Power to the effort!

[imwithid]

I would applaud whatever extra people give to this project. I am relatively new and I have tried whatever means of boosting contributions by installing the program on whatever computer I have (lawful or permitted) access.

However, since I have joined (recently, I migtht add), I have noticed a trend downwards (watching the project's 6 month graph). The lateset release should have led to a boost (with a lag in between for those finishing their progress through the previous SoB software).

Can anyone offer an explanation for this?

Also, should there be an auto-expiry on those who's current tasks are bordering on ancient (i.e. T>240 days: it seems to take me on average 30-90 days -> 2%/test/day - depending on how long my computer is on during regular usage - for completing a test)? There seem to be a handful that are in the lower ranges (albeit not a significant number).

Smack me if I'm out of bounds on this.

[enderak]

I know one of SoB's biggest contributors has not been active the past couple months (due to military responsibilities, I believe I read somewhere on another forum), which accounts for a sizable chunk of the recent drop. The rest I have been chalking up to the fact that it's been a while without a prime, so people are getting discouraged. Of course, the only thing that'll fix that is finding a prime!

There is an expiration mechanism for old tests - I want to say it's 90 days without any contact with the server, but I'm not sure.

If you are interested, there is a list of old tests at http://www.seventeenorbust.com/stats/oldTests.mhtml but as long as the client keeps making contact with the server within the time period they won't normally get expired. (The oldest one I see on that list is almost 5 years old - for a k we already have a prime for :P )

[imwithid]

Interesting. Thanks for the link. I queried those older than 2007 (Q4) under 25% and whose rate < ~50k/d. Surprisingly, there was only one that stood out:

core - n=55459•2^14179306+1 Date: Oct 1 2007 Completed: 18 %

I don't mean to name names or point pointers, but if it were me, I'd be glad to expire my test (unless this is a double check). At this rate, it should be done by approximately January 3, 2017 (yes, it is prime)!

[wolfemancs]

Hopefully someone will confirm this, but I'm under the impression that a lot of these super old ones have been checked, and possibly double checked, and that there's kind of a feeling that it's nice to keep these computers tied up doing old checks rather than having them grab a new check that could be a prime, and not knowing the result of that one till 2020.

I haven't been here long enough to know for sure, but I think I've read some comments like that. . .

[enderak]

Well, since I had a machine just sitting here, I manually put that test into it's worktodo file, and started testing it. As soon as prime95 contacted the server to send an expected completion date, the server came back with "ERROR_WORK_NO_LONGER_NEEDED" and the test was automatically canceled, so it seems that you are correct in that it these really old tests have been checked and double-checked.

EDIT: Or, I suppose it could have been canceled because that particular test wasn't officially checked out by me, but either way I do think I've read the same thing you have regarding the really old tests.

[opyrt]

Well, since I had a machine just sitting here, I manually put that test into it's worktodo file, and started testing it. As soon as prime95 contacted the server to send an expected completion date, the server came back with "ERROR_WORK_NO_LONGER_NEEDED" and the test was automatically canceled, so it seems that you are correct in that it these really old tests have been checked and double-checked.

EDIT: Or, I suppose it could have been canceled because that particular test wasn't officially checked out by me, but either way I do think I've read the same thing you have regarding the really old tests.

This is getting very off-topic, but if you are to use a custom worktodo.ini, I suggest you unzip prime95 to a new folder, then choose _not_ to join primenet. Then it won't try to report anything. :-)

[znedelchev]

For my surprise, trere are six users, doing tests for k=33661:

allio 33661•2^11483928+1 6 Aug 3 2006 May 15 09:16 83 % 20935
Drakull 33661•2^14168736+1 Sep 30 2007 Apr 16 11:36 99 % 68733
jkusuda 33661•2^13826592+1 Aug 4 2007 May 15 23:40 94 % 54246
Propagumbhis 33661•2^7788528+1 Jan 28 2005 Apr 26 14:42 78 % 5907
russkris 33661•2^13885512+1 Aug 14 2007 May 14 09:41 3 % 2294
swatkins 33661•2^6346656+1 Jun 10 2004 May 13 20:51 43 % 1841

The last one beats all records for the longest doing of one test!!!
After 3 weeks his test will celebrate 5-th anniversary !

[Death]

by a Murphy's law there is an extremely high probability that it's a prime ))))))

[[DPC]Frentik]

by a Murphy's law there is an extremely high probability that it's a prime ))))))

Luckily, a prime for 33661 has already been found

prime found: 33661•2^7031232+1

[engracio]

Luckily, a prime for 33661 has already been found

[Death]

Murphy's law in action! ^______^

[imwithid]

Is there a statistics page that breaks down the number of users out there still using the old SoB client? I've noticed a 4-8% improvement already just by using the new release (25.11 vs. 25.9) running Ubuntu 9.04 x64 (I find it works better than on my primary boot Windows XP x64 - I get to squeeze out an extra 2-4% more output). I base these figures on per iteration time when my system is idle.