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Seventeen or Bust found another prime

Originally posted by: malak
Originally posted by: miketheidiot
glad to know that at least 1 DC program is doing something. :thumbsup:
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I'm sorry, how is finding a prime doing anything?
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Finding a prime is doing something, like finding a matching code to crack an encrypted test phrase. While the implication of the first comment that no other DC projects do anything is inflamatory, I wouldn't recommend fanning the flames. 🙂

Anyway, congrats to whomever found the prime. Reading about advances in these specialized branches of mathematics always intrigues me, even though I have a hard enough time with the basic calculus that we get in high school. 😱 😉

Edit for clarification
 
Originally posted by: ProviaFan
Originally posted by: malak
Originally posted by: miketheidiot
glad to know that at least 1 DC program is doing something. :thumbsup:
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I'm sorry, how is finding a prime doing anything?
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Finding a prime is doing something, like finding a matching code to crack an encrypted test phrase. While the implication of the first comment that no other DC projects do anything is inflamatory, I wouldn't recommend fanning the flames. 🙂

Anyway, congrats to whomever found the prime. Reading about advances in these specialized branches of mathematics always intrigues me, even though I have a hard enough time with the basic calculus that we get in high school. 😱 😉

Edit for clarification
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Still didn't answer my question. Other projects seem to help finding cures to diseases. How is finding a prime helping anything?
 
Originally posted by: malak
Still didn't answer my question. Other projects seem to help finding cures to diseases. How is finding a prime helping anything?
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It's proving a mathematial theorem. If someone wants to do this rather than something else, that's fine with me; I don't believe that we should pass judgement on what projects others choose. However, if someone's doing RC5-72 (talk about an exercise in futility!)... 😉
 
Originally posted by: malak
Still didn't answer my question. Other projects seem to help finding cures to diseases. How is finding a prime helping anything?
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Ever bought something online? How do you think your credit card number was kept safe from haxors?
 
Originally posted by: kamper
Originally posted by: malak
Still didn't answer my question. Other projects seem to help finding cures to diseases. How is finding a prime helping anything?
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Ever bought something online? How do you think your credit card number was kept safe from haxors?
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And that's what I wanted to know, the point to finding a prime. If that's really the point, then I suppose it's not bad. Although seems like people are doing fine right now with online purchasing...
 
Originally posted by: malak
Originally posted by: kamper
Originally posted by: malak
Still didn't answer my question. Other projects seem to help finding cures to diseases. How is finding a prime helping anything?
Click to expand...
Ever bought something online? How do you think your credit card number was kept safe from haxors?
Click to expand...

And that's what I wanted to know, the point to finding a prime. If that's really the point, then I suppose it's not bad. Although seems like people are doing fine right now with online purchasing...
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Online security is doing fine now because alot of people worked hard on the mathematical theory a long time ago. I think that a certain amount of "useless" science is a necessity because it drives the more useful applications in the future, even if we can't always tell what they will be. In this case I think we can guess what the use will be: as our algorithms grow smarter and our computers more powerful we will need a continually expanding knowledge of numbers to keep the encryption ahead of the decryption.
 
Actually the Seventeen or Bust project is not just finding any old primes. They are trying to solve what is known as the Sierpinski problem. At the start of the project 17 very special prime numbers needed to be found, hence the name Seventeen or Bust. Honestly I don't know anything about the math involved or why it may/may not be of value, but it is certainly more than just finding prime numbers.

Below is a bit more of an explaination straight from the Seventeen or Bust site:

What Is It?
SB (Seventeen or Bust) is a distributed attack on the Sierpinski problem. Our system utilizes the spare computational power of hundreds of computers around the world, creating a powerful network of machines working together on the problem. Anyone can participate: we provide a piece of software that installs on your computer and uses its "spare time" to help our project. You won't even notice it's running, since it only uses your processor if it would otherwise be sitting unused.

The Sierpinski problem itself deals with numbers of the form N = k * 2^n + 1, for any odd k and n > 1. Numbers of this form are called Proth numbers. If, for some specific value of k, every possible choice of n results in a composite (non-prime) Proth number N, then that k is called a Sierpinski number. The Sierpinski problem itself is: "What is the smallest Sierpinski number?" (For a more rigorous mathematical discussion of the problem, see prothsearch.net's Sierpinski Problem page.)

John Selfridge proved, 40 years ago, that k = 78,557 is a Sierpinski number. Most number theorists believe that this is the smallest, but it hasn't yet been proven. In order to prove it, we have to show that every single k less than 78,557 is not a Sierpinski number, and to do that, we have to find some n that makes k * 2^n + 1 prime. When Seventeen or Bust was started, this had already been done for all but 17 values of k; hence the name of the project. After 20 months of computation, we have eliminated 7 multipliers: seven down, ten to go.
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Way to go SOB crunsters! :beer:

(how many of the 17 have been found now?)

-Sid

edit: found the answer in your link 7
 
thats outstanding! hard work paying off. btw, our SoB team could use some help if anyone is reading this and is interested!
 

Quote of the day


'In the end, we all do what we do in relation to our own set of values and what's most important for us. As others have said, I think it is impossible to justify one project over all the others, because there are just to many unknowns involved. In the end, it's not about justifying your project of choice to others. It just about how you justify it to yourself. And there are many ways you can do that.'
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Curses, it was a TPR member. There goes the one thing we held over them 😛

To any TPR lurkers, I'm kidding. It was fully deserved and pretty much inevitable at the rate you're going. Well done.
 
Thanks Allio

With ~1.5 "T"hz on prime95, our SOB team, and some on psearch you cant say we havent been trying.


Here's hoping that Anand can get it together again and give us a challenge in SOB.
 
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