand for a year or two, and it would look great on my resume going into college :-) (I have taken some advanced math courses at the Rochester Institute of Technology while a high school student, if anyone is confused) I would certainly be more than happy if I found a prime, and even if I never do (which is quite likely) I will be content to have helped this project and to have sped up somewhat the efforts of whomever does win. After all, without each failure, the winner would have been delayed by one exponent. Another question, on a slightly different note: How likely is it that the cutting edge, so to speak, of the main first-time LL effort will check all the exponents up to 10 million before a 10 million digit prime is found? We're about a third of the way there now in terms of exponents, about halfway or more when you rule out composite exponents and I have no clue how close in terms of actual P90 time. Please, feel free to correct me if I made some factual errors - I have been, after all, only here eleven days. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
