User: kirel

Re:Dueling compression algorithms

On: MySpace Private Pictures Leak

ZIPped JPEGs? What's the point? Windows' best method of emulating a tar file. It's not compression you're wanting, just bundling of files.

Re:OBVIOUSLY LEGIT

On: 6.8GHz 1TB RAM and 2TB HDD Laptop?

Awww... crap!
I kept hoping I wasn't an idiot, but I guess that dream has now been crushed.

I'm gonna go cry.

Re:Plain and simple

On: What is Responsible Disclosure for Security Flaws?

Responsible disclosure from Microsoft's perspective: You tell us and only us. We'll tell the rest of the world when we think it's necessary (if ever).

As much as ./ ers like to bash Microsoft, note that, as we have read before, Cisco does the same thing. Makes me wonder how many other companies have the same procedures/ policies.

(now that I ponder that a bit more: probabaly not many. Huge companies are really the only ones that could get away with that behavior)

Re:The age old question.

On: DVD Truce Between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD?

... when he's underwater, does he get wet? Or does the water get him instead?

Nobody knows...

Re:Keeping Count

On: Forty Years of Moore's Law

You're right that there is a huge difference between transistor count, and performance payoff.

http://acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=sh owpage&pid=273&page=3 has a great interview with Alan Kay. (probabaly linked from ./ at one point)

One powerful point made is:

Neither Intel nor Motorola nor any other chip company understands the first thing about why that architecture was a good idea.
Just as an aside, to give you an interesting benchmark--on roughly the same system, roughly optimized the same way, a benchmark from 1979 at Xerox PARC runs only 50 times faster today. Moore's law has given us somewhere between 40,000 and 60,000 times improvement in that time. So there's approximately a factor of 1,000 in efficiency that has been lost by bad CPU architectures.

The myth that it doesn't matter what your processor architecture is--that Moore's law will take care of you--is totally false.

Individual votes are still somewhat meaningless...

On: How To Lose An Election

Can anyone tell me why we still use an Electoral College at all?

If I recall my history correctly (admittedly: it was my worst subject), it was originally established because there were so many problems/ inaccuracies in counting votes, it was a way to guess, or summarize, the intentions of the people.

Besides contributing to voter apathy and being a nice source of potential corruption, I don't see a reason for it any longer.