On 12 May 2001, at 15:26, Nathan Russell wrote:
> On Sat, 12 May 2001 14:20:36 -0400, Jud McCranie wrote:
> >A thought (but it would mean more work) is that if an exponent expires, it
> >gets reassigned to someone who has completed at least one exponent, to keep
> >the progress going. These unfinished exponents in the 6,000,000 range were
> >originally assigned so long ago that they must have been dropped several times.
>
> I think that's more of a 'quick fix', and might make new participants
> feel that GIMPS doesn't trust them.
>
> It's certainly an interesting topic for discussion, though.
I don't like the idea, for the reason Nathan indicates - it smacks of
"elitism".
A better "fix" would be to patch PrimeNet so that it can assign an
exponent for two LL test runs simultaneously. (Whichever finishes
first becomes the "LL test", the other is the double-check).
Another useful enhancement for PrimeNet would be to do the job that
George did yesterday automatically each time George releases a new
database (about weekly). Exponents which need first LL tests are
those listed in the hrf4 database file, less those with current or
recently-completed assignments. Exponents which need double-checks
are those listed in the hrf3 database file, up to a certain limit,
again less those with current or recently-completed assignments.
"Recently completed" means since George last used results submitted
via PrimeNet to update his master copy of the database.
PrimeNet could be instructed to ignore exponents in particular ranges
for e.g. manual assignment if neccessary.
If this were implemented, George would have less "routine" work to
do, but he'd still be in control of what was going on by "massaging"
the database files manually on the (hopefully fairly rare) occasions
that intervention was needed.
Regards
Brian Beesley
1775*2^332181+1 is prime! (100000 digits) Discovered 22-Apr-2001
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