DC-Vault listing and NPLB website

[MyDogBuster]

Just my 2c also. Being a long time BOINCER (I was there running Seti Classic, but wouldn't run any Boinc now if ya paid me), you DON"T want to even think about it. BOINCERS are in it for the points and thats it. Your forum would turn into a big gripe session with the Boincers taking over the conversations. If you ran a site that aided and abetted terrorists, but it paid good points, you would get a strong BOINC following. If it were me, I would contact Prime Grid to see if they would do some sieving, but only sieving. If not them, then maybe YoYo. Under no circumstances try to install the Boinc software. If someone wants a challenge then, write a wrapper for a sieving effort where the wrapper communicates with a server to handle work unit's, much like LLRNET does. You could then parse out real small sieving units to be done for points. Thats basically what BOINC does without all the other BS.

Having your own website is desirable though. Advertise NPLB as a hobby. It's the mathematics that scares people away.

BTW, I know absolutely nothing about setting up a website but seeing as there are billions of them out there, it can't be that horrendous. DC Vault is also a good idea. Anything, anywhere just to put DC eyes on us.

MyDog

[Brucifer]

At first thought, using the services of PG possibly to take care of some sieving sounds like it could be a workable thing IF the NPLB project picked up a lot of help on the LLR/LLRnet work. On the one hand, it would offload one of the less desirable aspects of the prime hunting. On the other hand though, we would end up with a ton of sieved stuff in a hurry. It's hard to do anything with boinc if there isn't a steady flowing source of work units. The work units start fluctuating and the complaining starts. So in the case of PG there would always be other work units for the boincers.

I am not a boinc fan and most that know me know. Like PCZ, I would find another way to do the math stuff that didn't involve boinc. RS was a real lesson in life with boinc, and a few other issues. A lot of us put a lot of work into the project. I like the small town atmosphere here. It's friendly. People help each other. This is a hobby, and it is enjoyable. I used to crunch boinc way back, played the beta test game and all too. Some people crunch of play the system, or game the system, etc., and others crunch for love of the project, it's purpose and what it is doing.

I am reminded (as I'm sure about everyone has seen) of a nice small restaurant that has good food, friendly staff, steady reliable cusomers, and both the customers and the staff are responsive to each other. Things go along fine, and then one day someone in management figures that if they can get into this place that's a little larger, etc., that they can increase income, productivity, etc. So they do. And in the process the charming little restaurant that had a devoted following because the clients just loved the food and atmosphere, disappears and there is a different restaurant. The same clientèle is no more cause they have moved away. It isn't the same. Some of the places make it, but a lot of them don't as it then turns into a quest just to keep their head above water. And that's the basic problem facing project managers when they start changing the status-quo.

To some degree there is a bit of concern about change in my mind regarding the DC_Vault. The concern revolves around people that just "game" the vault and could care less about the actual project. The plus side of the Vault is that as mentioned, it would bring more participants, and teams. And in that regard it would be good as it would help the project reach more of it's goals. The one real issue I see would center around the sieving aspect if participation significantly increased. And at that point we should give serious consideration to MyDogBuster's suggestion of PG and sieving.

Just an old man's thoughts after watching the DC world evolved through the stages to where it is now. I like this project, it is a nice comfortable place and a nice hobby with some super people. I'd hate to lose that.

[Mini-Geek]

Originally Posted by vaughan

- If you want the project to stay basically as it is you can continue on the current path. The key to attracting stayers with the existing setup is the chase for Primes. Gary's posts about the statistics or odds of finding a Prime were very interesting to read. AMDave's work on the stats pages for the k/n pairs done and the Project Status coloured graph are also the type of thing that is attractive. It gives the volunteers something to check, to see the project's and their own progress.

I think that the expected number of primes could be a very interesting addition to the stats pages. Might be a little difficult, especially with getting all old numbers scored in this way, but I think it'd be fun to see a more fluid and yet concrete measurement of how many primes you ought to be getting (if that makes any sense!) instead of the confusing, random bunching that you get in reality...you could understand what's going on and if the primes are really sparse or you're just really unlucky, etc. (or vice versa )
If this is (or becomes) too off-topic feel free to split this (and any replies) to a new thread

[MyDogBuster]

Just an old man's thoughts after watching the DC world evolved through the stages to where it is now. I like this project, it is a nice comfortable place and a nice hobby with some super people. I'd hate to lose that.

I don't know who is older, you or I, but you summed it up perfectly.

PS. Riesel Sieve was my favorite project also. Too bad b2 went the direction he went. I wonder whatever happened to those humungous sieved files?

[gd_barnes]

Originally Posted by PCZ

If this project were to go boinc then i would not participate.
i like the way it operates now.

Probably will go lone wolf on my own K's if this project does go boinc.

Originally Posted by Flatlander

I like things the way they are.

Originally Posted by IronBits

I thought we already decided?
Boinc is not going to happen on this project.
Way too much to go through...

Looking for a good front page for the website, which will have a great introduction to NPLB (with logo) and the links to the various items of importance.

No worries guys. We aren't going the BOINC route. I think my post was misconstrued. What I meant to imply is:

If we got listed on DC-Vault, I don't want a bunch of griping point getters that would make the project seem "BOINC like".

Let me be more specific:

If we got listed on DC-Vault, would it bring the right kind of exposure to the project such as the type that would attract people interested in the project for the project's sake. For instance, I think that Brian and Vaughan only got interested in the project after participating in the last rally and then became more interested in the nuts and bolts of it after "hanging out" for a while. Sure, you may be interested in points on our stats and at top-5000 (the latter for me! lol), but to me, your interest is more than that. Those are the type of people I think we'd like to have around.

That said, I don't mind the temporary short-term push that we get from people who are just after points or stats but not much into the project. That is why we have rallies. (Actually the intent was to do them every 1-2 months but they kind of slipped my mind of late since they do require a little more work on the admin's part.) I just don't want to make that the majority of what we do or are.


Gary

[gd_barnes]

Originally Posted by MyDogBuster

I don't know who is older, you or I, but you summed it up perfectly.

PS. Riesel Sieve was my favorite project also. Too bad b2 went the direction he went. I wonder whatever happened to those humungous sieved files?

Never fear. I have that file. You don't think I'd be running CRUS and not follow up did you? Technically, it is a direct subset of the CRUS project.

If someone wants to give me a little (OK, maybe a BIG) push, I could be talked into setting it up to start testing on the file again. But PLEASE, no more sieving. The file is WAY WAY over-sieved as it is. It just needs primality testing done on it. We'd likely start at n=3M but I'd need to check into test limits a little more.

If we did something like that, we'd need these things:
1. A hardy server to run it on.
2. It's own stats page like what we have for NPLB.
3. Someone to handle the political fall out from "taking over" the Riesel Sieve project. [Not sure how it could be taking over the project since the project hasn't existed for 9 months now.]

Part of the reason I haven't pursued it is that I didn't want to drag resources away from NPLB. I've strongly felt for a long time that what is needed to find and unlock the "key" to the primes is to find a lot of smaller primes (if you can call n=500K-600K small ); not to find a few huge primes.

But the main reason is the political fallout. I hate politics and self-admitidely don't handle politics well. (Same way in my personal life too, much to my chagrin. lol) So if we did something like that, I'd need a P.R. guy to handle any crap that comes down. BTW, that is why I asked Max to help with CRUS and NPLB. He does the P.R. stuff well and has the techie knowledge to help where I fall short there. I've given him a hard time in these forums sometimes when he gets a little busy but it never phases him. Thanks Max!

Anyway, since it'd be a sub-project of CRUS, it could be handled there with it's own thread or sub-forum.

For that matter, I'd be just as happy to assist someone else who would want to take over such an effort.

If we get into an extended discussion on this, I'll move it over to a thread where we talked about RieselSieve before at CRUS and then provide a link to it from here.

Edit: BTW the RieselSieve file is about half the size of our k=1003-2000/n=500K-1M file...17.6 MB vs. 32.7 MB unpacked in ABCD format. Of course it's only 64 k's vs. 500 k's but it does go from n=100 to 20M. (That's 100, not 100K.)


Gary

[gd_barnes]

Based on all of this discussion, can I get a show of hands:

Do people think it is a good idea for us to be listed on DC-Vault?

In other words, will the majority of searchers that it attracts be the kind that we would like on the project?

[mdettweiler]

Originally Posted by gd_barnes

Based on all of this discussion, can I get a show of hands:

Do people think it is a good idea for us to be listed on DC-Vault.

In other words, will the majority of searchers that it attracts be the kind that we would like on the project?

Having only learned about the DC-Vault a few days ago when IronBits first mentioned it here, I am hardly familiar with the logistics of what types of users it tends to attract to projects. However, at least from what I can tell, I think it may be worthwhile--even though many of the users it attracts may be users who just care about credits and don't want to stick around, they'll probably mainly come during rally-type events (such as rallies proper, or team wars, etc.) which are designed to encourage that type of temporary participation anyway. I don't think we'll have a humongous problem with loads of users who only care about credits squatting on our project and staying there long-term.

Again, my familiarity with the actual effects of a project being listed in the DC-Vault is next to nil. Anyone who's seen such effects in action can feel free to augment/correct/etc. my remarks here.

[IronBits]

Getting the project name, NPLB, into the public eye, may bring more crunchers, what kind they will be, only time can tell.

[MyDogBuster]

Do people think it is a good idea for us to be listed on DC-Vault?

Yes

[gd_barnes]

I have taken the preliminary step of registering there but it says my "Email address has been banned.". Gad, what have I done now? lol I checked to make sure I had it typed correctly.

Anyway, I sent a follow up to the admins there. Hopefully I'll hear back shortly.


Gary