>I hope this doesn't
>start /another/ onlist flamewar... (sigh)
I doubt that would happen on here...the people on this list are all a part
of GIMPS, presumably. Well, except for the FBI and US WEST folks who
monitor my posts. :) So I think it's safe to say that you're just preaching
to the choir here.
>I wonder if telling them about the possibility of finding hardware errors
>would help. If we can each get all our friends to run one 5-30 day
>double-check each, it'll make a huge difference.
For what it's worth, one interesting side effect of me running the client on
all those US WEST machines was that I found a few machines during my look at
the logfiles of them that had failed with some bad hardware errors.
I made notes of the machines that had problems like that and removed the
client from them...I actually intended to open up service tickets on those
machines, but the US WEST security folks got to me first. :( I mentioned
the bad machines to them during my "interrogation", but they didn't seem too
interested in that more benevolent aspect.
>Some of these people had downloaded the seti client
>>and run it for a while but didn't seem to be impressed by its
>>performance or results.
>>I'm much more excited about gimps, and believe that I am much more
>>likely to find a certain Mersenne prime than evidence about
>>extra-terrestrial life (which would still only be a speculation even
>>so).
Curiously, some of the SETI clients I found on our network here were older
1.x clients which, apparently, will not get any new work assignments. I'm
sure these people just installed it on a whim and forgot about it... I
don't know much at all about SETI@Home (I had to download the client and
peek inside the CAB files just to see what the executable name of it was),
so I may be wrong about that 1.x assumption...but that's what the readme
seemed to say.
And the whole thing about people faking work results on SETI...sigh...that's
just so sad... I'm sure it's things like that which force them to send
duplicate data sets to people. At least with GIMPS, we already do
double-checks anyway, just as standard due diligence. And the "security"
CRC or whatever that George puts into his compiled code for the results has
been there for some time, correct?
Well, I've said before that the odds of finding ET are very small, given the
odds that any exist at all. But that point aside, I personally find it more
stimulating to use my spare computer's time for a cause with more tangible
results.
Just my $0.02 worth. :)
Aaron
_________________________________________________________________
Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm
Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
