On Tuesday 22 October 2002 21:00, you wrote: > Suffice to say that the machine I used to use when working at a *totally > different* telecom (not US WEST, oddly) had Prime95 running happily on > it. When I left, I didn't get a chance to wipe the machine, so every > once in a blue moon I see it check in a result. My mistake, for > assuming this company wiped and reloaded machines that were reassigned > to someone.
IMHO (and I do have some clout on this, as I work in the computer security field) this is NOT your fault. If your previous employer reassigns the system you used to someone else, it's either the employer's or the recipient's responsibility to wipe & reload the system. (Depending on corporate policy). This is a SERIOUS CONCERN; otherwise a disgruntled employee could get either the company or his replacement into serious trouble by deliberately leaving "illegal data" (child porn, pirated software or whatever) on the system, waiting a while then informing the authorities. > It's a lowly Pentium 180, but I had checked it to do LL > tests regardless of server preference. Meaning that nowadays, it's > taking nearly a year to complete one. Big deal, it was still contributing useful results! But perhaps you should have changed the work type to "whatever makes more sense" 0.1 microseconds before you left/were ejected from the building. > > I haven't actually seen it in a while, maybe 6 months or more, so maybe > they finally retired it (a P180 running NT4 with about 128MB of RAM). > It was just odd... 2-3 years after I last saw that machine, and then to > see it report in every 6 months or so. > > The odd part was, the machine must not get used all that much because I > thought I had it set to check in every week or so, but it was months > between check-ins. In that time, the exponent would expire, but then > the machine would come up and start working on it again... meaning > someone else had probably got the assignment and may have even finished > it for all I know. I have a number of old, slow systems which are used intermittently for testing purposes. I can't leave them all on all the time because the room they're in lacks adequate cooling. Perhaps something similar was going on. Unfortunately this activity pattern does tend to break the PrimeNet server checkin protocol, resulting in work getting reassigned. Still, if you're running LL tests, this probably doesn't matter - if the assignment ever completes, you'd get PrimeNet credit for a double check, and save someone else the effort of running the DC assignment. Regards Brian Beesley _________________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.ndatech.com/mersenne/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
