#
distributed

introduction

quick and dirty IRC

various IRC clients

a bit more depth

etiquette

further help
an Ars guide to IRC from
Team Prime Rib ladenedge.

Have some immediate info for other TPR members?
Need some fast help with your client?
Bored out of your skull?

If you answered 'yes' or 'no' to any of these questions, keep reading to find out how to chat with Team Prime Rib in IRC!

Wednesday, October 1, 2003
 
Halloween Gauntlet
Posted @ 17:25:00 EDT by TomM
Today is Day 1 of our First Annual October Halloween Gauntlet -- be sure to check out our newly renovated Gauntlet Page to see how the competitors are performing.

If you forgot to sign up, it's not too late! Head over to our Gauntlet Signup Thread to let us know you'd like to take part!

With the Gauntlet underway, we are slowly starting to rebuild our lead over Anandtech - still a very slim margin. We should at least make the 800 TcEM milestone during the Gauntlet, and with a few more members, might even hit 900 TcEM before October 31.

Both teams have managed to maintain a tremendous ramp rate over the course of the past year. Kudos to all you crunchers!

-Tom the Melaniephile
 
Monday, September 22, 2003
 
Milestones
Posted @ 18:48:00 EDT by TomM
Coinciding with our recent 600 TcEM milestone, Ars Front Page news helped bring in more than 50 new members! We have also brought up our baseline production to better than 50 McEM/second - this is some pretty explosive growth. Consider that production in May (just four months ago) was only around 15 McEM/sec. Less than year ago, we were putting out no more than 2 McEM/sec. We've grown to twenty five TIMES that amount - 2500%!

Great going, folks!

We're standing pretty much toe-to-toe with Anandtech in the dailies - we need to keep up our growth, as we've stabilized with a lead of only ~23 TcEMs.

-Tom the Melaniephile
 
Thursday, August 21, 2003
 
Major milestone - one half of a Peta cEM!
Posted @ 13:32:00 EDT by TomM
Today, Team Prime Rib - Seventeen or Bust! hit a major milestone -- 500 Tera cEMs, or 0.5 Peta cEMs. Woo Hoo! We have again shown Ars Technica members as a major force within the Distributed Computing community.

Looking back, we have done a heck of a lot of crunching for prime numbers. For the project as a whole, we represent one seventh (1/7) of all crunching since the beginning. Our nearest competitor is 45 TcEM behind us -- a nice lead, but not exactly comfortable. We have done it before, and it is now to double our rate again from ~30McEM/sec up to 60McEM/sec.

I know we can do it if each of us (this means you!) puts in that extra effort to recruit new members, borg more boxes, upgrade that equipment!

-Tom the Melaniephile
 
Wednesday, August 6, 2003
 
New Home Thread
Posted @ 18:48:00 EDT by TomM
Hi, folks! Be sure to join the rest of your team for discussion and occasional razzing in the Seventeen or Bust! Thread Part II

A reminder: Both versions of MathGuy's Windows service handler are rolled into the official 1.10 SB client, though you still have to choose one (9x or NT kernel) then install & configure on your own.

Louie (Louis Helm) is looking for beta testers for a new version of the Linux client. If you are willing to help, please email lhelm@umich.edu with a subject of "SB LINUX TESTER". Louie just left town for several weeks, so expect an "eventual" reply.

Be sure to tell your friends about crunching Seventeen or Bust! for Team Prime Rib - hand out disks with the client, offer to help with setup and configuring to make it easy for new folks. :)

-Tom the Melaniephile
 
Monday, July 14, 2003
 
Gauntlet Wrapup
Posted @ 20:07:00 EDT by TomM
Our month-long Gauntlet was a rousing success! Big thanks to everyone who participated.

During the Gauntlet, we cranked up our output to unheard-of heights, nearly hitting 50 McEM/sec as a team. We enhanced our lead over AnandTech, and especially Oral Roberts University. Final team results were as follows:

#1 26.126 TcEM - The Rolling Stones
#2 19.621 TcEM - The Beatdown Brigade
#3 15.319 TcEM - The Teaberry Collective
#4 11.835 TcEM - The Birds of Prey

Of special note is that The Beatdown Brigade consisted of a single member - Dan (DSheets) really took up the Gauntlet challenge and rocketed to #1 in the overall Ars Team standings.

Continuing post-Gauntlet production is about double our pre-Gauntlet levels, and we've gained quite a few new members. Excellent progress for Team Prime Rib-Seventeen or Bust!

Now, the only fly in the ointment: AnandTech responded fully to our challenge, and is the only team beating us in the dailies, currently by 4 McEM/sec. We can take back the lead in the dailies with just 12-13 high-end crunch boxes added to the team, or a virtual fleet of P200MMX boxen ;)

-Tom the Melaniephile
 
Tuesday, June 17, 2003
 
Teamprimerib hits 300T!
Posted @ 09:48:00 EDT by TomM
Congratulations, folks! Teamprimerib has completed over 300 TcEM of calculations in the main Seventeen or Bust! effort.

The current gauntlet has brought in a considerable number of new members to teamprimerib, and have taken our dailies from a weak 3rd, back to a very solid first place. Anandtech has started a moderate ramp in response, and Oral Roberts University has had a mild slump.

The new 1.10 Windows client has been found to be quite stable, and comes with a new version of the service handler. There seems to be no reason to stay with any older Windows client version. No client updates yet for Linux, BeOS, et cetera.

-Tom the Melaniephile
 
Wednesday, June 4, 2003
 
Welcome!
Posted @ 15:15:00 EDT by TomM
Welcome to all the new members of Team Prime Rib - Seventeen or Bust! Our leadup to the Gauntlet, and in particular our swelling ranks have put Ars back in our proper position -- #1 in the dailies!

In other news, Louie has announced that he is almost finished with an updated SB client, with an expected release date of Thursday, June 5th. This update should fix the client stall problems we have seen, and add functionality - such as the option to finish a WU without downloading a new one.
 
Sunday, May 25, 2003
 
Service Handler Links
Posted @ 23:18:00 EDT by TomM
As mentioned previously, MathGuy has come up with some rather nice service handlers for SB - both an NT/2K/XP handler and a
9X/ME handler - which may or may not work for Win95.

Unzip into the SB directory, usually /Program Files/SB - Comes with a thorough Readme file. From a command prompt, install & configure. Alternately, if you have lots of machines to configure, cut-n-paste the appropriate text below into Notepad, then save as Setup.bat in the same directory. Run the batchfile, and it should install & configure with several small popup windows. Run it twice, and you've screwed up your configuration, and have to go read the Readme ;) Feel free to modify as needed. For SMP with hyperthreaded processors, using the -o2 option instead of -o is likely to give better performance.

BEFORE INSTALLING THE SERVICE HANDLER, TURN OFF "AUTO-START ON WINDOWS BOOT" IN THE SB CLIENT.

After installing, a reboot is needed for 9X/ME.

------NT/2K/XP batch text below----
net stop "Seventeen or Bust Service"
sobsvc -i
sobsvc -m
sobsvc -s
sobsvc -o
sobsvc -r:400
net start "Seventeen or Bust Service"

--------9X/ME batch text below-----
sobsvc9x -i
sobsvc9x -m
sobsvc9x -s
sobsvc9x -o
sobsvc9x -r:400

-----------------------------------

Stats Roundup:

Ars is now ahead in the dailies - Woo Hoo! The runup to our gauntlet has finally gotten us outproducing Anandtech and Oral Roberts University again. Good showing of power, though we haven't crushed 'em yet.

Individuals:

Over 20T: endlessmike & Hadesau

Over 10T: KevinC, TomM, DigitalConcepts & MArc

Over 5T: DSheets (like a rocket) Timbo, outlnder, dragongoddess & kenlow

Plenty of folks who have broken 1T :)

For the full milestone roundup, head to the Milestones Page

Congrats, folks!

I realized that I should also update my "personal challenge" -- Dan (DSheets) upped production impressively, and issued a counter -- he's going to catch me before the start of the Gauntlet. I had a 7T+ head-start at the time.... Any other takers?
 
Thursday, May 22, 2003
 
Loads of stuff going on.
Posted @ 22:34:00 EDT by TomM
Hi, folks! Tons of new things going on with TPR: Seventeen or Bust! We have a big 'ol Subteam Gauntlet coming up rapidly - Running from 1:35AM June 9 to 1:35AM July 9. Pure crunching power -- Can you Teaberries take on the Birds of Prey? What about the Stoners?

Plus, a personal challenge to all comers: Can you catch me (TomM) in the overall Ars team rankings before the end of the Gauntlet? DSheets claims that Charlie Daniels is backing him up for the challenge. Start now -- at least put the client on a few boxes, and configure MathGuy's service handler. Makes a big difference.
 
Tuesday, March 18, 2003
 
endlessmike hits 10T!
Posted @ 01:59:00 EST by MAD-ness
Team Prime Rib now has a third member who has broken the 10T cEMs barrier!

Congratulations to endlessmike who should overtake DigitalConcepts for #2 on TPR and #5 overall in the project here in the next few hours.

 

Welcome to the Ars Technica Team Prime Rib Seventeen or Bust site

This page is still under construction but should soon be filling up with content and updates. News is plentiful as client and server updates happen, members reach new milestones and the project records additional successes. Two primes have already been discovered by the project, resulting in two of the 17 k values being eliminated. Only 15 remain and it is our goal for a member of TPR to find one or more of them.

-- MAD-ness

December 6, 2002

Yet another Prime was found yesterday, leaving us with just 14. Results are flying in very quickly, from the SoB page:

12/06: k=44131 3RD PRIME FOUND!!!

At 1005 GMT on Thursday, 05 December 2002, a third probable prime was reported to our server! We have confirmed that 44131*2^995972+1 is prime!! This is unbelievable. The test has actually been assigned since mid-day Moday but was not immediately finished because the user's computer wasn't running tests 24/7. So if you've been thinking that you can't find a prime without multiple computers that are always on, this just goes to show you obviously can. We haven't heard back from the lucky user yet. So check your email, it could be you!

44131 was the densest k-value being tested, therefore eliminating it removed the most tests possible. The prime discovered is similar in size to the last two with 299,823 digits, making it the 23rd largest known prime. A press release will be forthcoming. The decimal expansion is done though.

In other important news, the server will be undergoing serious software upgrades this Sunday. Due to the increased public interest in the project, it has become necessary to rewrite the stats and SB server from scratch to be more efficient. The new stats engine is going to floor you. It's that sweet. ;)

So new stats/website/server coming AND we just found a new prime! 3 down, 14 to go. Keep up the good work everyone!

-Louie

December 4, 2002

Yesterday afternoon (depending on your locale) the 2nd prime was found by a member of BeOS' team. The project is movin' along quite nicely. Pulled from the SoB homepage:

12/03: k=65567 2ND PRIME FOUND!!!

At 0349 GMT on Tuesday, 03 December 2002, a second probable prime was reported to our server! Six hours later we had confirmed that 65567*2^1013803+1 is prime!! Wow, two in the same week... this is awesome. Great job, everyone! Congratulations to James Burt (aka Beyond, of TeamBeOS), who reported the test containing the prime.

"I worked on George Woltman's project [Prime95] for a while but never found nothing. Then your project came along so now I run all my machines on Seventeen or Bust." James runs quite a nice farm of computers on SB. It was his fastest system, a 2.0GHz P4 that reported the prime.

The decimal expansion of the number is available.

This prime is over 45% longer than the prime we discovered only six days ago. 305,190 digits in all, making it the 21st largest known prime! Cheers all around. 15 primes left. ;-)

-Louie