> > Perhaps for the smallest factor of some Mersenne number or something?
>
> 3 is a factor of M(4) = 15, I claim the prize, since no-one will ever
> find a smaller prime factor of any Mersenne number ;-)
You got me there. :-) I hadn't worded that so carefully eh?
> Yes, some time ago (?October?) I suggested a prize to encourage
> people to run ECM. What I had in mind was an annual prize for the
> largest prime factor of any Mersenne number discovered using
> Prime95 (or one of its derivatives) during the calendar year. Now
> that the program can factor 2^n+1 as well as 2^n-1, I suppose we
> have to generalize a bit.
That seems to be the idea that was most frequently given in the past 24
hours. Perhaps Scott Kurowski is reading this...maybe he'd like to input
some thoughts since we would probably rely on the Primenet server to find
the winner...
> Also you need to be very careful in the wording of the competition
> rules, to prevent people making silly claims (like mine above!)
Agreed.
> I may be able to contribute some cash as well, at least something
> of the order of $500.
That's about what I was shooting for as well.
So, essentially, we might be talking about something like: a prize to the
person who finds the largest factor using ECM at the end of calendar year
1999? A Y2K prize?
Aaron
