<<Of course, we've got a classic chaotic feedback mechanism in place... if
the list is too quiet (posts per unit time is low), a thread will
spontaneously create itself to discuss the fact, immediately rendering the
list less quiet (increasing the post per unit time).>>
Excellent. And don't forget, when the list gets TOO busy, mails will erupt
decrying the current thread (poaching, prize division, and the other infamous
ones). This temporarily increases the traffic as people not only argue about
the big thread but about the size of the thread and whether it should
continue, and then the thread kills itself/is killed.
<<The normal traffic (e-mails not related to the lack of e-mails) could be
chaotic, but over the long haul is inexorably linked (I'd wager) to the
distributions of mersenne primes. That is, if you were to align the
graphs of mailing list traffic by time next to our progress towards
finding mersenne primes by time, you'd see huge influxes of traffic when
we found another prime (and probably when someone else finds one). That
sort of predictable dependance (fight about how predictable mersenne
primes are later) on an outside 'force' makes that sort of traffic
non-chaotic... right?>>
A driven chaotic system.... right? I have no idea about terminology. Weather
is driven by the sun (105 degrees in the middle of December in Montana? I
think not.) but is still chaotic. Of course... *evil grin*... far between
discoveries of Mersenne primes we should expect posts complaining about the
non-discovery of any Mersenne primes!
By the way... I hope to never live to see the day when a new non-GIMPS prime
is found. I even feel bad about living through the last days of the Era of
Supercomputers. :-D The sun will never set on GIMPS!
S. "Expect my cool paper on Mersenne primes out on the 23rd, which oughta put
some pep into the list, and yes, I do like giving myself long
pseudonicknames" L.
PostScript: By the way, if I'm right, we should see one heck of a HUGE
increase in list traffic when the missing Mersenne prime is found! *grin*
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