Abolish PrimeNet?
-----------------
> I guess we could do that by getting rid of primenet ;-)) if it was all done
> by email and manually entering the exponents on each machine (like in the
> old days) then I can still manage my 9 machines. Would you still run over
> 300? ;-)
Not a chance in hell. I spend 1 hour a week working with my machines,
thetas
it, no more. I spend that 1 hour a week on late Friday afternoons making
sure all the machines are up and running for the weekend. I can not
afford
to spend any more time then this. This is a good point, PrimeNet has
made it
incredibly more easy to run large setups like mine. Without PrimeNet I
would probably only run my fastest machines and the rest would have to
simply run screen savers.
I know your comment was simply in jest, or a rhetorical comment but it
is my opinion that PrimeNet is the best thing to come around since
Prime95.
I ran Prime95 on my personal machine at home back before PrimeNet, and
found the e-mail system to be quite cumbersome and left the GIMPS
effort.
I did not even look at the GIMPS site for about a year after this. But
when I did come back, last summer, I was so impressed with PrimeNet that
I gave it another shot. I ran it on my new at the time PII-350 and liked
it enough that I installed it on 200 of my 285 machines that September.
Without it I would probably still be running screen savers. Thanks
Scott!
Top Producers Chances
---------------------
> eh? if i buy 10,000 tickets and you buy one, then I have 10000 times more
> chances than you. OK that is still only 1 in 1400 (in the uk) as opposed to
> 1 in 14,000,000 but I know which I would choose....
FYI: Here in Pennsylvania in the US, our lottery odds are about 70
million to
one. My point is that everyone still has minuscule odds of winning. You
would
have a 1 in 7000 chance (0.14%) in winning vs my 1 in 70,000,000
(0.00014%),
not that great of odds for either of us, chances are someone else will
win.
Lets say that I bought 910 tickets (the equivalent number of P90s I
have)
and Stephen Wood bought 600 tickets (a guess at the equivalent number of
P90s
he has). Lets also say that the odds are 1 in 25,000 (an estimate as to
the
number of P90s equivalents participating in GIMPS). Overwhelmingly the
chances
are that someone else, with fewer machines, will find the next Mersenne
Prime. Together, as the two leading producers in GIMPS we only have a 6%
chance of finding the next Mersenne Prime. Now granted these odds beat
the
pants off the odds of winning Pennsylvania's Lotto, but the fact remains
that
chances are someone else will be the winner either way.
Aging Machines
--------------
> Aging machines - 97 (was it?) PII-300's I can think of a lot of corporates
> in the uk who would look in envy at your hardware setup and consider it
> pretty much state of the art....
And it could be 5 years before they are replaced. My lab of 48 PPro 200s
are
now old enough that they are on the schedule to be upgraded in the FY
2001-
2002. By this time they will be positively ancient. Yes, I realize that
many, perhaps most, envy at 97 PII-300 machines, but my point is that my
machines are only fast now, and will be slow soon. It may be the year
2003
or 2005 before the PII-300's are replaced. By this time someone with 50
PentiumIX 9 GHz machines will blow past me in the rankings like I am
standing
still. My 300 machines will not hold a candle to their 50 machines.
Rate Rankings
-------------
> A good idea, how about we split the rankings into separate lists judged by
> the number of hours per day produced...
> <50 <500 <5000
I think this is a poor idea. Not because I am currently on top, but what
purpose does this have? Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with
yet
another page listing Top Producers, by rate rather then years produced.
There is nothing wrong with the spirit of what you are proposing, but
statistically there is no way to have the little guy at the top of any
list,
at least as far as I can tell.
A person with a single brand new PIII-500 will, after turning in one
result,
rocket into the middle of the <500 list as you propose. Does this make
this
person with a new hot rod of a computer a member of the multiple
machines at
home list along with the person with a PII-233, a Mac, a 486 and a
Laptop? Or
does this make this person a single machine owner that is bumped "down"
onto
a different list, one with people with one machine? Early on in my GIMPS
participation I corresponded with an engineer in the midwest who was
running
a whole bunch of 486/33's and was quite happy doing so. This makes him a
member of the <50 hours a day list, but he still has a bunch of
machines.
The rate of a participant in GIMPS can not display the number of
machines
they have producing that rate. One could have a single PIII-500, or an
entire truckload of 5 year old machines and still produce the same rate.
Other top producers lists, whether sorted by rate, by number of machines
or by rate per machine could segment the GIMPS effort even further.
Pages
representing these statistics would be quite informative, but none of
them
would allow the "little guy" to rise to the top of any of these lists.
Only individuals/teams with large numbers of machines, or
individuals/teams
with the absolute newest bleeding edge machines would ever rise to the
top
of any top producers list.
Marc Getty - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - ICQ: 12916278
http://www.getty.net - http://www.vwthing.org Work: 215-204-3291
http://etc.temple.edu/ Home: 215-322-8363
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