[quote=Kevin;187732]Cheesehead seems to think people will be disheartened if we do anything at all (even if it's just asking familiar faces from the forum for a status update about why things are taking considerably longer than they should)[/quote]Misrepresenting my position only shows that you have no confidence in your ability to straightforwardly convince us of the superiority of your viewpoint without exaggeration.

[quote=RichD;187745]I like this guy. He would be great on a debate team. ;-)[/quote]... but I would rip apart his distortions.

[quote=Kevin;187846]Also, imagine people who might make it their goal to clear out the lower end.[/quote]So, you take it upon yourself to claim a sort of ownership of part of this public project.

[quote]It's a little disheartening if you spend a lot of time working on clearing everything beneath a certain range, and it takes an extra year to actually reach the goal because a few people take their time.[/quote]Well, [I]that's what happens when you inappropriately interject your ego into a public distributed computing project[/I]. If you hadn't presumed to take part of the project as your private task, you wouldn't have the associated disheartening!

The lesson is for you to restrain yourself, not for you to presume to order others.

[quote]There's never really a sense of accomplishment or moment of triumph for your wok when you get within arm's length of the goal, but things don't officially end for another few months.[/quote]A revealing Freudian slip (the pronoun, not the missing letter) there: " [U]your[/U] wo[r]k", as though [U]you[/U] somehow had the right to assume proprietary ownership of a portion of a public project that had not been assigned to you.

What an ego.

Kevin,

[U]If[/U] your motivation were only to determine how much GIMPS, the project, (rather than your own excessive sense of ownership) was being affected by the supposedly excessively long time taken to complete certain assignments, you could have simply requested the project administrators to conduct a periodic survey and report anonymous results without releasing any individual identity information.

But instead, you ask for individuals' information to be available to you. Why? That isn't necessary for the good of the GIMPS project; it's necessary only if you are to exercise some sort of power yourself. Why does GIMPS need you to be able to do that?

With all due respect, what in the bloody hell are you talking about? I'll skip over things like your usual tired talking points about work is being done no matter how it's assigned, even though there appears to be an overwhelming preference for clearing things up from the bottom and working towards milestones (you realize that's why this thread has gone on for so long, right?). You're not as much making an argument against what I'm talking about as making an argument against the existence of the reliability rankings/preferred exponent system/minimum P4 GHZ, which almost everybody agrees has been a significant improvement in how things are done.

First of all, I don't understand your fixation on claiming that this is all me trying to promote my own personal goals. I stopped reserving preferred first-time exponents months ago, and have been focusing on P-1 ever since. Like I said in my first post resurrecting this thread, if nobody cares about clearing low exponents anymore, I don't especially care either and we can just let the thread die and keep things the way they are. But if there is still interest in clearing low exponents (at some point there was least enough interest to justify modifying the assignment system and creating this thread), then I just pointed out that now would be a good time to start paying closer attention to how well the new assignment system does at facilitating this when there's only a few exponents left. If anything, your only purpose in this thread seems to have been promoting your own misplaced sense of self-righteousness.

Second of all, when did I say anything about giving me access to people's user information or poaching exponents? I never suggested anything more than the possibility of contacting known users on the forum (which has already been done in this thread and was in no way a problem) in the hypothetical situation that certain preferred exponents still take longer than average to finish to figure out what flaws might exist with how the assignment system guides certain exponents to "trusted" users. Unbunch your panties, for God's sake.

[QUOTE=cheesehead;187866]Kevin,

[U]If[/U] your motivation were only....[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Kevin;187879]With all due respect.....[/QUOTE]You both need to take a breath and step away from the terminal. Go outside, run and play, read a book, take a walk, call a friend, go :camping:, write a letter, etc. You guys are working each other up into a lather.:pals:


I will have to say that the new smart assignment system of the v5 server is making things better. The 'slow pokes' get their assignments and help GIMPS, the 'known producers' help make things a bit more tidy than it had been. Everyone helps, but George/Scott, have worked it out so that, the march of progress has a much better appearance. We have 3 milestones with under 1000 to go, this is great. As they fall, those that love to feel progress happening will have things to rejoice over.


To be fair to some of the folks that TF on machines that should be DC'ing or LL'ing, or even P-1'ing; some of them are using cycles on machines at work, and don't want trouble that would follow if they found a prime. P-1 is such a memory user, that the machine becomes less responsive. Set it to TF and forget it. And like Wabbit, TF's can help one monitor the status of machines, if they stop producing, something is amiss.

[quote=Kevin;187879]there appears to be an overwhelming preference for clearing things up from the bottom and working towards milestones (you realize that's why this thread has gone on for so long, right?).[/quote]How is the overwhelmingness of this preference measured?

Oh ... wait ... it was by its "appearance" to you.

[quote]You're not as much making an argument against what I'm talking about[/quote](such as

"we might want to start keeping track of them to possibly identify stragglers (and maybe prod them along"

"At least as far as I know, there's no way to see what kind of progress a person is making like there was with the old system, so we're very much in the dark."

"people who might make it their goal to clear out the lower end")

[quote]as making an argument against the existence of the reliability rankings/preferred exponent system/minimum P4 GHZ, which almost everybody agrees has been a significant improvement in how things are done.[/quote]No, I wasn't arguing against that. I never mentioned it at all! I complained only about your proposals to enable the ... uh ... "prodding" of certain individuals.

[quote]First of all, I don't understand your fixation on claiming that this is all me trying to promote my own personal goals.[/quote]Because it's your name on the postings?

[quote]I stopped reserving preferred first-time exponents months ago, and have been focusing on P-1 ever since.[/quote]So? Is that supposed to be some excuse for you to "prod" folks whose progress is too slow for you?

[quote]I just pointed out that now would be a good time to start paying closer attention to how well the new assignment system does at facilitating this when there's only a few exponents left.[/quote]No, that's not all you proposed. As I said in my previous post, if that was really all you'd proposed, you could have accomplished it by simply requesting the project administrators to conduct a periodic survey and report anonymous results without releasing any individual identity information.

But you want more: to be able to "prod" folks.

[quote]Second of all, when did I say anything about giving me access to people's user information[/quote]You can't "prod" folks who are slower than you like [I]if you don't know who they are[/I], can you?

[quote]or poaching exponents?[/quote]I never claimed you had mentioned poaching.

[quote]I never suggested anything more than the possibility of contacting known users on the forum (which has already been done in this thread and was in no way a problem)[/quote]... but you also want more of those "straggling" users to be made known, that's what more you suggested.

[quote]in the hypothetical situation that certain preferred exponents still take longer than average to finish[/quote]"still take longer than average"? Sounds pretty innocent ... but after you "prod" them out, the average of those remaining is faster, so again some of them "still take longer than average". Then after you "prod" [I]them[/I], ...

(See, folks? Kevin never specified any objective standard for determining who was too slow other than his own impatience ... until now, when his standard is simply slower-than-average. Notice how that standard justifies excluding all but the fastest systems!)

[quote]to figure out what flaws might exist with how the assignment system guides certain exponents to "trusted" users.[/quote]... so you can "prod" the ones who, according to you, shouldn't have been trusted with low exponents because they don't have faster-than-average systems.

- -

Kevin,

My overall theme is that I don't think the folks with the fastest systems should be proposing that folks with "slow" systems should be excluded from certain types of assignments. Persuasion and defaults are fine, but straight-out barring on the mere basis of some folks' impatience [I]without any showing of objective damage to the GIMPS project[/I] are not okay with me.

Secondly, there is a satisfactory assignment system in place. It is improper for folks to be expressing some kind of ownership of, or proposing interference with, assignments that have been made to others in this public project and are proceeding in accordance with project rules.

[QUOTE=Kevin;187846]No, I very clearly stated "whether or not there is a problem will be a debatable point." And progress isn't guaranteed after a year. The exponent could theoretically be assigned to somebody else that takes an additional year to finish.
[/quote]

Well I would be very surprized if someone runs over the 1 year limit and for the first time in the history of the project is officially kicked off a unit while still reporting regular progress (it would seem to be a manual operation) does not subsequently have the exponent assigned (manually) to someone known, fast and reliable. What am I missing?

[quote]
Also, imagine people who might make it their goal to clear out the lower end. It's a little disheartening if you spend a lot of time working on clearing everything beneath a certain range, and it takes an extra year to actually reach the goal because a few people take their time. There's never really a sense of accomplishment or moment of triumph for your wok when you get within arm's length of the goal, but things don't officially end for another few months.[/QUOTE]

I would say it was a problem with the premiss, rather than the result. It can be disheartening when a project is discovered to be founded on false assumptions.
Buck up. Better luck with you next project.

It is one of the reasons I like this project. It is inclusive of people with lesser computers. It doesn't demand you upgrade every couple years to keep contributing (but of course you can upgrade if you want). If you discourage anyone from helping even just to say "Hey why are you so slow?" it is liable to have repercussions for the project as a whole quite beyond the obvious. I for one would not want to see it.

[QUOTE=Uncwilly;187886]We have 3 milestones with under 1000 to go, this is great. [/QUOTE]We have under 700 to go to clear the gap under 3 primes and under 325 to prove the 40th known is in fact the 40th MP. So, we have slightly more than 1000 test to have turned in to clear 4 milestones. I think we are doing well.

[quote]You both need to take a breath and step away from the terminal. Go outside, run and play, read a book, take a walk, call a friend, go camping, write a letter, etc. You guys are working each other up into a lather.[/quote]A friend of mine would call this a p**sing contest. Two tomcats sniffing each others rear-ends and growling to prove who is tougher.

[QUOTE=cheesehead;187887]How is the overwhelmingness of this preference measured?

Oh ... wait ... it was by its "appearance" to you.
[/QUOTE]

I was going off the fact that this thread exists, and that I have never seen anybody other than you support the same position you hold, especially as vociferously as you do.


[QUOTE=cheesehead;187887]
No, that's not all you proposed. As I said in my previous post, if that was really all you'd proposed, you could have accomplished it by simply requesting the project administrators to conduct a periodic survey and report anonymous results without releasing any individual identity information.
[/quote]

I'd be fine with something like that. But I think George would rather spend his time optimizing code and working on other things, so it's in the best interest of everybody if we do the leg-work first to see if such implements are even necessary.

[QUOTE=cheesehead;187887]
But you want more: to be able to "prod" folks.

You can't "prod" folks who are slower than you like [I]if you don't know who they are[/I], can you?
[/quote]

For the nth time, I was referring to contacting known users on the forum. Quit referring back to the first post when I was vague after I have clarified what I was talking about multiple times since then.


[QUOTE=cheesehead;187887]
I never claimed you had mentioned poaching.
[\quote]

[quote]Then why do you need more information on their progress? So someone can poach their assignments?
[/quote]

That seems like a pretty direct accusation, unless you want to hide behind the "rhetorical question" argument.


[QUOTE=cheesehead;187887]... but you also want more of those "straggling" users to be made known, that's what more you suggested.[/quote]

You can just look up who has what assignments on Primenet. I never suggested seeking more information than is already publicly available.

[QUOTE=cheesehead;187887]
"still take longer than average"? Sounds pretty innocent ... but after you "prod" them out, the average of those remaining is faster, so again some of them "still take longer than average". Then after you "prod" [I]them[/I], ...

(See, folks? Kevin never specified any objective standard for determining who was too slow other than his own impatience ... until now, when his standard is simply slower-than-average. Notice how that standard justifies excluding all but the fastest systems!)
[/quote]

Why should I bother coming up with an objective standard before we've even checked to see if some kind of objective standard might be necessary? Most people were able to see that there was an issue with lagging assignments in the previous system without any objective standard in place. You could make it anything more than 10 standard deviations past the average. You could set a time limit of 6 months instead of 12 months for the 100 lowest exponents remaining. I don't really know, we're not at that point in the discussion yet. At this point in time, all I said we might want to pay more careful attention, and made some loose suggestions for things to discuss in the future.

[QUOTE=cheesehead;187887]
... so you can "prod" the ones who, according to you, shouldn't have been trusted with low exponents because they don't have faster-than-average systems.
[/quote]

The assignment system is set up so that preferred assignments are only supposed to go to computers with a minimum P4 equivalent GHZ, something like 2.4GHZ. If a computer is only making progress equivalent to 400MHZ, then yes, those computers shouldn't have been trusted with the low exponents. I don't think that's an especially unreasonable viewpoint. I haven't bothered being terribly precise about a metric because I only think we need to bother doing something if there are delays so drastic that it's blatantly obvious (like it was with the old system).


[QUOTE=cheesehead;187887]
Kevin,

My overall theme is that I don't think the folks with the fastest systems should be proposing that folks with "slow" systems should be excluded from certain types of assignments. Persuasion and defaults are fine, but straight-out barring on the mere basis of some folks' impatience [I]without any showing of objective damage to the GIMPS project[/I] are not okay with me.
[/quote]

So what you're really doing is arguing against the system of having minimum P4 equivalences/reliability rankings/preferred exponents. I mean, if your P4 equivalence is less than 2GHZ, you can't get assigned a first-time test. You do realize that what you're arguing against is precisely the system that has been put in place, and has drawn minimal complaints and has largely been considered a success, right? The only thing I've done is propose that we check to make sure the system is working as intended, and that assignments meant to go to people above a certain threshhold aren't being worked on by systems significantly below that threshhold.

[QUOTE=cheesehead;187887]
It is improper for folks to be expressing some kind of ownership of, or proposing interference with, assignments that have been made to others in this public project and are proceeding in accordance with project rules.
[/quote]

Yes, it would be, which would be explain why [I]nobody[/I] has suggested that except you. But even if we can't change the assignments that have already been made, we can change how assignments are made in the future, and perhaps even change the standard of what is considered "acceptable progress" for certain sets of exponents. That's exactly what happened with implementing the new assignment scheme, and that's exactly what would happen with making slight modifications to the new assignment scheme.