SubscribeFile Compressors in 64-bit
Though I’m not the sort of person who believes that native 64-bit compilations of programs will automagically make them perform faster or better, I do like to keep an eye on the state of the art, since I was an early adopter of native 64-bit OSes (I’ve been using 64-bit Linux since about Fedora Core 2 or 3, and beta versions of Windows XP x64) when AMD launched their K8 platform.
Previously, I’ve casually benchmarked the Javascript speeds of 64-bit browsers v. their 32-bit counterparts (here); more recently, I benchmarked a 64-bit compile of FLAC against several other 32-bit compiles of the same version (here).
This time, I decided to test various and sundry file compression utilities—more specifically, those which offer both 32- and 64-bit versions of themselves. This benchmark did not exhaustively test all potential combinations of compression options (if you’re interested in that, see Werner Bergman’s excellent Maximum Compression and Matt Mahoney’s Data Compression Programs), nor will it compare various compressors to each other; neither will it even list how well the programs actually compressed, since that’s not really a consideration here. The sole purpose of the benchmark was to compare the execution time of a 32-bit program with its 64-bit version.
Snow Crash
-
Snow Crash
by Neal Stephenson - Publisher: Spectra
- Year: 1992/1993
- Pages: 480
- See the rest of this year's listings
- What is 52 Books in 52 Weeks?
- №7
My familiarity with Neal Stephenson began with Cryptonomicon, which at the time came much more highly recommended to me than Snow Crash. The former doesn’t quite count as “science fiction”; it was more like a techno-thriller consumed by comp.sci and technological masturbation, with a bit of historical intrigue thrown in for good measure.
Snow Crash, which is really what launched Stephenson’s career (it achieved both critical and commercial success), falls more solidly in the realm of science fiction, but it is a novel which operates on a number of levels. A great deal of verbiage has been produced on behalf of its various subtexts, meanings, influences, and reactions, so I won’t linger too long on any one aspect: further information is there for the taking.
JPod
-
JPod
by Douglas Coupland - Publisher: Bloomsbury
- Year: 2007
- Pages: 567
- See the rest of this year's listings
- What is 52 Books in 52 Weeks?
- №64
JPod is considered the spiritual successor to Douglas Coupland’s Microserfs, a boom-era tech novel about the joys and perils of working at Microsoft in its heyday. As you can read in my review of the book, I was not particularly fond of it; perhaps I simply can’t appreciate Coupland’s treatment of that era. I personally found Show Stopper! to be a more interesting and engaging book; it dealt with the same subject matter, but it was a historical treatment and not a romp through absurdist humor only vaguely related to its purported subject.
Halting State
-
Halting State
by Charles Stross - Publisher: Ace
- Year: 2007
- Pages: 368
- See the rest of this year's listings
- What is 52 Books in 52 Weeks?
- №57
I read Accelerando earlier this year; it was my first experience with Charles Stross, and it was a bit of a mindjob. While Stross is known for “hard” scifi, Accelerando quickly vaulted into a plausible-but-fantastic realm that probably wasn’t very indicative of the Stross that was recommended to me when I read Daemon.
Accelerando
-
Accelerando
by Charles Stross - Publisher: Ace
- Year: 2006
- Pages: 432
- See the rest of this year's listings
- What is 52 Books in 52 Weeks?
- №12
I was recommended Charlie Stross after my less-than-exemplary experience with Daniel Suarez’s Daemon. The commenter in question figured that Stross had better bona fides and wrote a better technical piece of fiction. I’m quite pleased to say that he was right.
Accelerando is actually free: you can download it in a variety of formats here. Because I stare at a computer screen long enough as it is, I opted for the paperback after about 15 pages of the PDF. The book is unlike anything I’ve read before; I see ghosts of other writers, but the end result is unique to me. Mostly, it’s like a bullet train barreling past; you reach tentatively out and get yanked out of your shoes and carried, screaming, for several hundred miles.
The City of Brotherly Love
I find myself in downtown Philadelphia, staring at the window of the Cathedral-Basilica of Sts. Peter & Paul. I am a long way from my hometown, a smallish suburb of Chicago, feeling at odds with Philadelphia’s large stature—the sixth most populous city in the entire United States—and my own touristy insignificance.
I took a picture of the Liberty Bell earlier, but it was a mere formality: the bell, in real life, was smaller, duller, and much less impressive than I realized. Congress Hall, too, was neat but tidily boring. I thought of the Nick Cage vehicle filmed in next-door Independence Hall and can’t help but think it’s all been trivialized to the point where it’s impossible to care.
Recent Comments
-
Nice review, Ben. I actually hadn’t heard of this book, but I might have to look for it. True SF...
-
If you mean the current, theme, I can’t take the credit for that. It’s Renegade, by...
-
I’ve just stumbled upon your site and wanted to tell you how great I think your...
-
just found out about the other book myself, waiting for it to be delivered. i dont blame you for...
-
It’s interesting that the filmmakers (or the screenwriter) made the decision to approach the...
-
