On Tuesday 25 May 2004 05:58, Matthias Noch wrote: > Are we going to polish our stats a bit for a possible upcoming > press-release regarding the 41st Mersenne prime? It might look better if > we could report some additional mile-stones, like "all exponents below > 15,300,000 have been tested at least once" or "Countdown to testing all > exponents below M(13466917) once: 7". We would need only a few more work > to reach these mile-stones and most likely those exponents have been > assigned to people here. But if they are calculated on very slow PCs it > might take to long to be finished before the PR is send out. So maybe we > should assign those exponents additionally to people with much faster > PCs to get those exponents done in time. It would be nice to have those > miles-stones reached as they alone wouldn't be noticed by the press, but > together with a new Mersenne it would add flesh to the story.
A few points here: (1) Advancing milestones NOW only slows later ones since the amount of work remaining remains constant (2) Having a steady trickle of milestones to report is better press than fixing everything to coincide with prime discoveries - when they will be overlooked in favour of the Big Story (3) Having exponents "poached" in the way you suggest is a major disincentive to those who end up as "poachees". I don't like this idea. Regards Brian Beesley _______________________________________________ Prime mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hogranch.com/mailman/listinfo/prime
