Mersenne Digest Friday, June 4 1999 Volume 01 : Number 567
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1999 18:03:14 -0700
From: Will Edgington <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: New Prime...I wonder if the "islands" theorem will hold fast?
Luke Welsh writes:
TTBOMK, the theory was never formalized. Regardless, Peter Lawrence
Montgomery settled the issue:
http://www2.netdoor.com/~acurry/mersenne/archive2/0032.html
See also:
http://www2.netdoor.com/~acurry/mersenne/archive2/0035.html
http://www2.netdoor.com/~acurry/mersenne/archive2/0026.html
http://www2.netdoor.com/~acurry/mersenne/archive2/0023.html
That archive appears to be old and I do not see some replies that I
later made to this thread.
Notably, I added mersdistrib, a slightly modified version of the
program that Peter included in the first message above, to the mers
package at the URL below.
Will
http://www.garlic.com/~wedgingt/mers.tar.gz
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Date: Wed, 02 Jun 1999 20:47:54 -0500
From: Ken Kriesel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: New Mersenne Prime found!! Not yet verified
At 07:13 PM 1999/06/02 +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>Presumably a statement of fact in a news column in, e.g., "Nature"
>is sufficient, rather than a full-blown paper. For that, all that would
>appear to be needed is the number, the names of the discovery
>and verification teams, dates and possibly some brief details of the
>hardware & software used.
The EFF requires that they approve the specific publication and referee
process; see section 4F of
http://www.eff.org/coop-awards/award-prime-rules.html
(and may perform verification themselves also).
"We strongly recommend that you submit your paper to the Mathematics of
Computation." EFF also requires publication prior to submission for the
prize.
The AMS site says they are backlogged 3 issues as of May 31.
And it's a quarterly even in electronic form, according to
http://www.ams.org/cgi-bin/bookstore/bookpromo.pl?fn=20&arg1=mcom&item=99MCOME
>George - is DS doing the verification run again - or is this also
>"restricted information" at the moment?
>Regards
>Brian Beesley
Presumably the practice of simultaneously notifying all past discoverers
of mersenne primes, and then multiply double-checking the result has been
used.
It would be no big deal to double-check p~6,000,000 since p~7,300,000 is
under 3 weeks on a PII-400, and PIII-550's are on the market.
Of course you know that already, Brian, having Alpha's that could do it
easily.
Ken
Here's what George said some time back. Also, verification is done on a
program and typically a processor architecture different than the discovery.
>Return-Path: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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>Date: Thu, 29 Jan 1998 14:08:55 -0500
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>From: George Woltman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: Mersenne: Re: Announcement Policy
>Cc: Scott Kurowski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>Hi,
>
>The results of my informal, non-scientific survey are as such:
>
>5 voted for keeping a new prime secret until verified.
>3 voted for full disclosure.
>15 voted to announce as unverfied, but keep the actual exponent secret.
>
>It looks like the middle-of-the-roaders win.
>
>So here is my proposed future announcement plans:
>
>1) When a new prime is reported, the primnet server will email all
>previous Mersenne Prime discoverers as well as Chris Caldwell and
>Richard Crandall. This essentially stakes GIMPS claim.
>
>2) I will download the server log files and see if the verification
>code from the results file is correct. Someone will need to crack the
>server's security codes and prime95's security code to falsely get our
>hopes up. Hopefully hackers have better things to do with their time.
>
>3) I will email this mailing list with the news and a rough idea of where
>the exponent is. The server's statistics page will show one unverified prime
>reported. I will keep the actual discoverer's name secret until
>the prime is verified.
>
>4) We all wait together for the verification.
>
>Best regards,
>George
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Date: Wed, 02 Jun 1999 21:49:23 EDT
From: Foghorn Leghorn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: New Mersenne Prime found!! Not yet verified
>Hi all!
>
> The 38th Mersenne prime was *probably* discovered today. The exponent
>is in the 6,000,000s (the prime is in the neighborhood of 2,000,000
>digits).
This is great news for the project--it should raise morale after the version
17 bug. It has been a long time (almost a year and a half) since the last
discovery.
Is there anyhing you can tell us about how this result is being
double-checked? I'd imagine that some sort of supercomputer is being used.
Do you have any idea how long it is expected to take?
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Date: 3 Jun 99 00:02:37 MDT
From: Paul Derbyshire <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [Re: Mersenne: New Mersenne Prime found!! Not yet verified]
Foghorn Leghorn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> This is great news for the project--it should raise morale after the
> version 17 bug.
What "version 17 bug"?
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Date: Thu, 3 Jun 1999 10:52:20 +0200
From: "Grieken, Paul van" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: speed question pentium III solved
> Thanks for the reply from several members of the list.
>
> Indeed the screensaver was still on, stupid me, after that the PC was
> running with
> a iteration speed of 0.21sec for the whole night.
>
> Paul van Grieken
>
> > When I switched the monitor on the next day I saw that the
> iterations
> > speed was dropped during the night to 1.2 sec.
>
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Date: Thu, 3 Jun 1999 12:03:25 +0200
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Mersenne: Prime95 on linux, a tech question
I'm trying to run mprime on a (test)webserver (linux/apache) with no
console access.
Now I can start mprime remotely through telnet - which works fine.
But as soon as I quit the particular telnet-session - mprime quits too.
Anybody can give me a hint how do keep mprime running?
thanks in advance
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Date: Thu, 3 Jun 1999 10:52:20 +0200
From: "Grieken, Paul van" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: speed question pentium III solved
> Thanks for the reply from several members of the list.
>
> Indeed the screensaver was still on, stupid me, after that the PC was
> running with
> a iteration speed of 0.21sec for the whole night.
>
> Paul van Grieken
>
> > When I switched the monitor on the next day I saw that the
> iterations
> > speed was dropped during the night to 1.2 sec.
>
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------------------------------
Date: Thu, 03 Jun 1999 14:40:46 +0100
From: Gordon Spence <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: Re: New Mersenne Prime
>From: George Woltman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: Mersenne: New Mersenne Prime found!! Not yet verified
>>Date: Tue, 01 Jun 1999 21:26:59 -0400
>Hi all!
>
> The 38th Mersenne prime was *probably* discovered today. The exponent
>is in the 6,000,000s (the prime is in the neighborhood of 2,000,000 digits).
>The discoverer is a member of the top 200 contributors according to
>http://www.mersenne.org/top.htm
Now that George has publicly announced the tentative discovery, I guess I
can give public congratulations to the finder. I have already emailed
him/her directly.
[snip]
>
> And now the bad news. Since the EFF award requires publication
>of the result in a refereed academic journal, the publication process
>will take longer than normal. It could be a few months.
Ah well, that's life. It took 17 months to find it after Roland's so what
is another small wait.
>
> Tentative congratulations to all GIMPS members for their contribution
>in this exciting discovery!!
>
> Oh yeah, and special thanks to Scott Kurowski and entropia.com.
>We wouldn't have found this prime without his tireless Primenet server work.
>
Wholeheartedly agree with these sentiments, we *all* made it possible, if
we hadn't used up all the small numbers then we wouldn't have reached this
number for a long time yet. If I remember it correctly when I joined back
in 1996 the intention was to test all numbers less than 2.6M before 2000...
A big thanks to Scott as well, without the automated procedures I'm sure
George would be swamped trying to process all the results.
>
>Date: Tue, 1 Jun 1999 18:44:10 -0700 (PDT)
>From: Bradford Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: Mersenne: Prime, UNVERIFIED
>
>What's the stroy with this prime that Primenet says is unverified?
It just simply means that a number in the 6M range has had a single LL test
which returned a residue of zero. Hence it is probably prime. It now needs
to be checked on a different hardware platform. Only a general announcement
is made at this stage just in case the result is false - how could that
happen? s/w bug, h/w glitch...
The full information is sent to a small list of people.
>
>Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1999 06:03:32 -0600
>From: "Aaron Blosser" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: Mersenne: New Prime...I wonder if the "islands" theorem will hold
fast?
>
>Once this new one is verified, it will be interesting to see if there is a
>prime either just below or just above it, to see if this elusive and highly
>unverified "island" theory sticks in this case or not.
I was wondering about this myself, might be worth getting a few exponents
in the vicinity of the new number...
>
>While the prize money would be nice, I for one would think it cool enough
>just to find one,
It is...
>
>Date: Wed, 2 Jun 99 14:58:04 CES
>From: "Cornelius Caesar" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: Mersenne: Re: New Mersenne Prime found!! Not yet verified
[snip]
>
>Do any of you remember this post?
>If no in-between number will be found this posting turns out to be
>false (as I always suspected)...
Yes I do remember it, now 5.2M is not *so* far away from the new number,
well alright it is xx% away. Why don't we hand out a few assignments in the
17-19m range. I have already done a 20m one which took 10 months ;-)
regards
G
Gordon Spence, Nokia IP Telephony
Applications Engineer Grove House, Waltham Way,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] White Waltham, Maidenhead,
http://www.nokiaiptel.com/ Berkshire, SL6 3TN, UK.
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Date: Thu, 3 Jun 1999 14:33:53 +0000
From: "Steinar H . Gunderson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: Update of web pages
Hi, and congratulations to all of you for the (probable) prime.
Even though it's not 100% certain and published yet, would it be an idea to
update GIMPS' and PrimeNet's web pages, with at least a note of the finding?
/* Steinar */
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Date: Thu, 03 Jun 1999 10:04:38 -0400
From: Yvan Dutil <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: Silent participant?
I noticed there is some participants who as not logged on the server
for more than a year. Is there a way to have an automated process
which call them in order to see if they have given up?
Yvan Dutil
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Date: Thu, 03 Jun 1999 17:58:34 +0200
From: "Philip Heede" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: Prime95 on linux, a tech question
On Thu, 3 Jun 1999 12:03:25 +0200, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>Now I can start mprime remotely through telnet - which works fine.
>But as soon as I quit the particular telnet-session - mprime quits
>too.
>Anybody can give me a hint how do keep mprime running?
Sure..
I run mprime remotely on a server by using a simple
"./mprime > /dev/null &" command. The "> /dev/null" suppresses output and
the "&" makes MPrime run in the background. If you want output in a file
simply replace "/dev/null" with the filename.
- --
Sincerely,
Philip Heede
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Date: Thu, 3 Jun 1999 07:02:38 -0700
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [none]
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 03 Jun 1999 15:26:00 -0700
From: "Aaron Schaufenbuel" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: Second LL
Congratulations to everyone from GIMPS on the new *probable* prime, especially
George! Just wondering, can you tell us when the second LL test will be finished, I'm
guessing that your running it on something alittle faster than a standard PIII?
- ---Aaron Schauf---
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Date: Thu, 03 Jun 1999 23:45:30 GMT
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Kevin Jaget)
Subject: Re: Mersenne: Prime95 on linux, a tech question
On Thu, 03 Jun 1999 17:58:34 +0200, you wrote:
>On Thu, 3 Jun 1999 12:03:25 +0200, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> >Now I can start mprime remotely through telnet - which works fine.
> >But as soon as I quit the particular telnet-session - mprime quits
> >too.
> >Anybody can give me a hint how do keep mprime running?
>
>Sure..
>I run mprime remotely on a server by using a simple
>"./mprime > /dev/null &" command. The "> /dev/null" suppresses output and
>the "&" makes MPrime run in the background. If you want output in a file
>simply replace "/dev/null" with the filename.
You might also want to look at the nohup and nice commands,
depending on what exactly you are trying to do. If you've got root
access (and the permission on the box's owner) you can also set
mprime up to start when the system boots by modifying the init files
in /etc/rc.d.
- --
Kevin Jaget (or an FDA approved generic equivalent)
kcjaget at mindspring.com
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Date: Thu, 03 Jun 1999 20:43:47 -0400
From: George Woltman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: Second LL
Hi all,
At 03:26 PM 6/3/99 -0700, Aaron Schaufenbuel wrote:
>Congratulations to everyone from GIMPS on the new *probable* prime,
especially
>George! Just wondering, can you tell us when the second LL test will
>be finished, I'm guessing that your running it on something alittle
>faster than a standard PIII?
I've been in contact with Slowinski and Gage. Cray time is a little
scarce right now. However, a volunteer has started the test today
running at idle priority. It will probably take 4 weeks but could be less.
Ernst Mayer has also begun a verification. It too will take about 4 weeks
depending on what speed hardware he can get his hands on.
Patience,
George
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Date: Thu, 3 Jun 1999 18:49:49 -0700
From: Paul Burnett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: New Mersenne Prime found!! Not yet verified
At 08:47 PM 6/2/99 Ken Kriesel wrote:
>The EFF requires that they approve the specific publication and referee
>process
...otherwise the newly discovered Mersenne Prime isn't "officially" a
Mersenne Prime? Fascinating! (Or is this just for the prize?)
Paul Burnett, Morgan Hill, CA: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Date: 4 Jun 99 02:48:52 MDT
From: Paul Derbyshire <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: Mystery message
This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
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>
What's with the blank-subject blank message?
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Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1999 10:36:39 GMT
From: "Brian J Beesley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: Re: New Mersenne Prime
Gordon Spence <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes,
in reply to Aaron Blosser ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):
> >Once this new one is verified, it will be interesting to see if there is a
> >prime either just below or just above it, to see if this elusive and highly
> >unverified "island" theory sticks in this case or not.
>
> I was wondering about this myself, might be worth getting a few exponents
> in the vicinity of the new number...
>
Well, _if_ (and it's still a big "if") the "island" theory holds, then we
would still expect any supposed "partner" of the new prime to have
an exponent a few hundred thousand different from the new
discovery. That's a lot of candidates, and lots of them are already
allocated.
Another approach (if you really believe in the "island" theory) would
be to use the new prime's exponent (once it's made public) to
refine the values of k & q in the predictor formula k*q^n and start
checking exponents in the 12/13/14 million range. Personally I feel
you've a better chance checking smaller untested exponents
allocated normally by PrimeNet.
BTW inspection of the tables of known primes of the forms k.2^n-1
and k.2^n+1 for odd k between 3 and 299 reveals some interesting
irregularities. Some values of k seem to generate far denser
patterns of primes than others; the density of Mersenne primes is
about average. Some values of k have distributions of primes which
are apparently much "clumpier" than Mersenne primes, however
other values of k have distributions of primes which appear to be
suspciously smooth. Without an underlying theoretical argument
as to why the "island" theory might be valid, I find it hard to explain
the distribution irregularities as anything other than statistical
artifacts based on inadequate observational data.
...................
There's been plenty of congratulations flying around - which I of
course endorse - but I feel we should also offer condolances to
Roland, Gordon and Joel for apparently being pushed down the
honours table!
With regard to the EFF prize - the new discovery (if verified) does
not represent anything radical in terms of hardware, algorithm or
exploitation of a new theorem, which is why I indicated in an earlier
message that I didn't think it would be contentious. After all, the
mathematical theory behind the Lucas-Lehmer test is "old hat", the
source code for several implementations is available for public
inspection, and several types of off-the-shelf consumer hardware
could be used to run the verification in a reasonable time.
The same might not be true for the larger EFF prize claims.
Regards
Brian Beesley
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Date: 4 Jun 99 04:11:50 MDT
From: Paul Derbyshire <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: Serious problems with v.18
Before the upgrade, I was 77% of the way through an exponent in the 7M area.
Now it says 0%. It looks like it couldn't read older versions' save files and
started over! How do I recover that 77%? (I assume it would have to be checked
to see if the version 17 error struck it, and either corrected or discarded if
it had...)
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Date: Fri, 04 Jun 1999 07:42:54 -0400
From: Peter Doherty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: Serious problems with v.18
This is normal. Because of the bug in v17, all the math it was doing was
wrong, so using that 77% would have been a waste since it was incorrect
data. There is no need to try and retrieve that data. It's useless.
- --Peter
At 04:11 06/04/1999 -0600, you wrote:
>Before the upgrade, I was 77% of the way through an exponent in the 7M area.
>Now it says 0%. It looks like it couldn't read older versions' save files and
>started over! How do I recover that 77%? (I assume it would have to be
checked
>to see if the version 17 error struck it, and either corrected or
discarded if
>it had...)
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Date: Fri, 04 Jun 1999 09:45:10 -0400
From: Jud McCranie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: Second LL
>>Congratulations to everyone from GIMPS on the new *probable* prime,
Will the derails be announced when it is submitted to the journal, when it is
accepted by the journal, or when it appears in print?
+------------------------------------------+
| Jud McCranie [EMAIL PROTECTED] |
+------------------------------------------+
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Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1999 09:50:43 -0300 (EST)
From: "Nicolau C. Saldanha" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: Prime95 on linux, a tech question
On Thu, 3 Jun 1999, Kevin Jaget wrote:
> On Thu, 03 Jun 1999 17:58:34 +0200, you wrote:
>
> >On Thu, 3 Jun 1999 12:03:25 +0200, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> >
> > >Now I can start mprime remotely through telnet - which works fine.
> > >But as soon as I quit the particular telnet-session - mprime quits
> > >too.
> > >Anybody can give me a hint how do keep mprime running?
> >
> >Sure..
> >I run mprime remotely on a server by using a simple
> >"./mprime > /dev/null &" command. The "> /dev/null" suppresses output and
> >the "&" makes MPrime run in the background. If you want output in a file
> >simply replace "/dev/null" with the filename.
>
> You might also want to look at the nohup and nice commands,
> depending on what exactly you are trying to do. If you've got root
> access (and the permission on the box's owner) you can also set
> mprime up to start when the system boots by modifying the init files
> in /etc/rc.d.
On the other hand, if you do not have root access or do not want to fool
around with init files (always dangerous), you can start mprime via cron
as a normal user: this is what I do and here is my script file which is
called every hour via cron. See the crontab command.
#!/bin/tcsh
set mersenne=`ps aux | grep -v grep | grep nicolau | grep mprime | wc -l`
if ( $mersenne == 0 ) then
echo "No mprime program running! Program will be initialized..."
pushd ~/mprime >& /dev/null
nice +19 ./mprime >& /dev/null &
popd >& /dev/null
else
if ( $mersenne > 5 ) then
echo $mersenne "mprime programs running!"
endif
endif
The variable "mersenne" counts the number of processes called mprime
run by nicolau; make sure your script is *not* called mprime_init
or it will count the script itself!
You must of course substitute your login where "nicolau" is.
You may also want to add parameters to mprime, or change the path
where mprime is located, or change the level of niceness.
http://www.mat.puc-rio.br/~nicolau
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Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1999 07:49:05 -0700
From: Greg Hewgill <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: Re: New Mersenne Prime
On Fri, Jun 04, 1999 at 10:36:39AM +0000, Brian J Beesley wrote:
> message that I didn't think it would be contentious. After all, the
> mathematical theory behind the Lucas-Lehmer test is "old hat", the
> source code for several implementations is available for public
> inspection, and several types of off-the-shelf consumer hardware
> could be used to run the verification in a reasonable time.
I would guess that although the EFF was expecting a Mersenne prime to be the
first to meet the million-digit criteria, they added the publication clause to
protect themselves if the first million-digit prime were of a less well known
form. In the case of Mersenne primes, with the theory and implementations well
established, the actual publication ends up being merely a formality. Of course,
this is just my opinion. :)
Congratulations to George, Scott, and the mystery prover. It's been too long
since our last one.
Greg Hewgill
http://www.hewgill.com
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Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1999 11:42:54 -0400
From: "Pierre Abbat" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: Prime95 on linux, a tech question
> if ( $mersenne > 5 ) then
Why 5? Isn't one enough? If there is more than one running, they'll just
compete with each other for the CPU, even though they're being nice to everyone
else.
phma
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Date: Fri, 04 Jun 1999 10:19:57 -0700
From: Gordon Irlam <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: Mystery message
Paul Derbyshire wrote:
> "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" wrote in a message titled "":
>
> What's with the blank-subject blank message?
This is presumably a bug in majordomo (or posibly sendmail). My machine
ran out of swap space yesterday (thanks to Netscape chewing up 150M),
and majordomo does not appear to fail gracefully under such
circumstances. Presumably someone sent a message to the list, and
majordomo only managed to half deliver it, sending out the message, but
forgetting the subject and contents.
gordoni
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Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1999 16:37:13 -0500 (CDT)
From: Conrad Curry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: M619 sieving
M617 is being factored by the Number Field Sieve (NFS). The sieving
started about 3.5 weeks ago is almost finished. It will be many more
weeks as the final assignments are finished up and the final stages are
complete. Meanwhile, sieving for M619 has started. If you want to
participate go to ftp://ftp.netdoor.com/users/acurry/nfs
and download the siever for DOS or linux. Source code is available to
compile on other platforms. You will need about 20Mb memory free.
From the list published May 25, M617 is now on the 'Most' wanted list
and M619 is on the 'More' wanted list. See
http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/ssw/cun/index.html
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Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1999 22:45:45 -0400 (EDT)
From: "David A. Miller" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: An example of inconsiderate CPU hogging
The message of the day on the Sun machines here at the University of
Michigan included the following today:
* * * * *
Please do not run the Seti At Home program on the Login Servers. Although
it is for a good cause, the Login Servers do not have any spare CPU cycles
to donate. Running Seti At Home interferes with other users getting their
work done.
* * * * *
This illustrates the importance of getting permission before running
processor-intensive programs on machines that are not entirely your own.
There are only about thirty people logged in on the machine that I'm using
right now, and as usual almost all of them are running Pine; even with
this comparatively light load the slowdown was apparently bad enough to be
a problem. I suspect that people trying to run Seti on these machines at a
peak time of year would create a big performance drag, and force the
administrators to monitor individual users' processor usage more closely
to prevent such abuses. It is easy to forget about such consequences in
the quest for CPU time.
I'd like to think that GIMPS members, on the whole, do not deserve
warnings like the one above. Let's keep it that way.
David A. Miller
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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End of Mersenne Digest V1 #567
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