Mersenne Digest Sunday, February 6 2000 Volume 01 : Number 688 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 12:33:07 -0600 From: Jeremy Blosser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: RE: Mersenne: FW: what do you think about the authenticity of thi s? Ah, good 'old urban legends... "This wonderful bit of creative writing began circulating on the Internet in April 1998. Written by Mark Boslough as an April Fool's parody on legislative and school board attacks on evolution in New Mexico, the author took real statements from New Mexican legislators and school board members supporting creationism and recast them into a fictional account detailing how Alabama legislators had passed a law calling for the value of pi to be set to the "Biblical value" of 3.0. This brilliant piece of humor was originally posted to the newsgroup talk.origins on 1 April 1998 as well as sent to a list of New Mexican scientists and citizens interested in evolution and printed in the April issue of the New Mexicans for Science and Reason newsletter NMSR Reports. Its talk.origins poster followed up a day later with a full confession and explanation of the prank, thereby allowing others to share in the fun. One would have thought that would have been the end of it. Ah but the Internet works in mysterious ways. Several readers forwarded the piece to friends and posted it to other newsgroups. As the story moved along, what would have easily identified it as a parody and not a news item was stripped out: the attribution to "April Holiday" of the "Associmated Press." Now it looked like a real news piece. Which is how it was received by many. There is not now and never has been a bill in front of the Alabama state legislature to redefine the value of pi. With one exception, none of the names given in this fanciful account stand up to scrutiny. The one exception is Guy Hunt. He is a former governor of Alabama, convicted in 1993 for diverting $200,000 from his inaugural fund to his personal use. Though the claim about the Alabama state legislature is pure nonsense, it is similar to an event that happened more than a century ago. In 1897 the Indiana House of Representatives unanimously passed a measure redefining the area of a circle and the value of pi. (House Bill no. 246, introduced by Rep. Taylor I. Record.) The bill died in the state Senate." For more funny urban legends, I suggest visiting http://www.snopes.com Jeremy Blosser - -----Original Message----- From: Olivier Langlois [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, February 04, 2000 3:15 AM To: Mersenne mailing list (E-mail) Subject: Mersenne: FW: what do you think about the authenticity of this? Is this story really ?? Where is going our society ?? :-) <snip> _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 20:09:35 +0100 From: "Hoogendoorn, Sander" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: RE: Mersenne: The return of poaching? >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. Not so long ago David send a mail to this list on how he's doing this. He said: And now the hard and real important part: monitor your Account report EVERY DAY (I can't stress this enough, because EVERY DAY 4-5 new exponent are going to be assigned to you, if you are only able to monitor your account on the weekend modify the part* schedule and Time setting, to fit your need) and keep ONLY 60 days of work for your computer, use the release form on PrimeNet to release high exponent that you can't complete in 60 Days. and reorder your assignment so that the smallest exponent are finished first. So he takes only 60 days of work for each pc. >Most of Dave's assignments have gone untouched for 30 - 90 days. That those exponents have gone untouched is because he is scheduling the lowest exponents first and they are finished within 3 or 4 while a lot of other exponents take months. I saw some exponents that would expire in a few days and then the data gets updated and it takes another 60 days before the exponents expire while the LL test wasn't even started on those exponents. I think David is doing a good job in completing the milestones MUCH faster. He never poaches an exponent but lets the exponents asing by the server. Although i agree with you that he could release some of the higher exponents for so that others could test them. >If Dave gets poached, I won't shed a tear. Nobody should poach PERIOD >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. Like he said befor No more than 60 thays for each machine Sander _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 04 Feb 2000 14:28:39 -0500 From: Jeff Woods <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Mersenne: OFFICIAL poaching might be better? In other words, David is "pre-emptively poaching" these numbers, to prevent them from getting taken by quitters, in thinking he can clear them before others.... So, he's a poacher himself, it stands to reason on this side of the aisle... To me there's no difference between hoarding and poaching -- both are detrimental to the effort. You claim that David is doing a good job completing the exponents much faster. I think they'd get done much faster if we just created a "cleanup pool" of machines, perhaps a few dozen. I'd donate a P-100 or two to the effort. v20 of Prime95 could allow a machine to join "the cleanup crusade", which would have the following differences from standard participation: 1) The smallest exponents could ONLY be assigned to the cleanup crusade. If there were 100 cleanup boxes, then the smallest 400 exponents ought to be held back for them. 2) The TTL (expiry time) on a cleanup box ought to be MUCH shorter than 60 days. Perhaps as low as 7 days. If you don't have a frequent connection, don't be a cleanup hitter. 3) Once operational, Dave could release most of his queue, and flood the crusade with work. We'd clear his 260 day backlog in about a month, and would continue to crank out milestones even faster than random poaching would allow. If we did that, and didn't do ANYTHING else, other than ensure that when small exponents under CURRENT operation expire, they go to the cleanup pool rather than to the general pool. Questionable results and errors can also go to the cleanup pool, as well. Comments, flames, etc, welcome.... ;-) At 08:09 PM 2/4/00 +0100, you wrote: >Not so long ago David send a mail to this list on how he's doing this. >He said: > > And now the hard and real important part: > > monitor your Account report EVERY DAY (I can't stress this enough, because > EVERY DAY 4-5 new exponent are going to be assigned to you, if you are > able to monitor your account on the weekend modify the part* schedule and > Time setting, to fit your need) and keep ONLY 60 days of work for your > computer, use the release form on PrimeNet to release high exponent that > can't complete in 60 Days. and reorder your assignment so that the > smallest exponent are finished first. > >So he takes only 60 days of work for each pc. > > > >Most of Dave's assignments have gone untouched for 30 - 90 days. > >That those exponents have gone untouched is because he is scheduling the >lowest >exponents first and they are finished within 3 or 4 while a lot of other >exponents >take months. I saw some exponents that would expire in a few days and then >the data >gets updated and it takes another 60 days before the exponents expire while >the LL >test wasn't even started on those exponents. > >I think David is doing a good job in completing the milestones MUCH faster. >He never poaches an exponent but lets the exponents asing by the server. >Although i agree with you that he could release some of the higher exponents >for so >that others could test them. > > >If Dave gets poached, I won't shed a tear. > >Nobody should poach PERIOD > > >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. > >Like he said befor No more than 60 thays for each machine > >Sander _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 20:58:13 +0100 (MET) From: Wojciech Florek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Mersenne: Small exponents Hi all! I've lately returned to GIMPS and devoted to double checking. Using the ideas presented by David Campou (diamonddave) I make a shell script which is started every two days and takes new exponents. New and all exponents are merged and sorted. When mprime starts it returns the largest ones to the pool. DaysOfWork=20. I use Celeron 300 (but only about 30% of CPU time). I try to take only a few exponents and finish each of them in a week or unreserved it. I don't like poaching but I don't want to fight with the poacher(s). Wojciech Florek (WsF) Adam Mickiewicz University, Institute of Physics ul. Umultowska 85, 61-614 Poznan, Poland phone: (++48-61) 8273033 fax: (++48-61) 8257758 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] www: http://spin.amu.edu.pl/~florek _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 20:59:46 +0100 (MET) From: Wojciech Florek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Mersenne: Small exponents Sorry David for misspelling your name David Campeau! WsF _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 15:31:29 EST From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Mersenne: Re: American Pi Olivier Langlois wrote: > The bill to change the value of pi > to exactly three was introduced without fanfare by Leonard Lee > Lawson (R, Crossville), and rapidly gained support after a letter-writing > campaign by members of the Solomon Society, a traditional values group. Note that ignorance, having presumably been around longer than intelligence (but only to us arrogant evolutionist pigs :) is well-suited to being a "traditional value." > "There are other geometries, and pi is different in every one of them," > said Humbleys. "Scientists have arbitrarily assumed that space is > Euclidean. A circle drawn on a spherical surface has a different value > for the ratio of circumference to diameter. Anyone with a compass, > flexible ruler, and globe can see this for themselves. It's not exactly > rocket science." Indeed, the ratio [circumference/diameter] ranges from pi (the irrational one, defined using plane geometry) in the limit of vanishing circle size monotonically downward to 2 for the largest possible circle one can draw on a sphere, which is a great circle (e.g. on an idealized earth, the equator is a great circle having circumference C, and its "radius" is the length of an arc of another great circle from the equator to either pole, i.e. C/4. Thus [circumference/diameter] = [C/(2*C/4)] = 2. Each latitude thus has its own value for pi. Atheists standing on the north or south pole should use the irrational Euclidean-geometry value. Folks whose religion admits only of whole numbers should choose either 2 or 3, depending on which value is closer to the real value at their latitude. Folks living in non-spherical geometries or higher-dimensional spaces will necessarily be politically disenfranchised. This seems a small price to pay for the wonderful simplicity of being able to remember just the number 2 or 3, which can be done even while knuckle-walking: if one is at a latitude having pi := 2, just stick both thumbs out while walking on all fours. If pi := 3, stick thumbs and tongue out. In the latter instance, when having to occasionally retract one's tongue to keep it from drying out, one should shut one eye so as not to lose one's place. Of course one has to be careful not to moisten one's tongue and blink at the same time, because one then has pi := 2 thumbs + 2 shut eyes = 4, which is heresy, and even momentary heresy is punishable by remedial mathematics reeducation. > Roger Learned, a Solomon Society member who was in Montgomery to > support the bill, agrees. He said that pi is nothing more than an > assumption by the mathematicians and engineers who were there to > argue against the bill. "Those nabobs waltzed into the capital with an > arrogance that was breathtaking," Learned said. "Their predatorial > deficit resulted in a polemical stance at absolute contraposition to the > legislature's puissance." At this instantiation, even the cursory or desultory peruser should become cognizant of the likelihood that the exposition under scrutiny is intended to be recognized as risible by the reader. (In plain English: it's a joke, folks!) Sadly, it's based on actual occurrences, and the flowery, obfuscatory language of the above paragraph is not too far from the kind preferred by many politicians and lawmakers. - -Ernst "The streets shall flow with the blood of the unbelievers." - Beavis and Butt-Head "...and three shall be the number of the counting. Four shalt thou not count, nor two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out..." - Monty Python and the Holy Grail _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 14:04:27 -0800 From: Russel Brooks <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: RE: Mersenne: The return of poaching? Let me give you the 'newbie' point of view to all this. I've only been part of GIMPS for a couple of months. It looked like something fun to do, useful for science, etc. and a good way to burn off those spare cycles that keep building up. :-) 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. Cheers... Russ _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 22:13:37 +0000 From: "Steinar H. Gunderson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Mersenne: Poaching is no more We do not need to poach anymore. See George's last post on this topic. I believe the PrimeNet semantics were changed in v15 (?), and now it's based on check-ins, not just expected dates. Anyhow, if any poaching _needs_ to be done, George and Scott takes care of that themselves, since they occasionally check for such exponents. /* Steinar */ - -- Homepage: http://members.xoom.com/sneeze/ _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 17:34:14 -0500 From: "Vincent J. Mooney Jr." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Mersenne: The return of poaching? 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. > >_________________________________________________________________ >Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm >Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers > _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 15:52:14 -0800 From: "John R Pierce" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Mersenne: The return of poaching? > 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. I think the 10 intervals might be a bit too draconian. I have most of my systems set to check in every two days, its a quick and easy way to keep track of the servers I don't directly monitor. A half dozen of my machines are various lab computers which sit around idle 99% of the time, and don't even have their consoles turned on. By your standards, 20 days would be a cutoff... Well, many of these machines are pentium 120s and stuff that take a bit over 20 days to do a LL test. Sure, they are slow. But they are steady. Of the 13 machines I have running currently, only 3 or 4 of them are faster than 200MHz. - -jrp _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2000 00:39:38 +0000 (GMT) From: Chris Jefferson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Mersenne: The return of poaching? On Fri, 4 Feb 2000, John R Pierce wrote: > > ... I think the 10 intervals might be a bit too draconian... I agree, 30 days should be considered a minimum. I don't know it if could be put into the primenet server, but could a 'trust' setting be put in? Maybe for the first 15 days a new person has an exponent, they should be limited to a max of 30 days with it. This could be set into the software, just so any people who join then immediatly quit don't chug up the system. Also, maybe the smallest components could be given to people with a high 'trust' rating, so we think they will get done. Obviously, anyone could fiddle their trust rating, I don't think it is worth getting too advanced, just stick in the first started date in the .ini file, don't put too much into it... Chris _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2000 12:27:22 -0700 From: "Aaron Blosser" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: RE: Mersenne: FW: what do you think about the authenticity of this? > Though the claim about the Alabama state legislature is pure > nonsense, it is > similar to an event that happened more than a century ago. In 1897 the > Indiana House of Representatives unanimously passed a measure > redefining the > area of a circle and the value of pi. (House Bill no. 246, introduced by > Rep. Taylor I. Record.) The bill died in the state Senate." And I would guess that that bill was related to agriculture somehow, and not any religious perspective. Just wanted to point that out, since some people take unusual delight in taking potshots at religious folks. Aaron _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2000 12:39:37 -0700 From: "Aaron Blosser" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: RE: Mersenne: The return of poaching? > 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 ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 05 Feb 2000 15:33:08 -0800 From: Luke Welsh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Mersenne: The return of poaching? At 12:39 PM 2/5/00 -0700, Aaron Blosser wrote: [snip] I respectfully disagree. If I had the time and machines, I'd be cleaning up the smaller exponents. I am not interested in my ranking. I appreciate people diligently "mopping up". I do not presume to know what their motives are but I would like to assume that their motives are the same as mine. There are over 2000 p < 4,ooo,ooo being double checked on PrimeNet. It will probably take until sometime in 2001 to polish them off unless somebody mops up. That is my opinion and my 2 cents. BTW, PrimeNet has reached a sustained teraflop! Are we gaining members, are we upgrading our hardware, is it George's faster v19 code, is it people running Ernst's code, or some/all of the above? - --Luke _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2000 15:48:37 -0800 From: Russel Brooks <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Mersenne: PrimeNet Clock ?? I'm looking at rhe Aasigned Exponent Report for the first time. It says it's 5 Feb 2000 23:02 (5 Feb 2000 4.02pm Pacific). The 23:02 is ok for UTC time but the local time should be 3:02pm for Pacific. Cheers... Russ _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2000 21:58:24 -0500 From: "David Campeau" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Mersenne: The return of poaching? (or lets all blast dave) Hi all, Before I start, I was poached more than my share and I poached 1 number. Ok, here we go, in chronological order... Gordon Bower writes: > A quick look in the cleared exponents file reveals many recent results > reported by a user "rick" who apparently has several fast Pentium IIs > doing double-checks. A look in the the assignments file reveals not a > single small exponent reserved by this user. It's a sad state of things. But since it was brought to light, no action were taken to prevent it, only to reduce it's occurence by putting the 60 days hard cap. > > 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. > I feel sad for people who have been poached. It does not have anything to do with me being poached. > I don't know exactly what our policy is on this matter, or what we can do > about it the the facts are as they seem to be. But it seemed worth > bringing the matter up. > Sadly we don't have any. Well if you are not on the list that is... (People like to point finger and stuff) Jeff Woods write: > 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. > I didn't know there was any place that changed the official number of days to queue. Back before PrimeNet, George Woltman was asking people to take about 2-3 month of work! I might have missed the newsletter changing the rules. > > 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. > taken from my status report (work done since Dec 7): Factored composite : 0 Lucas-Lehmer composite: 0 Double-checked LL : 98 - ---------------------- ------- TOTAL : 98 I guess those 80 number should be done before April Fools days! I wont comment on the rest. [snip] *comment on how I am a Pig, selfish and some other false assumption* Then, after some post explaining my ways by Alexander Kruppa and Sander Hoogendoorn. Jeff Woods writes: > In other words, David is "pre-emptively poaching" these numbers, to prevent > them from getting taken by quitters, in thinking he can clear them before > others.... So, he's a poacher himself, it stands to reason on this side > of the aisle... Poaching was attributed to people who grabbed an exponent without it being assigned to them. There is no poaching what so ever in what I do. What can I say, it's not the 100,000$ that interest me, what I want to see is more Milestone achieved with the least time possible between them. [snip] *idea with some merits.* Aaron Blosser writes: > 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. > Did you know that for about 6-8 hours _each_ days, it's only expired exponent that are distributed. So about 20 exponent re-released by PrimeNet will in there own time expire again (and the cycle begin anew). > 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. Maybe that's why I don't keep more than 60 days per computer. [snip] > 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. What is the difference between keeping only small exponent and keeping only big exponent (going for 100,000$), we will reach that plateau eventually? Why did this tread went from exposing a poacher to accusing a sensible PrimeNet user of poaching? Everyone seemed to have forgotten are mutual friend "Rick", why? David Campeau a.k.a. DiamondDave _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 04 Feb 2000 14:33:57 -0600 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Mikus Grinbergs) Subject: Re: Mersenne: The return of poaching? On Fri, 04 Feb 2000 11:12:09 -0500 Jeff Woods <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > 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". > > 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. For heavens sakes ! Suppose that I get struck by lightning next month. Will my life have been in vain because such_and_such a GIMPS milestone had not yet been reached by next month ? This __used__ to be a fun project. People who contributed their time and resources were appreciated. Now it's results, Results, RESULTS ... mikus There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you -- who are you to judge your neighbor? (James 4:12) _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 05 Feb 2000 23:05:57 -0800 From: Spike Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Mersenne: The return of poaching? Luke Welsh wrote: > BTW, PrimeNet has reached a sustained teraflop! Are we gaining > members, are we upgrading our hardware, is it George's > faster v19 code, is it people running Ernst's code, or some/all > of the above? Yes, so the *real* milestone is less than 10% away. The real milestone is not 10^12 but rather 2^40 ops per second. Lets get with it! My model predicts we will hit 2^40 in May. {8-] spike _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2000 10:33:54 -0000 From: "Brian J. Beesley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Mersenne: The return of poaching? No particular quotes - lots have people have had interesting and relevant things to say. 1) I have no problem with the likes of David Campeau (aka diamonddave) as, whatever systems he is using, the exponents seem to get cleared in a reasonable time (_much_ faster than the reports indicate) - and he does appear to be acquiring exponents in a way which is not only accessible to everyone, but which he has even gone to the trouble of documenting. This is _not_ "poaching", which is the quite different activity of working on exponents assigned to someone else. 2) There is no doubt that a certain amount of "poaching" is going on. Will the offenders (they know who they are) please desist. Poaching often results in early triple-checks being done, at this stage this is a waste of resources. 3) Cutting the 60-day exipry date may well have unwanted consequences. During the last week I obtained an assignment (for a double check in the 4 million range) which disappeared from my status report after a couple of days. I guess whoever had the exponent before finally returned the result - deliberate poaching does not seem likely in this case, and it's very doubtful that anyone would have a system powerful enough to start & finish the job in the time I had the assignment. If anything, we ought to be increasing the figure, as assignments take longer to complete these days. Perhaps we could/should have different expiry dates for different assignment types, but this would probably involve changes to PrimeNet which aren't strictly neccessary. 4) Please don't forget the many people using manual assignments for one reason or another. Often non-Intel systems which can't use PrimeNet because of the hangups over the security code. Shortening expiry times or the maximum amount of work queued makes it more of an effort to keep these systems contributing. (Of course, if you want an all-Intel project...) 5) Finally, a couple of suggestions. a) I agree with the correspondent that said that everyone should have an equal chance of picking up recycled small exponents. A practical way of achieving this would be to run the job which recycles expired/returned exponents at a random time each day instead of a fixed time. (Start the job at 0600 GMT but have it immediately sleep for a number of seconds picked from a uniform random distribution minimum 0, maximum 86399). b) As a deterrent to poachers, could I suggest that any results submitted by anyone working on exponents assigned to someone else be credited to the "poachee" rather than the poacher. c) I would suggest that v20 sorts assignments so that they are executed in order of increasing exponent (once trial factoring prior to LL testing has been completed) rather than being executed in the order they were assigned. Regards Brian Beesley _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ End of Mersenne Digest V1 #688 ******************************
