Re: Mersenne: What computer is OK today?
Hi Yuri, At 10:48 PM 11/11/98 -0800, Yuri Sorkin wrote: I participated in GIMPS from the very beginning, Yuri was indeed one of the earliest members, LL testing exponents below 500,000 with a 486. How times have changed! And now I see that my P5-166 (SDRAM, MMX, Intel) doesn't get from Primenet anything for LL-test quite awhile. Since I'm going to buy a new desktop soon and consider its suitability for GIMPS to be a certain indicator of satisfactorily performance, I wonder what computers get exponents for a test now? In version 17, less than a P-75 will get factoring work. Less than a P-133 will get double-checking assignments, P-133 and higher will get first-time LL tests. A year from now, less than a P-200 will get double-checking assignments, P-200 and higher will get first-time LL tests. If your P-166 is getting double-check assignments now, there are three possible causes: 1) Your CPU hours per day is set below 24. A P-166 running 12 hours a day is treated like a P-83. 2) Your machine is substantially slower than other P-166s. Look in local.ini and find the line RollingAverage=xxx. If xxx if a lot less than 1000, then this is the cause. 3) There is a bug in the program. If so, please send your ini files to me by private email. For those on a tight budget, consider building a machine around the Intel Celeron 300A. There have been many success stories overclocking this chip to 450MHz with a 100MHz front-side bus. This suggestion is only for the most knowledgable hardware enthusiasts - see the Usenet newsgroup comp.sys.intel for more information and ideas. Best regards, George
Re: Mersenne: What computer is OK today?
At 10:48 PM 11/11/98 -0800, you wrote: I participated in GIMPS from the very beginning, yet trying to join it with 386-SX. And now I see that my P5-166 (SDRAM, MMX, Intel) doesn't get from Primenet anything for LL-test quite awhile. Since I'm going to buy a new desktop soon and consider its suitability for GIMPS to be a certain indicator of satisfactorily performance, I wonder what computers get exponents for a test now? Four months back? That's weird. My P166's first assignment is an LL test. You did select "24 hours" as the amount of time per day the machine will be up right? -- .*. "Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not -()circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a `*' straight line."- -- B. Mandelbrot |http://surf.to/pgd.net _ | Paul Derbyshire [EMAIL PROTECTED] Programmer Humanist|ICQ: 10423848|
Mersenne: List of Contributors Companies or Schools?
Hello, A group of students here at Virginia Tech have formed a group here to promote distributed computing. The Computer Science department is interested in participating, but are hesitant to join GIMPs (or distributed.net). One of their questions is "What other companies or schools are participating?" I have read the link for the University of Albany. If there is anyone else out there representing a school or company, or who has permission to use someone else's computer systems, I'd greatly appreciate hearing from you. BTW, the student group is called the Cooperative Computing Consortium. Our web page is at http://www.ccc.vt.edu . Thanks, Mike Michael Clark http://michaelclark.simplenet.com/welcome.html Center for Public Administration and Policy http://www.cpap.vt.edu Only 415 days until the year 2000!
Re: Mersenne: What computer is OK today?
On Thu, 12 Nov 1998, George Woltman wrote: For those on a tight budget, consider building a machine around the Intel Celeron 300A. There have been many success stories overclocking this chip to 450MHz with a 100MHz front-side bus. This suggestion is only for the most knowledgable hardware enthusiasts - see the Usenet newsgroup comp.sys.intel for more information and ideas. I have a question about the new Celeron chips with the 128K cache. Suppose one were to get an overclockable Celeron 300A and ran it at 450MHz. That would mean you would have 128K of L2 cache running at 450MHz (I might not have some of this right--if so, someone please let me know!). I wonder how it would compare speedwise (running LL tests on an exponent in the 550 to 600 range, say) to a regular PII-450 with 512K L2 cache running at 1/2 the processor speed? The Celeron L2 cache would be quicker, but would that be offset by it's small size (relative to the PII cache) when running LL tests? Has anyone done any systematic testing? I've seen reports of overclocked Celeron 300A chips benchmarking as high as PII-450 chips, but I suspect that LL tests are such that this might not be true for those of us in GIMPS. Kel
Re: Mersenne: Password safety
Michael Clark wrote: What (if any) are the concerns with having an account's password and user ID posted on a web page? Would someone be able to change the "Your Name" and "Your email address" fields with them? So if my school set up a web page to encourage people to join our team, could someone come along and usurp our work? Also, what would happen if someone changed (or deleted) the existing UserID and password in the middle of a LL test? Thanks very much, Michael Michael Clark http://michaelclark.simplenet.com/welcome.html Center for Public Administration and Policy http://www.cpap.vt.edu Only 415 days until the year 2000! The secure-yet-still-automated way to do this is to have a public html form that takes the new persons data and wraps it up and sends you an email containing another url that you can click on from inside your e-mail system which will process the user's membership. One working out of the system, then many one-click approvals, rather than simply having the applicants e-mail you and needing to do boring data entry, and you still have control unlike if you just put the password out. Have teams been implemented? Theyt could follow the practice of "web rings" and have an "inner circle" who have approval power; applications to join can get sent to all approvers, or round-robined to each in turn, or a designates one or two. There is no limit to possible subtletl when it comes to dreaming up a user interface. __ David Nicol 816.235.1187 UMKC Network Operations [EMAIL PROTECTED] Border on graphomania
Mersenne: Net abuse
Will Edgington wrote: Paul Derbyshire writes: To Yuri Sorkin: your e-mail address bounces... that's not exactly a friendly gesture, signing on this list with a bogus address. Yuri has been on this list and part of GIMPS, including providing and testing programs, from very early on; I think it's far more likely that his mail server is experiencing problems. Hi Will, CRL actually bounces mail from rogue sites and well-known net-abusers. To my deep regret, they give false reasons, and I told what I think about it in my Usenet post on 8/5/97. However, Mr. Derbyshire is unlikely not know about this problem and whether my address is real. Not only he used in past to repost messages which he received from this address, among 336 hits yielded by http://www.dejanews.com/dnquery.xp?QRY=DerbyshireDBS=2ST=PSdefaultOp=ANDLNG=ALLformat=terseshowsort=scoremaxhits=100subjects=groups=news.admin.net-abuse.*authors=fromdate=todate= I see his "More CRL cluelessness about spammer websites" from 7/22/98 etc. While I'm here, what are best modern programs for large integers? Yuri Sorkin
Re: Mersenne: status page
kilfoyle wrote: DOes anyone know why the http://project.vobis.de/cgi-bin/mersenne.cgi?engine=primenet site is not connecting. This was a good status page lookup location. Michael I've noticed that the site has been unavailable since about Monday. This was a great site for status and ranking information. I believe I may still have the email addresses of the two guys who set it up. If I do, I will send them some email and see what I can find out.
Mersenne: Re: Thoughts
The fastest unclassified machine at the moment is ... used for modeling nuclear processes, "to maintain USA's nuclear stockpiles without the need of further nuclear tests". Am I the only one to whom this makes no sense? Here's a news story that may help. It's from the Albuquerque (NM) Journal. full story at http://www.abqjournal.com/scitech/1sci11-12.htm an excerpt: Lab officials say the real test comes not in speed tests but in performing real nuclear weapons simulations. Sandia National Laboratories is now in the midst of the first real example of substituting computers for testing, said Sandia vice president Roger Hagengruber. Martinez and his staff are developing a new neutron generator for the W76, a type of nuclear warhead carried on Navy submarines. Neutron generators are electronic devices small enough to fit in the palm of your hand that create a burst of subatomic particles to help detonate a nuclear weapon. Without underground nuclear tests, and with other Energy Department test facilities unavailable, computer simulations are the only way to collect the data needed to certify that the neutron generator will perform the way it's supposed to, Hagengruber said. -roger
Mersenne: Re: Yuri's Address
At 12:40 PM 11/12/98 -0800, you wrote: To Yuri Sorkin: your e-mail address bounces... that's not exactly a friendly gesture, signing on this list with a bogus address. Yuri's address, [EMAIL PROTECTED], was valid 24 hours ago. Did you finger his account? No, I guess you didn't, did you? Who the hell said anything about [EMAIL PROTECTED]? I'm talking about the address [EMAIL PROTECTED] which was signed to the most recent message he sent to the Mersenne list, and which is as real as a three-dollar bill... -- .*. "Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not -()circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a `*' straight line."- -- B. Mandelbrot |http://surf.to/pgd.net _ | Paul Derbyshire [EMAIL PROTECTED] Programmer Humanist|ICQ: 10423848|
Re: Mersenne: Net abuse
At 03:49 PM 11/12/98 -0800, you wrote: CRL actually bounces mail from rogue sites and well-known net-abusers. They also bounce mail from usa.net which is neither a rogue site nor a net-abuser, well-known or otherwise. My guess is that they are stupid and moronic and have been suckered into thinking usa.net is a net-abuser simply because usa.net is an address sometimes forged onto spam originating from such places as ix.netcom.com and Earthstink. (If they would only look at the Received: headers and do a traceroute or two they'd know where that shit really came from, but they are either stupid or lazy.) CRL is an irresponsible net neighbor and they have been somewhat troublesome and unfriendly for years although it is only recently that they seem to be become a real annoyance. CRL is also notorious for the hypocritial policy of wilfully hosting spamvertised websites. I see his "More CRL cluelessness about spammer websites" from 7/22/98 etc. ...as I was saying... they have been obnoxious net neighbors for years although this capricious and inconsistent blocking of arbitrary email addresses is a new one on me. -- .*. "Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not -()circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a `*' straight line."- -- B. Mandelbrot |http://surf.to/pgd.net _ | Paul Derbyshire [EMAIL PROTECTED] Programmer Humanist|ICQ: 10423848|
Mersenne: Optimization
I have two computers - a 200Mhz Pentium MMX, and a 400Mhz Pentium II. Also, the PII is left on 24 hours a day, while the P5 is used during the day and is only left on sometimes during the night. Currently both run LL tests. I was wondering, if it would be possible and more efficient to have my P5 factor exponents and then have the PII do LL tests on them if no factor is found. Can the P5 go above and beyond what's already been factored by others (is there a limitation in the Prime95 software) and would the chances of finding a factor (and thus saving a whole LL test on the PII) be better than just using both for LL tests? Thanks. STL
Re: Mersenne: Password safety
Hi, At 11:07 AM 11/12/98 -0500, Michael Clark wrote: What (if any) are the concerns with having an account's password and user ID posted on a web page? Would someone be able to change the "Your Name" and "Your email address" fields with them? So if my school set up a web page to encourage people to join our team, could someone come along and usurp our work? Also, what would happen if someone changed (or deleted) the existing UserID and password in the middle of a LL test? On your machine, set LockUserInfo=1 in prime.ini The next time you run prime95, this will be sent to the server which will then prevent anyone from changing your user name or hijacking your results. I know this is a rather kludgy way to implement teams, but it is the only method at present. Maybe someday we can do better. If someone changes userids mid-LL test the credit will go to the new userid (presumably the owner of the machine has abandoned your team). Perhaps a web page that contained an entire directory with filled in .ini files (and LockUserInfo=1 set to disable the user info dialog box) is the best way for you to go. Scott Kurowski is the best person to answer your questions regarding any possible danger in sharing your password. Hope that helps, George
