A good sensible posting. I concur and thank Jeff Woods for writing it.
At 11:12 AM 2/4/00 -0500, you wrote:
>I hate to open a can of worms here, but feel I must.... However, I am not
>a poacher myself, nor do I advocate it. I only write this to tell you why
>I don't feel sorry for folks who queue up WAY too much work and then gripe
>about it when someone else calls them on the carpet about it by poaching
>them. I write this in the hopes that you'll see the error of your ways,
>and work not just for yourself, but for the good of the group.
>
>My conclusion at the end of this message is for George's consideration, and
>the rest of this message defends this conclusion:
>
>George: v20, *and* the PrimeNet server, ought not allow any one machine to
>keep more than ten times its average communication frequency in exponents
>queued, and no more than 60 days no matter what -- requests for additional
>exponents when the server knows that that machine already has two months'
>work ought to be denied. If a machine reports in every 3 days, let it
>keep no more than 30 days. If it reports in daily, let it keep ten
>days. By stopping exponent hogs from locking up hundreds of exponents
>just because they like the small ones, GIMPS will reach its goals
>(milestones, proving M37, etc), much faster.
>
>----------------------------------------------
>
>Dave has at least 80 exponents reserved between 2.4M and
>3.99M. Eighty. Almost all are less than suspected M37. It is a
>certainty that without poaching, we will have to wait until late 2000 or
>later to prove M37, because Dave is trying to do all the double-checking
>singlehandedly.
>
>I cannot stress this part enough: This is why we have thousands of
>participants in GIMPS! It is our PRIMARY raison d'etre! To spread
>around the workload to get things done faster! By trying to take 80 of
>the 280 or so exponents left for doublechecking up to M37 (nearly 30% to
>ONE participant!), Dave is intentionally thwarting the very purpose of
>GIMPS: distributed mathematical research. DISTRIBUTED computing is key!
>
>Each of Dave's 80 exponents will take a P-II/400 0.09 seconds per
>iteration. If the average exponent is closer to 2.8M, here's how much time
>Dave has set aside:
>
>2.8M x 80 x 0.09 = 20,160,000 seconds DIV 86,400 = 233 days.
>
>That's if Dave uses P-II 400's, on PRIMARY tests. Double-checks use a
>different LL code, and take longer. I doubt Dave is using P-II's for this
>purpose, too. If it's P-90's, that's 233 x 4.5 (times slower) x 1.2
>(times slower to double check, a guess), or 1574 days of work queued up for
>Dave.
>
>I can only find six named machines of Dave's in the work list. 1574 days
>of work over 6 machines is an AVERAGE of 262 days of work queued up per
>machine.
>
>What a PIG. Why does ANYONE need nine months of work queued up,
>especially for machines that seem to report back to GIMPS on a daily
>basis? Many of us want to see results -- we want milestones, we want to
>see "All exponents less than 3,000,000 have been double checked." We want
>to see "Double checking proves 3021377 is the 37th Mersenne Prime".
>
>Most of Dave's assignments have gone untouched for 30 - 90 days.
>
>We don't want to wait a YEAR for this milestone, just because you and a
>handful of others want to test all the little exponents.
>
>Your machines are useful to us, don't get me wrong. Nobody here wants you
>and Dave (and other exponent hogs) to quit GIMPS. We just want you to
>reserve a reasonable number of exponents, and take what comes to
>you. These machines will be equally useful to us whether double-checking
>2916117 or 4717123.... and we'll get where we're going faster that way!
>
>Dave's machines are permanently connected (or frequently connected) -- they
>have reported progress nearly daily -- slow, steady progress, but they
>report.
>
>Thus, IMO, Dave should not have his clients set to queue up more than TWO
>DAYS of work. I set mine at ONE day, so that I don't even get a new
>assignment until the machine is less than a day away from finishing its
>exponent and being left with NO work. And that's the way it ought to be
>-- nobody ought to even be ABLE to hold up the progress of the group in
>reaching milestones for this long. When your machine is ALMOST out of
>work, THAT is the time to request the smallest available exponent OF THAT
>MOMENT.
>
>So, to your paragraph below, there's nothing wrong with seeking out the
>smallest available exponents.... but there *is* something wrong with
>seeking out nine months' worth of them, and holding up the very purpose of
>the group.
>
>If Dave gets poached, I won't shed a tear.
>
>I'd have done a similar analysis on your assignments, but didn't know your
>ID. You're probably not as heinous as Dave is, since he appears to be the
>worst of the lot on cursory inspection, but ANYONE holding more work than
>necessary is on the list of "won't cry for you, Argentina" folks.
>
>MOST folks understand this. There are 26,600 machines right now, and
>44,200 exponents assigned -- 1.66 exponents assigned per machine. Since
>the software defaults to 28 days of queued work, this is
>understandable. Dozens per machine is just not defensible, under any
>circumstances (except, perhaps, multi-processor machines, but then ID's
>would be different).
>
>Any defense you'd like to offer for holding 9 months' work, I'll listen to,
>but I doubt you'll come up with anything convincing.
>
>At 07:42 PM 2/3/00 -0900, you wrote:
>
>>Not a big deal in the greater scheme of things, but frustrating to people
>>like diamonddave and myself who make an effort to seek out the smaller
>>exponents and reserve them.
>
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>
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