Re: [news] 41st Mersenne prime found

From: Marcel Martin (mm_at_ellipsa.no.sp.am.net)
Date: 06/04/04

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    Date: Fri, 04 Jun 2004 00:03:34 +0200

    Lassi Hippeläinen a écrit :
    >
    > Marcel Martin wrote:
    > >
    > > Mok-Kong Shen a écrit :
    > > >
    > > > http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/it_res/article.php/3361501
    > >
    > > I find this paper quite unjust. The name of the discoverer is quoted
    > > only once at the bottom of the paper and yet, he is not even called
    > > "discoverer" but "a volunteer at the research project, was running the
    > > computer that discovered ..."!
    > > Fortunately (for Findley), there is a press release by Woltman:
    > > http://www.mersenne.org/24036583.htm
    >
    > I beg to disagree. Josh Findley let his machine run the code, but it
    > doesn't make him a discoverer. He can be called a sponsor of the
    > discovery. George Woltman and Scott Kurowski as the authors of the
    > software contributed more.

    I agree that the scientific merit of finding a prime Mersenne number
    by doing an exhaustive search is roughly the same that the one of
    buying a winning lottery ticket. But, precisely, this is a lottery
    and, in a lottery, there are always two kinds of winners, the
    accidental ones (the ones who got the winning tickets) and the
    structural ones (the ones who organize the lottery). Woltman seems
    to have understood it. The first GIMPS member who will find a prime
    having more than 10,000,000 digits will have half the amount of the
    EFF award [*], i.e., $50,000 [**].

    [*] http://www.eff.org/awards/coop.php

    [**] Assuming this member is honnest. 

    -- 
mm
http://www.ellipsa.net/
mm@ellipsa.no.sp.am.net  ( suppress no.sp.am. )
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