Yes, indeed.
You may not know, but Slowinski and Gage's behavior has caused
certain accusations and ill feelings in the prime number community.
A lot of people want to perform a systematic search for Mersenne
primes. Slowinski and Gage on the other hand, pick out random
regions and search them hoping to find a diamond. They also don't
tell anyone else where they have been searching, which causes other
searchers to have to go over the same ground.
Scandel, scandel, scandel, ... :-)
Obligatory FoRK required childish ego boasting:
A friend of mine (and discoverer of the 31st Mersenne prime
(which, BTW, my knowing him, makes me famous, of course)) uses
my little old '386 system (acid.base.com (which was listed as
one of the coolest host names on the net, which also makes me
famous)) to host the Mersenne prime mailing list (and my system's
doing this, makes me famous):
majordomo@base.com
subscribe mersenne <your name>
They have organized a grass roots team of 300-500 people on the
Internet who are using PC's to systematically search for the 33rd
Mersenne prime. They were written up in Science last week (this
makes me very famous). And David Slowinski has posted on this
list (which boosts my ego to new FoRK'ish level heights).
childishly yours,
gordoni