++ 10-Oct-06 23:48 -0500 - Tim Sloane: > On 10/29/06, david eddy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > > > >>Hmm... just an idea, but why not a "screensaver mode"? > > > > > > any eyecandy would hugely slow the program down. check out the speed of > > > Seti-at-home screen saver vs the seti-at-home background service. > > > > We don't need "eye candy" - at least not time consuming stuff. > > > I recall this being discussed ad nauseam on the Mersenne Forums a long > time ago. A screensaver, which would always take up some cycles, goes > against the spirit of the project. This project is to make the most > efficient use of spare CPU cycles, and using a screensaver to run the > program goes against that idea.
If you go back to the post where the screensaver mode was advocated, it's clear that the point isn't to provide "eye candy" but merely to provide a mechanism for shutting the calculation off completely while the machine is being interactively used. For this purpose, the screensaver could just be a blank screen; the idea is to kick in when there's no active user to notice any "slowdown". -- pvn _______________________________________________ Prime mailing list [email protected] http://hogranch.com/mailman/listinfo/prime
