At 05:23 PM 2/6/00 -0600, you wrote:
>What do we have now? I *do* find it troublesome to contact the
>server to say "I'm still here" - that is "compulsion" rather than
>"trust". As my post indicated, if I am considered untrustworthy
>for failing to do it, I will simply choose to not participate.
That's not COMPULSION -- it's COMPASSION. Primenet came about because
"the good old days" that you yearn for (and I was there, have been since
April 1996) have grown to the point where it *has* to be automated, as you
recognized in your post. However, you can't have your cake and eat it,
too. If you're going to automate, you can't automate the assignments and
not automate the completion.
George DID used to "tickle" folks who'd had exponents out a very long
time. (This, back in the day when a single LL test too no more than a
week, mind you). He'd send an Email after about THIRTY days IIRC, and if
no response, he'd reclaim and recycle them by hand, just exactly like
Primenet does now.
OLD:
If a checked out exponent wasn't reported within a reasonable time...
George manually sent Email to ask "Are you still working on this?"
If the answer was yes, the exponents continued to be left alone.
If the answer was NO or there was no answer, they were reassigned.
NEW:
Auto-checkout.
If the exponents are still being worked on, they are left alone.
If NOT, they are reassigned, without human intervention.
-------------
Seems to me that the only thing that has changed is efficiency, in no
longer needing to make extraordinary demands on George's time, nor is it
subjective any longer, "as time permits" on George's part.
What's the huhu? You didn't mind that before, so why now?
>And my trust in PrimeNet would be taken away should those partici-
>pants win out who have decided it is "for the good of the group"
>that no one have more than 60 days of work queued up. Again, I
>will simply choose to not participate if whatever I am working on
>might be reassigned to someone able to finish it faster.
Sorry to lose your efforts, then. Have you considered using machines that
slow for factoring purposes?
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