On 11 Sep 00, at 23:43, Robert Deininger wrote:
> I'm not particularly worried about intentional cheating, just accidents.
That seems reasonable.
> OTOH, there isn't anything like a verification code on the manual check-in
> page.
This would be fairly hard to arrange. The point is that most of the
programs which require manual check-in have no code to generate the
verification code, and are unlikely to get it as the algorithm is
"secret" - publishing it would make the whole exercise of generating
the verification code pointless!
We should probably be thinking about using digital signatures
instead; unfortunately this would require changes to the PrimeNet
server to verify these and also to Prime95 (etc) to generate &
transmit the required signature instead of the verification code.
>
> Maybe non-prime95 results are so rare they aren't worth thinking about.
(I take it you're using Prime95 as a general label covering mprime,
NTPrime etc. as well i.e. everything generated from George Woltman's
optimized assembler code)
Hey! Maybe there aren't _too_ many of us around, since Intel-
compatible PC hardware is so pervasive (though I wonder why there are
so few Macintosh users contributing results). However, as a user
running Mlucas on a couple of systems, I do most certainly consider
that they _are_ worth "thinking about".
Double-checking at least a proportion of tests using independent
hardware and software is surely highly desireable.
However it is true that, to the best of my knowledge, none of the
"other" programs are capable of safely double-checking results
produced by the same program. So, if username & computer id
duplicates _not_ involving "W" series programs exist, these could
very well be "dubious".
Regards
Brian Beesley
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