May 18, 2001

3:26 PM

Find a 10 million digit prime number,get $100,000! "Now the bad news. Testing a single 10,000,000 digit number takes a full year on a 500 MHz Pentium III computer." This GIMPS organization merely provides software to do the searching process (not to mention they take most of the profits if you DO find a new prime).
posted by grank (3 comments total)

Lets see, they write the software, maintain servers/bandwidth, promote it and ask for volunteers and you're complaining about not getting paid?

A better comparison is you're getting a free lotto ticket by using your wasted processor cycles. Even if you got $0 dollars you still get contributor credits even if you never passed algebra.
posted by skallas at 3:44 PM on May 18, 2001

Sounds like a job for a beowulf cluster.
posted by SpecialK at 4:01 PM on May 18, 2001

I'm complaining?
posted by grank at 4:07 PM on May 18, 2001