UCLA discovers 13 million-digit prime number, disproves crowdsourcing
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Hoping to encourage cooperative computing on the Web, the Electronic Frontier Foundation offered a $100,000 prize to anyone who could come up with a prime number with more than 10 million digits. A government-funded state university, UCLA, will claim the prize, rather than some promising amateur using distributed Web computing. UCLA researchers discovered a 13 million-digit prime number, using a dedicated network of 75 computers running Windows XP. The EFF's generous donation will increase UCLA's $1.5 billion endowment by .007 percent. (Photo by cleong)