Excellent point... we can also safely assume the average user's upstream connection is quite a bit slower--likely on any metric other than latency--than his dow

Excellent point... we can also safely assume the average user's upstream connection is quite a bit slower--likely on any metric other than latency--than his downstream. In addition, let's not forget to multiply the cookie overhead by the number of images on the page... likely to be quite a large number given 4chan's love of images and enormous, eager-loaded discussion threads.