Mersenne Digest Thursday, 21 January 1999 Volume 01 : Number 499 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Henrik Olsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Tue, 19 Jan 1999 14:10:33 +0000 ( ) Subject: Mersenne: Trial factoring not getting credited? Hi, I've noticed that several of the exponents I've been assigned recently had been trial factored to fewer bits that normal for that range, so mprime started out with trial factoring them, before going on to double check it. Now, what I wonder about, is why that time spent trial factoring isn't credited as such? - -- Henrik Olsen, Dawn Solutions I/S URL=http://www.iaeste.dk/~henrik/ Get the rest there. ------------------------------ From: "Ernst W. Mayer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Tue, 19 Jan 1999 14:00:59 -0500 Subject: Re: Mersenne: Let's recruit her for GIMPS Henrik Olsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >On Fri, 15 Jan 1999, Ernst W. Mayer wrote: > >> The following article, titled "Irish teen's e-mail code could >> transform Internet commerce" should be of interest: >> >> http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9901/14/email.genius/ >> >> Pretty impressive work for a person of any age, much less a 16-year-old. >> We should see if we can recruit her for the GIMPS effort. >> >> -Ernst >I checked that article, it has no mention of her algorithm, no mention of >the strength of the algorithm, no mention of whether the judges where >competent to evaluate the strength of the algorithm and a very scary quote >foretelling the future of her work. > ><quote> > She said that she would prefer to publish her discovery rather than > patent it, because making money from it would go against the spirit of > science. ></quote> > >With the way the US patent law works, that will put it up for grabs to >whoever gets the application done first, thus enabling them to prevent any >unlicenced use by others, including the discoverer. >She's showing her age with that comment:( I agree with the part about being unable to determine the likely impact of the work until details appear, but disagree with the part about the inventor's desire to put the work into the public domain as being "scary." In fact, it is the same spirit that infuses projects such GIMPS, Gnu and Linux, and (assuming the inventor puts the work into the public domain) cannot be patented or commercialized by anyone else. I think Hendrik misunderstands some fundamentals about US patent law, especially the clause about something being patentable only if it is not "prior art". http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/doc/general/novelty.htm says: - ---- NOVELTY AND OTHER CONDITIONS FOR OBTAINING A PATENT In order for an invention to be patentable it must be new as defined in the patent law, which provides that an invention cannot be patented if: (a) the invention was known or used by others in this country, or patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country, before the invention thereof by the applicant for patent, or (b) the invention was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country more than one year prior to the application for patent in the United States . . . If the invention has been described in a printed publication anywhere in the world, or if it has been in public use or on sale in this country before the date that the applicant made his/her invention, a patent cannot be obtained. If the invention has been described in a printed publication anywhere, or has been in public use or on sale in this country more than one year before the date on which an application for patent is filed in this country, a patent cannot be obtained. In this connection it is immaterial when the invention was made, or whether the printed publication or public use was by the inventor himself/herself or by someone else. If the inventor describes the invention in a printed publication or uses the invention publicly, or places it on sale, he/she must apply for a patent before one year has gone by, otherwise any right to a patent will be lost. Even if the subject matter sought to be patented is not exactly shown by the prior art, and involves one or more differences over the most nearly similar thing already known, a patent may still be refused if the differences would be obvious. The subject matter sought to be patented must be sufficiently different from what has been used or described before that it may be said to be nonobvious to a person having ordinary skill in the area of technology related to the invention. For example, the substitution of one material for another, or changes in size, are ordinarily not patentable. - ---- Note that many of the legal disputes about patents (more often than not involving biotech companies) don't involve prior art, but rather involve competing claims of novcelty by two or more companies, all of which are seeking to commercialize the same or similar technologies, which means none of which have placed their work into the public domain (they may well have published it in some form, but will require you to sign some sort of licensing agreement before giving out crucial details.) On the other hand, many involve cases where a company applied for and/or was granted a patent for something, and someone comes along and says, "wait just a minute - I published a paper describing essentially the same thing some fifteen years ago." One of the main reasons there is an ongoing race between public and private genome sequencing projects is that having a public-domain sequence done makes it prior art, and thus prevents a company from patenting it and resctricting access to people able to fork over big money or promises to give the company rights to any or all future developments based in some way on the technology. Of course a big company with deep pockets can drag legal proceedings out for years, a strategy which is much more effective if they gain a patent (even if wrongly) to begin with. - -Ernst ------------------------------ From: "Scott Kurowski" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1999 23:24:42 -0800 Subject: Mersenne: PrimeNet 4.0 Testers Needed Hi all, I'm looking for about a dozen volunteers to help first test a new PrimeNet intranet proxy service, then the all-new PrimeNet 4.0 server. The local proxy is a NT service or Win95/98 console app. It channels LAN traffic from your v17 Prime95 or NTPrime clients via a single HTTP or RPC connection to PrimeNet 3.1 or 4.0, optionally through a firewall. Supported LAN protocols include TCP/IP, named pipes, Windows Network, UDP/IP, and IPX, including DNS lookup indirection. A new RpcNet.dll is provided to enable clients to use these protocols and the PrimeNet proxy service. Internet testing of PrimeNet 4.0 starts within the next few weeks. A prerequisite is to successfully setup a local proxy to PrimeNet 3.1. Tests will use real exponents and may require an occasional email dialog to check or set something, but probably little else. Please reply privately to me at [EMAIL PROTECTED] Regards, scott ------------------------------ End of Mersenne Digest V1 #499 ******************************
