"Brian J. Beesley" wrote:
> (1) Removing these assignments from PrimeNet and managing them
> seperately. Anyone who is prepared to make special arrangements to
> acquire these assignments is unlikely to default by reason of lack of
> commitment.
Someone is (or was?) doing something similar - David Campeau (sp?), aka
diamonddave, who set up scripts to grab small exponents right after the
Primenet servers recycle run and completed them in ascending order of
size. And boy, did he get flamed for it. Right, flamed - because some
only looked at the 20 or so small exponents he had reserved and tought
he was holding them back.
Maybe those who complain about slow "linear" progress could take on a
similar approach? (except for the getting flamed part, I hope.) Write a
script that (or get up early/stay up late to) get exponents right after
the servers recycle run and immediately release the biggest ones so you
have enough work for, say, 30 days. Maybe David can help with the
scripts or general tips for maintaining the exponents list, *especially*
safe guards so that reserved exponents dont pile up in an uncontrolled
manner.
If everyone sticks to the rules - don´t poach, dont hog exponents - this
should solve most of the problem with the least possible hassle. Those
who want to see milestones soon can help to get there, the rest can just
go on with their regularly assigned work.
This doesn´t help with the exponents that are currently reserved with a
expected run time of several years - but if the user abandons them, the
server will recycle them 60 days after the last update from the user
which doesn´t seem like an overly long delay for the project. If the
users chooses to complete the exponent on a slow machine or on a machine
that is not in use very often, then I don´t see why he shouldn´t be
allowed to do so, delaying a milestone or not.
Ciao,
Alex.
_________________________________________________________________________
Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm
Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
