gogetter

Either my comment was mistunderstood (e.g. we are each referring to different caches) or I am suffering from a fundamental misunderstanding.

Let's say you have a diskless RAM-based system. Swapless.

Now you launch a large program, say firefox or some other "modern web browser". That is going to require page caching, correct? This program cannot fit into the CPU cache, specifically what the Wikipedia entry (to use a common point of reference) calls the "data cache" (cf. what it calls the "instruction cache").

Now say you launch another large program. Depending on how much main memory you have, the OS is going to have to do some decision-making. Which program (or parts thereof) need to be "immediately available"?

Now imagine you have a small program constructed from very dense code, say a few K in size, and it fits entirely within the data cache. Correct me if I'm wrong, but in that case there is no page caching or OS decision-making. The program is "immediately available" as long as it's in the data cache.

OK, now I'm sure someone will take this comment apart piece by piece. But keep in mind the general idea I am suggesting is: code density lends itself to smaller programs, smaller programs lend themselves to fitting in the data cache, and fitting entirely within the CPU's data cache lends itself to running faster in a diskless RAM-based system. If this is wrong, then you need to explain why, specifically.

In a more general sense, I see benefit outside of just demoscene. If code density makes programs small enough to fit in cache it makes diskless, RAM-based systems potentially faster.

I did not even get past the first 100 lines before I want to give this blog post a score off the charts. We need more people programming, lots more, with the honesty and humility of the author. Thank you for saying what you said.

yosefk.com +10000

Hate? I'm not the one who called users "Dumb fucks."

If what you say is true (and I believe it is), then the solution is not FB but better skills, i.e. education.

True value would be teaching people the skills they need so they do not have to subject themselves to someone like Zuckerberg and a "company" like FB.

While you may see altenatives as difficult, that is only your opinion. It is not fact. Stop making assumptions about what users can and cannot do. Stop tricking them like FB does. Let's teach them.

Let's deliver real value.

Another top comment that makes no sense. Alas, karma does not necessarily correlate with intelligence.

The point of the blog post is clear. There are other methods to do what people, such as middle-aged ones, now use Facebook for: sharing photos and text blurbs.

Knowing this, Facebook is pretty silly since you're posting all your private stuff on some kid's website. You do not know him and he doesn't know you. To him, you are just "Dumb fucks".

Can photos be shared by email? Can photos be shared via peer-to-peer? What is Skype? It's peer-to-peer. But it's not used for sharing "files". Years ago Google had something called the HELLO protocol. Anyone remember that? There are many ways to share personal photos and private text blurbs, not all of them are widely used. Posting your private photos and text blurbs on some kid's website seems like one of the dumbest ways to do it, especially when the kid calls people "[d]umb fucks" for doing so.

Hey, just wanted to say thanks for this. It's very helpful to my projects. I had collected a number of historical papers on spell checking and I thought I had most all of Kernighan's Bell Lab papers, but I missed this one. And it is indeed very clear. Cheers.

How would Steve Jobs have fared on these empathy tests?

What if they asked questions about workers in Chinese factories?

D'oh!

The pain of typing these letters, this alphabet soup, it's unbearable. It gives me nightmares.

Cooper, the Thought Leaders, to the rescue!

Didn't Chris Farley have something to say about living in a van, down by the river?

"Getting our work done was an alphabet soup nightmare."

Exactly. This is why I'm in favor of a worldwide shift to hieroglyphics and touchscreens for business. Writing business correspondence is old hat. Letters, words, sentences, parapgraphs, what a nightmare. And shorthand? Don't get me started. Let's face it, we all would much rather touch some graphical shapes on a screen to communicate. A picture says a thousand words, so why are we typing them out? What a waste of effort. Text has got to go. It's time to leave the alphabet soup behind.

Finally a design firm who really "gets it".

Twitter, Paypal don't really need to be that fast. Nor does Facebook.

But do you think major banks on Wall Street tracking billions of trades a day in near real-time would be satifisfied with these numbers?

It all depends on what your users demand and what they will put up with.