>-----Original Message-----
>From: Brian J. Beesley
<snip>
>However I do wonder how much of the recycling of expired exponents is
>due to people picking up Prime95 just to run a hardware test. The
>proportion of LL test assignments which complete seems to be dropping
>recently. I wonder if there is some problem where the program goes &
>picks up an assignment straight away on installation - would it be
>too much of a deterrent to normal users if it asked a straightforward
>question "Do you want to run a full self-test?" before anything else,
>& if so leave the setup of PrimeNet username etc. till later?
I agree with Brian how that would help to cut down on abandoned assignments,
but as we know, some of those are not abandoned but just late reporting in.
Which brings up a situation I've just come across which I believe could be
easily fixed.
A couple of weeks ago one of our PCs (14 days before completing current job)
was assigned an exponent in the 10M range which obviously had been assigned
to someone else earlier. No problem, that happens all the time. A few days
later the original assignee finished the exponent and it dropped off our
account report. Again no problem, that happens sometimes too. Then a couple
of days ago our PC finished its exponent and reported it in. Since it hadn't
been 28 days since last checkin, it just went ahead and started on the
exponent which someone else had already finished. This PC dropped off our
account report altogether, reducing the number of "machines assigned to
primenet". Now it has happened before that a reassigned exponent was
finished by the original owner AFTER one of our machines started testing it
and I realize there's not much that can be done about that. However, how
much trouble would it be to have it check with the server before starting on
a new exponent to make sure it hadn't already been finished by someone else?
It had to communicate with the server anyway at that point to report the
completed assignment.
Yeah I know, no big deal, it will be recorded as a double-check when ours
finishes. (At least I think it will.) Just seems like it would have been
easy enough to prevent happening in the first place.
Steve Harris
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