IP: PC World: Article on EFF Cooperative Comp. Awards

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

> From: Alex Fowler <afowler () eff org>
>
>
> http://www.pcworld.com:80/pcwtoday/article/0,1510,10890,00.html
>
> > From PC World Online
> Together We Search, United We Find
>
> Researchers think it's prime time for personal computers to work together,
> and they're dangling big prizes.
>
> by Jennifer Pelz, special to PC World
> May 11, 1999, 3:00 a.m. PT
>
> Somewhere near the edge of human imagination, there's a million-digit
> number with a rare distinction. It is the biggest prime number ever
> known--and it's waiting to be discovered.
>
> And a San Francisco Internet group wants you to find it.
>
> Don't worry, you don't have to do the math. Your computer will do it for
> you in its spare time, experts say.
>
> To demonstrate how personal computers can cooperate for the common good,
> the Electronic Frontier Foundation is offering a $50,000 prize to the first
> person to find a million-digit prime number, the mathematical term for
> numbers like 2, 3, or 7027 that can't be divided evenly. The awards rise
> for the first ten-million-digit prime and beyond.
>
> They are part of a growing number of efforts to put the world's millions of
> computers together to work for progress and profit.
>
> Home PCs Do Their Bit
>
> All it takes to try for the prime-number prize is a standard home computer.
> A free program, available at Mersenne.org, will assign a number to test and
> start the computer on its way.
>
> Designed to be unobtrusive, the software works with power left over from
> whatever else the computer is doing, explains George Woltman, the program's
> author. If the computer is grappling with a big database, the
> number-testing will go slowly. If the machine is idling, the program will
> crank away as fast as it can.
>
> But even when the computer is working, "most of the time, you're really not
> using your computer very hard," says Woltman, a retired computer programmer
> living in Orlando, Florida.
>
> A PC with a 200-MHz Pentium processor can check out a number in about three
> weeks, if it's running the entire time, he says. There are also versions of
> the software for Macintosh and Linux operating systems.
>
> Although it will work unnoticed, the software installs an icon that allows
> the user to easily check its progress. If it finds the assigned number is
> prime, "it'll go crazy and beep," Woltman says. "It'll let you know you've
> gotten lucky."
>
> Big Rewards
>
> Roland Clarkson, a California college sophomore, got lucky this January.
> Running Woltman's program, Clarkson's two 200-MHz computers found the
> current record-holder, a prime number with 909,526 digits.
>
> Clarkson's find is a number so huge that, written in a line of 12-point
> type, it would stretch for nearly two and a half miles, according to
> University of Tennessee math professor Chris Caldwell. And that's without
> commas.
>
> Except for 1, not a single other number can divide it without leaving a
> remainder.
>
> While such prime numbers are useful for code-writing, mathematicians admire
> them for themselves. These rarities are the building blocks that make all
> other numbers. And there's no formula to find them all, said Caldwell,
> keeper of the Prime Pages, a Web list of all known prime numbers.
>
> To Caldwell, hunting prime numbers makes is like collecting gems, ancient
> coins, or first editions. "In all human endeavor, the more rare something
> is, the more we value it," he explains.
>
> About 8000 computers are now working on the Internet prime-number project,
> Woltman said. They have joined the distinguished company of major
> mathematicians and philosophers like Euclid and Descartes, who pondered
> prime numbers, Caldwell said.
>
> Effort's the Thing
>
> But for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the point is the effort, not
> the potential find.
>
> For one thing, the foundation wants idle computers to do something more
> productive than running screen savers. The project also showcases the
> social benefits and commercial potential of cobbling computers together,
> says John Gilmore, one of the organization's founders.
>
> "The way computers are linked now makes it possible to build supercomputers
> out of ordinary ones...with some social cooperation," he says.
>
> The prime-number hunters aren't alone in realizing it. Distributed.net, a
> group of computer users around the globe, has worked on various
> code-testing projects since 1997, in the interest of improving computer
> security. The current project promises prizes of $1000 to $2000.
>
> Meanwhile, astronomers at the University of California at Berkeley want
> help scanning the skies for signs of intelligent life, as part of their
> Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence at Home project. The necessary
> software--a screen saver that will analyze data from a giant telescope in
> Puerto Rico--is scheduled to become available May 17 from the SETI at Home
> Web site.
>
> Ultimately, Gilmore suggests, there could even be a market for these
> piecemeal supercomputers. He envisions businesses paying to have a network
> of small computers work on big projects like animation, economic modeling
> or testing product designs.
>
>
> ===----------------------------------------------===
>   Alexander Fowler
>   Director of Public Affairs
>   Electronic Frontier Foundation
>
>   E-mail: afowler () eff org
>   Tel: 415 436 9333; Fax 415 436 9993
>
>   You can find EFF on the Web at <http://www.eff.org>
>
>   EFF supports the Global Internet Liberty Campaign
>   <http://www.gilc.org>
>
> ===----------------------------------------------===