>
> Fellow prime number hunters,
>
> I was wondering...Primenet offers a reward for the next Mersenne prime
> found, but are there any other interesting things we could offer rewards
> for?
In a few months, hopefully, M601 will be factored with NFS. We could
have another factor length contest. This would allow everyone a chance to
win and not just those with the most CPU power.
Other contests could be based on complete factorizations (with ECPP
primality certificate), finding factors of 2^p-1 for p<1200, finding 40+
decimal digit factors with ECM, finding factors of M(M(p)), etc.
Of course the pool for the next Mersenne prime could always be
increased. $10,000 for decrypting a message and only $1,500 for a new
Mersenne prime just doesn't right to me :), but then I'm sure most of us
are not in it for the money anyway.
