Hi all,
At 03:00 PM 3/9/2001 -0600, Mikus Grinbergs wrote:
>I consider the attitude "GOTTA GET IT DONE" to be rat-race oriented
>rather than thank-you-for-participating oriented. It implies to
>those with less-than-state-of-the-art equipment: "__You__ are an
>obstacle in the way of GOTTA GET IT DONE -- there are no seats for
>you on this bus".
The mailing list has covered this several times in the past. I suggest there
is a middle ground - maybe GET IT DONE IN SEMI-REASONABLE TIME.
Both camps have very valid points. One camp wants to see steady progress.
The other knows that all machines can usefully contribute.
If you own a less-that-state-of-the-art machine and want to run first time
tests
that will take a year or more to complete, that's OK. However, it is not
unreasonable for the GIMPS community to suggest an exponent in the
9 million and up area rather than a recycled one below M(6972593).
Changing prime95/primenet to only recycle smallest-500 double-checks and
smallest-500 first-time tests to PII-300 or better machines might address
the concerns of both camps. I don't think distinguishing between long-time
and new users makes sense - the 3 month timeout before another PII-300
gets the exponent should not slow down progress greatly.
Since prime95/primenet does not currently support the above it is GIMPS' fault,
not the fault of the current user with the slow machine!
Regards,
George
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