Fun_People Archive
9 Jul
Not ready for prime time

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Tue,  9 Jul 96 10:40:52 -0700
To: Fun_People
Subject: Not ready for prime time

Forwarded-by: "pardo@cs.washington.edu" <pardo@cs.washington.edu>
Forwarded-by: Bob Cmelik
Subject: ok, which one of you guys wrote this?

    Have you ever noticed that there's no attempt being made to
    find really large numbers that *aren't* prime?  I mean, wouldn't
    you like to see a news report that says "Today the Department of
    Computer Sciences at the University of Washington announced that
    2**58,111,625,031+8 is even.  This is the biggest non-prime yet
    reported."
		-- bathroom graffiti, University of Washington

(from _a_course_in_number_theory_and_cryptography_, 2nd ed., pg 126
by neal koblitz, uwash math dept.)

© 1996 Peter Langston