>From: John Simmons <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Date: Wed, 16 Sep 1998 05:39:33 -0700 >Subject: Re: Mersenne: Should we or not? > >At 02:59 AM 9/16/98 -0400, Vincent J. Mooney Jr. wrote: >>Should the GIMPS effort discard Alan Blosser's results on the grounds that >>they were improperly obtained? Surely we can wait for the whole story, not >>just a newspaper article, but then if the news stories are indeed right, >>should we discard the results? I would like to make two short points here: 1) Now that the damage has been done, there is nothing at all to be gained from discarding the results that Aaron Blosser contributed. What he did was a bad thing (although imho not as nearly as bad as the press claims - I too have the suspicion that he is just a welcome scapegoat for USWEST, for their net here in Phoenix just isn't up to snuff - nameservers down etc.), and we should all make it very clear that we do not apprechiate (and in fact, not want) this kind of contribution. 2) If someone intended to embrace some sort of "no cheated CPU cycles wanted here"-policy, the question is: who is going to be the judge on that? Besides, GIMPS has been about fun from the beginning, and judges are not about fun, as we all know. >Well Vince, that is a pretty moronic suggestion. I think some of you >(especially you, Vince) have lost sight of the true goal - discovering new >prime numbers. The fact that Alan may (or may not) have used processing >time on unauthorized machines does NOT invalidate the numbers he has >completed. The fact is that he has completed a lot of numbers. How he did >it is NOT a consideration. > There is *no* reason whatsoever for personal insult on this list. PLEASE everybody comment only on whatever is the topic and NOT about whom they consider to be a moron or having a "non CPU-intensive life". Martin
