On Sun, 11 Mar 2001 12:03:47 -0500, Joshua Zelinsky wrote:
>The vast majority of computers still aren't doing any form of distributed
>computing. Here are a few suggestions to help increase GIMPS participation:
>
>1. Get people at major universities + colleges to become "active
>recruiters," posting messages on announcement boards, talking to friends and
>faculty. We should all be doing this sort of stuff anyways, but if we could
>get people to volunteer/coordinate efforts, we might get a lot out of it.
I've always discussed GIMPs with my friends, in and out of college. I
think the problem is that it's harder to understand what GIMPS
actually does than it is with, e.g., seti@home.
>2. Give people/teams some form of credit for recruiting people. This could
>be done as competition separate from the main one, or somehow connected. We
>could probably have people list an option of listing a "sponsor" or
>"sponsors" already on GIMPS when they join. Competition almost always makes
>things work better.
GIMPS has never worked that way, nor has any (not-for-profit)
distributed computing project of which I am aware.
In fact, the only programs I am aware of that /do/ work that way are
for-profit distributed computing efforts like processtree, and
earn-for-surfing programs.
>3. Post periodic announcements to sci.math and other discussion groups. In
>particular, if someone asks a question about Mersenne primes someone should
>answer it and throw GIMPS in as well. I'm alrwady doing this, but I can't
>get every group. If we organize to split them up, assigning different groups
>to different people, it might help out a lot.
That's an interesting idea - the only concern is making sure the
'periodic announcements' aren't resented by the users of said groups.
>
>Sincerely,
>Joshua Zelinsky
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Nathan
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