alt Hacker NewsCongratulations! It's funny that the reward schedule is not based on importance. It's just 0x$1.00 for an error and 0x$0.20 for a suggestion, no matter what. Personally I have 0x$4.40 in the bank, more than the author's 0x$1.00, but none of my four errors and two suggestions were as important as this one. Getting your name in the book is pretty cool though!
This bug is only in the English description of the algorithm, right? No bug in either the MIX or MMIX implementations?
Thank you!
Honestly, while waiting for the check I wondered what it would be, and 0x$1.00 feels just right. The name in the book came unexpectedly, it's really a reward on its own.
No bug in MIX, and there is no MMIX implementation yet. The transition of the first three volumes from MIX to MMIX is still far ahead. The MIX program actually implements Step D3 differently from what's written in Algorithm D, and this implementation, more aligned with 1st and 2nd editions of the book, avoids the error. The bug is due to a 1995 change in the trial quotient computation (that from my perspective came as part of a transition to MMIX). This broke correctness of Theorem B, which then led to overflows post Step D3 (in only one peculiar, rare, odd case).