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 2005-09-15, 20:06 #1 ekugimps   Sep 2005 5 Posts Mersenne.org Site Hi, George. I noticed there is a link to a new Wiki on the Mersenne.org website. Looks good. Have you considered deploying a content management system such as Plone or PostNuke for Mersenne.org? Also, I have a question about GIMPS governance. Let's face it, none of us are getting any younger, so I'm going to ask the unthinkable questions. What happens to the project when you die? What happens if you become seriously ill? Who's responsible? Not trying to be morbid or crude, just thinking ahead here. Anyone have any thoughts to add? Tom
 2005-09-15, 21:08 #2 Xyzzy     Aug 2002 20D716 Posts I'm not speaking for George here: I plan to live forever... So far so good!
2005-09-21, 00:31   #3
Prime95
P90 years forever!

Aug 2002
Yeehaw, FL

2×3×5×7×37 Posts

Quote:
 Originally Posted by ekugimps What happens to the project when you die? What happens if you become seriously ill? Who's responsible?
If I die, GIMPS will probably fade away. Scott could make
new Mersenne results available to an ambitious volunteer
to maintain the databases. That would keep it going for
quite a while. Even though the source code is available, it would be hard for someone to take over the assembly language code for future upgrades.

After GIMPS fades away, in several years computers will be faster and someone will think it is relatively "easy" to find the next Mersenne prime. He'll write a program and son-of-GIMPS will be born.

 2005-09-21, 22:04 #4 Peter Nelson     Oct 2004 232 Posts Unless of course someone can produce a proof that there are a FINITE number of mersenne primes. (many think there are infinite mersenne primes, but there exists no proof). If we found all the ones that exist, that would bring a conclusion to the project hopefully before any of us die. Of course such is unlikely so is prudent to have a plan to continue.
 2005-09-22, 21:24 #5 ekugimps   Sep 2005 5 Posts GIMPS Foundation? You know, when Wikipedia began it never imagined the explosive force that it would become on the Internet. So powerful, in fact, they decided to form the Wikimedia Foundation. http://www.wikimediafoundation.org/ The foundations' elected board of directors manages donations and acts as a steering committee for various other projects that spawned from the original Wikipedia. Should GIMPS also take a similar path? Wikipedia has expanded its offerings to include many others services to Internet users. Theoretically, GIMPS is a supercomputer tasked to search for very large prime numbers. Peter Nelson pointed out the possibility of a mathematical breakthrough which could invalidate the purpose of GIMPS. So why couldn't new software be written to perform other mathematically worthy tasks? We already have a vast pool of resources through the GIMPS community. So why not continue to tap into that resource for other mathematically worthy pursuits? But regardless of whether GIMPS becomes irrelevant, I would hate to see this amazing distributed computing effort dismantled because of poor planning. George, if you are following this post, what are your thoughts on organizing GIMPS as a non-profit foundation? I'd also like to hear thoughts from other members of the GIMPS community. The Good. The Bad. The Ugly. I'd like to hear from all of you. Am I a nut case? Tom team leader team ekugimps
 2005-09-23, 01:17 #6 jinydu     Dec 2003 Hopefully Near M48 6DE16 Posts Hmm... Why not just appoint a successor to keep GIMPS running in case something bad happens to you, Mr. Woltman?
2005-09-23, 19:56   #7
olmari

Jul 2005
Vaasa, Finland

2×13 Posts

Quote:
 Originally Posted by Peter Nelson (many think there are infinite mersenne primes, but there exists no proof).
So numbers just cease to exist after some certain number?

2005-09-23, 20:37   #8
wblipp

"William"
May 2003
New Haven

23×103 Posts

Quote:
 Originally Posted by olmari So numbers just cease to exist after some certain number?
Perhaps you misunderstood him to say there might be a finite number of Mersene numbers. He actually said there might be a finite number of Mersenne primes, which are by definition Mersenne numbers that are prime.

Last fiddled with by wblipp on 2005-09-23 at 20:37

2005-09-23, 20:41   #9
olmari

Jul 2005
Vaasa, Finland

2·13 Posts

Quote:
 Originally Posted by wblipp Perhaps you misunderstood him to say there might be a finite number of Mersene numbers. He actually said there might be a finite number of Mersenne primes, which are by definition Mersenne numbers that are prime.
So mersenne numbers cease to exists after some point? Same thing applies here

2005-09-24, 11:30   #10
jinydu

Dec 2003
Hopefully Near M48

2·3·293 Posts

Quote:
 Originally Posted by olmari So mersenne numbers cease to exists after some point? Same thing applies here
Of course not.

The nth Mersenne number is $2^n-1$. Clearly, you can set n equal to any positive integer, and there are obviously infinitely many positive integers.

The question is: Are there infinitely many Mersenne primes? That is, could there exist an N such that $2^n-1$ is always composite for n > N?

2005-09-24, 17:30   #11
Numbers

Jun 2005
Near Beetlegeuse

22·97 Posts

Quote:
 Originally Posted by jinydu Clearly, you can set n equal to any positive integer,
I have learned enough from being a member of this forum to know that jinydu is very rarely wrong on these matters. The word in his post that interested me most was where he said “you can set n equal to any positive integer.”
Looking at Mathworld, here:

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/MersenneNumber.html

It says, a number Mn of the form 2n-1 is a Mersenne number when n is an integer. It doesn’t say anything about it having to be a positive integer. But by this definition, since -1 is an integer, we get that 2-1-1 = -0.5 is a Mersenne number, which is clearly wrong. So the conclusion is that jinydu is now officially a better authority on these matters than Mathworld.

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