<< off topic >>

I'll ignore all references to the HP3000 and IMAGE and go ahead and mention
a lotto number crunching program I wrote in QBASIC that has been running on
a dedicated PC since December 1995. OK I admit I've had to temporarily
pause it in order to upgrade the PC, but it remains a program with a single
task to perform. If it *had* completed then it's quite likely I would have
retired very early and gone into the hotel business on some Greek island.
The number of combinations it has to theoretically test is derived from the
equation :  a! / (a-b)! * b!, where a=13983816 and b=759. I'm pretty bad at
math myself, but I make it 12 thousand trillion trillion (not a typo). Now,
with it's present rate of about 20 billion combinations a day, and again if
my math and my Windows95 calculator isn't failing me, that translates to 25
years. So, I'm hoping for a *major* breakthrough in PC technology which
will increase todays performance by a factor of, let's say, 10. That way it
might just complete before the year 2000 :)

<< off topic >>

Your question however, reminds me of another question posted quite some
time ago entitled "MPE Language Survey". That post requested responses to
be sent to an e-mail address other than the list. As I mentioned in a
private post entitled "Bangalore", I don't recall ever reading the outcome
of that survey. Anything worth mentioning ?

Costas Anastassiades,
INTRACOM SA,
Athens - Greece