A collective block of Q & A: > Is it possible for two GIMPS accounts to be merged into one new account, > such that the work completed by the two accounts is credited to the new > account ? > Or is it possible to take the work done by one account and transfer it to > another ? Yes. Change your userid in Prime95, connect to the server. PrimeNet will take care of transferring credit and assignments automatically. Alternatively, email me <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. > Anyone aware of any work in Mac-GIMPs land? As Will indirectly pointed out, PrimeNet only supports MacLucas for manual testing at the moment. I continue to offer support for anyone who needs help with the server's protocols and other requirements. Takes some work, but it's worth it. > [sorry, replying to digests is probably unfriendly, but I can't face hordes of > email. Do people mind if I just reply to interesting messages from the digest > two-daily or so?] I reply to digests. Like sending email from light-hours away... > Still getting a 2250 error with one of my networked PCs. All the rest work > fine. Any ideas (yes I have a primenet.ini) Error 2250 is the RPC protocol can't connect error. Select HTTP in the PrimeNet options to use the primenet.ini file. > 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. A few days ago I did a count of the colleges and universities contributing CPU time to GIMPS on PrimeNet, by email domain. There are 267, including almost every big name you can think of, plus about a hundred high and elementary schools. Commercial addresses are harder to count because they include ISPs, but they are in the thousands. There are a few dozen government accounts, including the US Navy and Air Force. > 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? Someone else could monkey with your account. > So if my school set up a web > page to encourage people to join our team, could someone come along and > usurp our work? Not if you at least once set LockUserInfo=1 in the prime.ini file. To change your account info or transfer anything around after this, you need to contact me <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. The challenge account prototyped distributed teams for GIMPS, and originally had a few hundred contributors (they have since started their own accounts, like netconx). > Also, what would happen if someone changed (or deleted) the > existing UserID and password in the middle of a LL test? The server would return 'assigned to someone else' errors until the test completed, at which time the server would accept and credit the result to the new user, then email the assigned account owner that the test was done. > 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. There are a few hundred teams. The account locking mechanism works quite well, so most team leaders simply pre-configure the software with the selected account settings, add the locking flag, and let people copy the files and start the program. If they somehow change things, they at most take the one or two exponents assigned to that computer. > Would it be possible to have the next version sending all expected > completion dates in one time, instead of one by one? Or are there > objections to do so? (copied in part from a private reply to Henk) A speed-up tip: If you are using RPC, you might try HTTP. Another speed boost for v17 RPC/HTTP and v15/v16 HTTP is to cache the entropia.com DNS lookup locally in your HOSTS file, using IP 207.104.25.155. Please see the FAQ page at http://entropia.com/ips/faq.html for more. Best regards, scott
