Alexander W. Janssen wrote: > > Factoring prime numbers is most definitely in P. > > Hold on. Earlier you say "Factoring is known to be in NP". P is much > smaller. I'm not familiar to the latest outcomes. So what do you mean?
If you have a proof that P is much smaller than NP, a million bucks is yours for the claiming. Factoring, in the general case, is in NP. Factoring, /specifically applied to prime numbers/, is in Context-Free. Like most math problems, there are certain special forms of problems that are easier to solve than others. If I ask you to factor 2,147,483,647, well, that might take you a very long time. If I tell you that 2,147,483,647 is a prime number (the eighth Mersenne) and ask you to factor it, you don't have to do any computation at all: you just give the number back to me and you're done. You can skip the entire computation step. When numbers are in a special form, there often exist special purpose algorithms that are much more efficient than the general purpose algorithms one would otherwise be forced to use. _______________________________________________ Gnupg-users mailing list Gnupg-users@gnupg.org http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users
