On 9 Mar 2001, at 17:27, Jeff Woods wrote:
> Actually, the next obvious milestone is checking all below M(6972593) for
> the first time. There are 67 exponents unchecked at all below that
> exponent, and that number has been VERY VERY slow to reduce, mainly due to
> number campers or 386's trying to test that number.
Or fast systems slowing because an animated screensaver is being run?
This can easily happen if you ask someone else to run Prime95 on
their system as a favour.
>
> I also massaged today's assignments report, and found that there are over
> 200 exponents assigned over a year ago (and some as far back as 1998), NOT
> including those expected to take that long (i.e. 33 million+). Some
> exponents have been run for over a year, and have "days to run" estimates
> of 2900 days or more -- yes, nearly EIGHT YEARS.
I remember getting "wound up" about this shortly after I joined the
project. George replied that these problems have a way of sorting
themselves out; experience proves him right.
>
> The point is that we could crank through these laggards if the Primenet
> server would have simply ensured they were assigned to a "top 1000"
> producer, or to a machine of sufficient calibre and reliability
> (historically, per prior test results).
To which [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Mikus Grinbergs) replied:
> Is that what we want - an elitist organization which SEGREGATES
> those participants to whom we do not attribute "sufficient calibre"
Well _I_ don't!
Back to Jeff Woods:
>
> You said you had a good reason not to do that, but didn't want to post it
> here (you were going to mail it privately to Henk). Why not discuss it here?
>
Now I believe Henk is a responsible individual, and I've no reason to
suspect Jeff is any less so. The system we have at the moment is
reasonably robust and will stand a certain amount of abuse. However,
abuse on a large scale will break it. I don't want to be responsible
for that. What I mailed to Henk privately amounts to a minor form of
abuse of the system. One paragraph of that private message reads:
(start quote)
Obviously you should be careful when doing this, else you are likely
to be accused of "pirating" assignments. Also there would be chaos if
several people were doing this, which is why this reply is being sent
to you only and not to the list.
(end quote)
Jeff, if you (or anyone else, for that matter) want to take advantage
of the idea I mailed to Henk, I suggest you mail Henk privately and
discuss amongst yourselves how you're going to coordinate your
combined effort. My contribution to your "sturmgruppe" ends here
because I don't believe that anyone's CPU cycles are inherently more
valuable than anyone else's.
Oh, and if you happen to find a new Mersenne prime whilst you're
working in this mode, I would hope that you'd be prepared to share
the credit with any other person who happens to "own" the PrimeNet
assignment at the time.
Regards
Brian Beesley
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