On Mon, 14 May 2001 00:20:47 +0100, Daran wrote:
>As someone currently running a legacy machine, (It's taking 4-5 months to run
>double-checks in the range under consideration,) I have some thoughts on this.
>
>First of all, as Jud notes, the 'elitism' is already there, in that different
>machines get treated differently in the assignments that they are given. It
>also lies at the heart of the 'Top producer' chart.
Every distributed computing project larger than a few dozen members
has such a chart. It would be difficult to keep people interested
without one. I know that I don't feel less a part of the project
because my placing is above 4,000.
>Even readers of this list
>get opportunities to acquire exponents or prebeta-test software, etc., that
>are not available to the unwashed masses.
Very true. Of course, George can hardly contact all several thousand
participants when such an opportunity happens. Additionally, GIMPS,
unlike most other projects, has exponents taht are 'better' than
others. If I run a range of distributed.net keys, it has an equal
chance of containing the correct key compared to any other range of
equal size. If I run a work unit for seti@home, some work units may
be slightly more likely to contain a message, but since a fast
computer does multiple work units in one day, it all averages out
fairly quickly.
>Secondly, if - when I ask the server to give me "whatever kind of work makes
>most sense" - it gives me something else, whether out of spurious concern for
>my feelings or for any other reason, then not only are the programmers
>betraying my trust in them, they are also indicating that they don't trust me
>to ask for what I want.
The type of work that "makes the most sense" is chosen based on CPU
speed, and is based on George's desire to avoid giving machines work
that will keep them busy for more than a certain length of time,
increasing the risk of an incorrect result. You can override that
setting if you have a strong preference.
>If I choose to specify what kind of work I want, I
>still expect the be given the work that "makes most sense" within that
>category. I certainly would not expect to be given work that would delay a
>milestone, given the limitations of my machine.
This might be a reasonable change in PrimeNet. Personally, I don't
think milestones should be a focus of the project, but it is nice when
a new one appears on the page.
>It "makes sense" to offer factorisations to newcomers to the project. It
>probably would make sense to offer at least one double-check before moving on
>to first time checks. And it makes sense to offer milestone-blocking work to
>fast machines with a proven track record of reliability. People will
>understand this. People do not expect to be given jobs that they are not able
>to do, or positions of trust within days of joining a new club.
I still think that this is very debatable. There should not be a
certain /assignment type/ reserved for 'veterans', but it may be
reasonable to, e.g., only give triple-checks to accounts that request
double-checks, and have returned more than a certain number of
results.
Note that an exponent given out for triple-checking has a microscopic
chance of being prime (something like two in one billion), since it
must
1. Be prime (once chance in 60,000-70,000) and
2. Have been missed by both previous tests (1 in 100 for each).
>People need to be informed about
>departures from documented practice.
Are you suggesting that, every time George offers exponents to the
members of this mailing list, he should send out a newsletter to every
participant - guaranteeing hundreds or thousands of replies for him to
deal with? I think there may be no good solution to this.
Nathan
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