I was just looking over the top 100 contributors and the vast majority of them have the Primegrid as their top project. While it's nice to have bigger prime numbers, it seems to me that using all the computing power to help cure cancer, AIDS or some other disease would be a better use of all that power.

Other top project seem to be Milkyway@home. Again, nice projec, I personally love the study of galexies, but I think curing disease is more important.

I understand that finding a prime is sexier because you can get you name on record as being the one who found it and the medical projects are more anonymous.

I know this is all volunteer and people are free to do what they want. But it seem to me that better cryptograpy or new models of the galaxy are not nearly as important as curing disease and saving lives.

Am I missing something in the data that makes these results misleading?

I was just looking over the top 100 contributors and the vast majority of them have the Primegrid as their top project. While it's nice to have bigger prime numbers, it seems to me that using all the computing power to help cure cancer, AIDS or some other disease would be a better use of all that power.

That would be a result of using gpus, it would be nice if more projects supported the use of gpus, (eg if you use linux and ati gpu there is only 4 projects to choose from primegrid, collatz, dnetc & milkyway, maybee moo - haven't checked). Then again, I'm sure I read that rosetta said there would be no benefit to there project in using a gpu (the calculation wouldn't benefit from being parallelised) so not all projects can offer a gpu application.

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FYI Moo does run ATI GPU...just to confirm.

FYI Moo does run ATI GPU...just to confirm.

cheers for the info

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let me cite Hamming "The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers."
(i am an EE dropout, with some math background)

yes, resources are wasted, especially on projects connected to number theory...

my own point is that if there will be a need for a large prime number, say, with 14839793256739 digits, the computers will be more efficient in that time, so it will take a fraction of the energy wasted today to get thet result...
as an other exemple, take the collatz project... it may be that i have missunderstood the project, but having a large amount of positive results is not proof of the theorem, so why waste megawatts on this kind of crap? where is the insight?

astronomical projects fail in my own eyes for several reasons... one is that I do not see that the insights, if any at all, we get by all the computations are deeper than what scientist say with help of telescopes...

projects i personally consider worthy are those that study structural problems that may leed to new theory or usable applications, such as protein folding and solid state physics in general...

as for humanity, i think like this: if a species comes over a certain intellectual treshold, so that it can explicitly model and eventually modify itself and its environment, it steps outside of evolution and, in some sense*, ouside nature... i also think that the only thing that will slow the negative effects is knowledge, science and technology... the faster we get out of the shit we stand in, the better...

Perhaps, hangya2, you would prefer to devise a new project called scatology@home? Just keep the tasks short though as most crunchers' interest is unlikely to exceed five minutes.

the thoughts on humanity is a respons to Dagorath, below.
"There's a lot of different ways to look at that. Some people think there's too damn many people on the planet already and that if we continue to mitigate natural population checks (by keeping people alive longer) we'll wipe out all the other species which will wipe us out too."

we are, we consume, we pollute, wipe out species and so forth... only technology will get us out of this. prime numbers will probably help, but will not be a principal component of our solutions, i feel... or not?

"Science, technology and engineering rely heavily on math. Prime numbers are a part of math and we have no idea where research into primes will take us and what it might enable us to do."
dude, i am educated, dont pull rethorics on me :D

point is, the way i see it, that the ratio of resources for number_theory+astronomy vs more mundane sciences do indicate a waste...

"If we allow population to grow to the point where all our forest are gone and all land dwelling species are gone and the land is covered from sea to sea with people standing shoulder to shoulder..."
- endless breeding is not the probable way... the number of descendants do not increase as function of longevity and quality_of_life, or am i missing something? look at sweden, or some other developed european countries, where the immigrants make up the population increase... also russia, romania, hungary where the population is declining lalely...

seems to me, tha people who breed the most are:
religious: no condoms and such
disaster areas: africa
cultural problems: china, india...

we need science and technology to more efficiently fix problems that we meet or cause...

also, assume we are contacted and are asked for help by aliens:
aliens: comrades, we have a pain in our venerable a****
we: well, let uss show u these prime numbers, now...

well, i apologize for the hurt feelings I seem to cause...

let me explain: i have never lived in a country where i spoke my native language, thus i can "fluently" speak 3 and understand 2 more... i can not understand how the sentence "dude, i am educated, dont pull rethorics on me :D" can hurt anyone; it is just a phrase, intended as a pun; while true, it also holds a contradiction... it does not imply my superiority, nor does it imply that you are a "dude". i simply felt that, while i know, dimmly, of some usages of number theory, i still find your view of the field optimistic, in contrast to our more immediate needs - and that is the topic of this thread.

i can not delete this account, so I ask the moderator AGELESS to ban me, but as long as i am cited, i will attempt to clarify...

as a side note, the word "crap", that i used in a post below to describe the collatz project, does not hold such a derogatory meaning, as it seems to in english, in any other language i know of...

That word isn't just derogatory. It's rude. It's vulgar. And it isn't necessary on a forum where intelligent people (all of us) are discussing intelligent ideas.

Your English is splendid. I'm a linguist so I know how much time and effort are required to reach the point where you are now.

Yes, the question of population growth is paramount. Open discussion about it in the media is, unfortunately, still almost taboo, and for many reasons.

Waste?

I assume you don't have a GPU crunching, specially ATI...
As many people around the planet, i'm engaged in helping projects donating my computer time, actually, i have around 10 computers 24/7 crunching for World Community Grid (Cancer, Aids, Malaria, clean water & Energy, etc...).

But, my GPU's are ATI, and there's the catch, with ATI GPU i have only few projects to option for, if u have NVidia GPU you have lot more options...

Mainly, with ATI GPU we have Milkyway@home, Collatz Conjecture, PrimeGRID and MOO! Wrapper to choose from, that's it, there's no other science, or let's say, more usefull project to choose from, not that those mentioned projects aren't useful.

If i had a WCG ATI support, of course i'll be using my GPU's to crunch more data trying to help cure childhood cancer, or other WCG projects instead of crunching for Milkyway@Home.

BUT, there's not, so, as the point of Distributed computing is to help, i'm helping the way i can, and, probably this is what is happening with all the "wasted" resources mentioned in the thread...

Cheers and Best Regards,
Carlos R. Moreira

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Not all are wasted. There are some interesting sub projects such as "The Riesel Problem" or in PRPnet SR5 to find a solution.

Maybe it is wasted. The GPU projects dont require to issue CPU WU's. Their WU's run better on GPU. As to the credits being given for CPU WU's, I dont think there is much difference. If they are stopped from handing out CPU WU's then maybe the projects that need the CPU's more, may get them.
There should be two credit comparission charts. Seperate ones for CPU projects and GPU projects. This lumping together of the two leads to heart burning.
As to the term "Credit Whores"? mo.v i dont think that is Victorian drawing room standads either, even though i have no quarrel with it. Dago, you busy at it? Any way enjoy your rubbing of the fur the wrong way.

If you want to contribute your ATI card to curing diseases do consider the other big project out there, fah. It supports a large number of systems, both modern and ancient and focuses exclusively on life sciences.

I contribute to BOINC (multiple projects) and FAH.

Personally I find this thread somewhat comical. While I agree it would be great if we could tackle certain problems like curing disease, getting clean/ renewable energy, and clean water for everyone, before we spend to much time on some of these projects that are more of a passing fancy. But if its not your machine, I do not see where anyone should really nitpick what anyone else is crunching.

FYI this is coming from a Mathematician, though the only real Mathematical project I support is Harmonious Trees as it is related to my research area. I spend most of the rest of my resources crunching WCG projects, or GPUgrid on my GPU.

But in response to something said earlier about the Collatz conjecture, as with most conjectures its not many many positive results that is the concern of the project. The fact that this conjecture has remained so elusive is what is shocking, and it would be a huge deal if a number was found that breaks the conjecture. The potential use of that number, and any other numbers that fail the conjecture, I can not begin to guess. But history has shown that its quite often that mathematicians are studying objects quite a a few years before applications are found for them, and even then its often several more years before those applications find their way into use through products or services. The Harmonious Trees Conjecture also falls into this category.

I say let everyone crunch what they want to crunch and leave it at that.

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Crunching for Science Blog

I agree--if you want to crunch a project, go for it. No need to denegrade other projects just because you may not agree with their goals or plans.

The beauty of PrimeGrid is the chance to find a prime number that will be forever "yours". It allows one to achieve a small degree of immortality.