> Here I thought I was part of some great cause and we were only here for
> the common good. Little did I know there really is a dark side to the
> force and behind the scenes GIMPS is really Peyton Place.
>
> I'm not even sure WHY anyone wants to go to the trouble of filtering out
> high exponents. Will this result in more LL hours worked and a higher
> position on the performers lists?
>
> Also, what's this about poaching? Sounds like stealing; what is there
> to steal in GIMPS?
>
> The biggest downside to this thread is that it exists at all. It's hard
> to attract new believers to a cause once they hear about the associated
> corruption.
It's true, all of that. :-(
People like getting small exponents not for any tangible advantage, but just
because their machines finish them faster than a longer one, and they can
watch their "numbers" climb in the stats.
Certainly, they could test a larger exponent, it would take longer to do,
but in the end, 2 weeks of work is 2 weeks of work, whether you do 2 small
exponents or one larger one.
There is thus no advantage to testing only smaller numbers which is what
riles up folks (including myself) when you get a handful of people who
selectively reject any assigned exponents above some arbitrary threshold.
One thing I *do* enjoy about GIMPS are those milestones. Being able to look
back and say that we've proven that M37 actually is M37 (and we didn't miss
any prime numbers in between). That means we need to finish double-checking
all those smaller exponents. But we can't do that efficiently when a select
few are hogging all those exponents for themselves, purely for the
satisfaction of watching their stats go up on a day by day basis.
I don't buy the argument that they reserve those smaller exponents simply to
keep them out of the hands of others who might not have computers diligently
working on them. That's why exponents expire after 60 days and are
reassigned. We don't need these folks subverting that.
I must confess that I was a poacher for a while (and I'll take credit for
inventing the usage of the term "poach" in the first place :-) because the
PrimeNet server, for a while, was not expiring exponents after 60 days. I
think the 60 day expiration was a direct result of our previous poaching
discussion, so in that sense, we came away with a positive innovation.
For a while though, some exponents had not been checked in for months,
sometimes even years, and because of an initial VERY long expected
completion date, they would not have been reassigned for months or even
years.
So I began taking those exponents that still had over 200 or so days to
completion and just whipped them out really quick on a PII.
I think in that sense, poaching made excellent sense. But with the current
method of expiring all exponents that haven't been checked in for 60 days or
so, we don't need to be worried about it so much. I'd rather expire them
after 45 days, but I won't lose sleep over it either. :-)
So, my opinion comes down to this: People who reserve ONLY small exponents
are doing the project a disservice by not allowing the distributed nature of
the project to work. They use a fallacious argument about "keeping them out
of the hands of the infidels" as justification for it. Fallacious because
that's the job of Primenet's expiration policy.
My 2 cents worth.
Aaron
_________________________________________________________________
Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm
Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
