On Sat, 2 Feb 2002, Aaron Blosser wrote: > Not sure what the crack about "with your history" means, but whatever. > I can't take this all too seriously because, really, it's just a hobby. > :)
Well, let me refresh your memory. PrimeNet used to set expiration dates solely on the basis of expected completion date instead of requiring checkins every so often. When that turned out to be not a terribly good idea because some expected completion dates were months or even years away, you took it upon yourself to "clean up" instead of raising the issue to put a better system in place. You ended up poaching exponents that people were actively working on and got a lot of people mad at you. Hobbies are supposed to be fun. Poachers make it not fun. It's like a bully trashing your sand castle because you're building right where he wants to. Imagine yourself a first time GIMPS participant. You sign your machine up and don't change any of the defaults. You get a double check assignment. Your machine is on most of the time, but it gets used a lot, so it takes longer than the initial estimate. You watch your exponent get crunched, you see maybe one PrimeNet report out of the four the machine makes, and four months later, you gleefully wait as the last few iterations tick away. Unbeknownst to you, in the meantime your exponent has floated up near the top of the Assigned Exponent Report, where a poacher has taken note that the exponent has been running for three months, is expected to run another month and has not been checked in in the last two weeks. A month later the machine finishes, connects to PrimeNet and you get the error, "Exponent already tested." What?! How did that happen? Noooo! You go check your account report. No credit. Four months wasted. "Screw this," you say, and delete Prime95. A friend told you that GIMPS was a rock solid well-run project. Obviously that's not true. Later on you get a much faster computer. Are you going to go back to GIMPS? Only if you're an idiot! Is that fun? Does that sound like fun? Some hobby! George said no poaching. He said if there was a problem with exponents not being completed in a timely fashion, he would take care of it. Anybody who continues to poach is putting up a big fat middle finger to George and GIMPS and running off legitimate participants that they consider "not worthy". > Like they say, you pick your battles. I guess if someone wanted to make > a huge issue out of this, they could, but me, I'd rather spend my time > and energy on more productive things. You spend your time the way you like, I'll spend mine the way I like. We can each agree to value our own time according to our own criteria. I'm not even sure why you bothered to respond to this, as it is surely a huge waste of your time. _________________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.ndatech.com/mersenne/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
