Question about selection of a in the P-1 algorithm

[kriesel]

Originally Posted by jnml

Please don't overreact. AFAICS, LaurV's comment talked about no _person_ at all and
I believe having opinions about _ideas_ is always fine.

Quoting was sufficient. Over time, patterns emerge. There are some on the forum whose contributions are quite commonly cynical or critical and not so commonly constructive or enlightening. The incidence of that among moderators is dismayingly high. Perhaps you have been fortunate enough to not be subjected to that, or threats by some, repeatedly.

[axn]

Originally Posted by ZFR

One last question: when Prime95 does the P-1 algorithm, that time-consuming part of it would be the exponentiation of 3 (and modulo n)? The gcd itself is pretty fast comparatively, right?

Yes and yes. Well, there is also the stage 2.

[ZFR]

Thanks, everybody.

[VBCurtis]

Originally Posted by kriesel

Quoting was sufficient. Over time, patterns emerge. There are some on the forum whose contributions are quite commonly cynical or critical and not so commonly constructive or enlightening. The incidence of that among moderators is dismayingly high. Perhaps you have been fortunate enough to not be subjected to that, or threats by some, repeatedly.

And yet, his post was enlightening- he said exactly what he thought the better explanation should be. And you went off about criticizing from the stands etc.

You post in nearly every single thread on this forum, speaking with the tone of an expert even when you don't know what you are talking about. When corrected, you nearly always take it personally, or write an even-longer-than-long-winded post to defend and explain your inaccurate post, and in the end present a know-it-all attitude that's really quite abrasive. Some of the moderators don't like the attitude, and treat you as such.

If your posts were half as long in half as many threads, I don't think you'd run into nearly the cynicism that you perceive- but you can't help yourself, and even when a question has already been answered you post a reply-answer anyway.

[kriesel]

No one responded to the OP for hours. While I was trying to help, and understand/remember myself, researching an answer, and composing, previewing, and formatting one with helpful links, R. Gerbicz replied, very concisely. Ernst's explanation I quoted is useful. Etc.

[LaurV]

Ok, people, thanks for jumping to my help, hehe, me and kriesel go long way back, so there was no harm done this time. I mean, I don't consider he harmed me in any way, ever. In fact, I really like his post #6, with the Roosevelt quote, albeit I don't consider myself a "gladiator in the arena". That's for show, and I understand some people like it. Not me. Anyhow, if he considers I harmed him in any way, now or in the past, is his problem. I still don't know how a random guy from the web, which you don't know, and who doesn't know you, can harm you with his arguments.

On the other hand, kriesel, buddy, I agree with Curtis' post that if you would post only half as much as you do, and limit to your "tutorials" (which I do use sometimes, and they were quite useful to me in the past, like for example when I was looking for the format of the worktodo lines for different work types, it was the easiest way to find it in your "tutorial", due to the well-done "contents" table), and to the subjects you really know, then your status and credibility here would be much higher. Have you ever seen me commenting about, say, gnfs, prime gaps, etc? No, I try to limit myself to subject I REALLY understand well (P-1 is one of them). And there, yeah, the RDS inside me sometimes overflows from my ears

For which, I don't apologize.