Kurzweil is reported as equating 25MB of compressed DNA to 1 million lines of source code, which seems several times too low: if I compress the comment-stripped

Kurzweil is reported as equating 25MB of compressed DNA to 1 million lines of source code, which seems several times too low: if I compress the comment-stripped source to one of my own projects, it compresses down to 8 bytes per line of code as defined by sloccount. If we suppose compressed DNA has similar real info rate to my gzip-compressed source, then 25MB corresponds to 3 million SLOC, not 1. If you include blank lines and comments, then more like 5 million. For another take, http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/linux-kernel-cost.html http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/linux-kernel-cost.html puts the Linux kernel source at 4 million lines. Can you compile a 25MB kernel? Compressed? (How much of it is 'introns', anyway? This might not be the best example.) (Not going to touch the argument about applicability. It does seem to me that whenever Kurzweil glosses over details, the closer look always appears less utopian. There are other writers about these ideas who I can read without having to check every assertion, like Anders Sandberg.)