Costas Anastassiades (ANTISPAM) [SMTP:[log in to unmask]] wrote:

<< 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 >>

But what's the useful purpose?  In 25 years are you expecting a single
column Excel spreadsheet with the 12 thousand trillion trillion numbers,
and then use this to figure out which numbers had already be selected in
the lotto during the past 25+ years.  This then allows you to "narrow down"
the available numbers to only 11 thousand trillion trillion. :)

LB
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