Slashdot Mirror
ZeoSync Makes Claim of Compression Breakthrough
dsb42 writes: "Reuters is reporting that ZeoSync has announced a breakthrough in data compression that allows for 100:1 lossless compression of random data. If this is true, our bandwidth problems just got a lot smaller (or our streaming video just became a lot clearer)..." This story has been submitted many times due to the astounding claims - Zeosync explicitly claims that they've superseded Claude Shannon's work. The "technical description" from their website is less than impressive. I think the odds of this being true are slim to none, but here you go, math majors and EE's - something to liven up your drab dull existence today. Update: 01/08 13:18 GMT by M : I should include a link to their press release.
Maybe they just needed more bandwidth for their terrible site?
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
The odds on a compression claim turning out to be true are always identical to the compression ratio claimed?
Maybe they'll be able to compress their debt to $1 when they go under.
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
ZeoSync said its scientific team had succeeded on a small scale in compressing random information sequences in such a way as to allow the same data to be compressed more than 100 times over -- with no data loss. That would be at least an order of magnitude beyond current known algorithms for compacting data.
ZeoSync announced today that the "random data" they were referencing is string of all zero's. Technically this could be produced randomly and our algorythm reduces this to just a couple of characters, a 100 times compression!!
Looks like Wired has a start to their top 10 list for 2002.
100 to 1? Bah, that's only 99%. /dev/null.
The _real_ trick is getting 100% compression. It's actually really easy, there's a module built in to do it on your average unix.
Simply run all your backups to the New Universal Logical Loader and perfect compression is achieved. The device driver, is of course, loaded as
So a perl programm can't be compressed?
We already have lzip to compress the files down to 0% of their original size. ZeoSync doesn't catch up with latest technologies on /. it seems.
Screw ZeoSync, I've built a compression algorithm that is 1000:1 and is completely lossless. I've yet to demonstrate it in public though but please give me venture capital. Thank you.
Not only that, but I just hacked their site, and downloaded the entire source tree here it is:
01101011
Pop that baby in an executable shell script. Its a self extracting
./configure
./make
./make install
Shh. Don't tell anyone.
Mr Thinly Sliced
... by compressing some VC's bank account, by a factor of greater than 100!
... real soon now, real soon".
"It was just data, you know," the sobbing wretch was reportedly told, "just ones and zeros. And hey - you can look at it as a proof of principle. We'll have the general application out
yes, we have no bananas
The company's claims, which are yet to be demonstrated in any public forum...
Call the editors at Wired... I think we have an early nominee for the 2k2 vaporware list.
ZeoSync expects to overcome the existing temporal restraints of its technology
Ah... So even if it's not outright bullshit, it's too slow to use?
"Either this research is the next 'Cold Fusion' scam that dies away or it's the foundation for a Nobel Prize," said David Hill...
Somehow I think this is going to turn out more Pons-and-Fleischmann than Watson-and-Crick. Almost anytime there's a press release with such startling claims but no peer review or public demonstration, someone has forgotten to stir the jar.
When they become laughingstocks, and their careers are forever wrecked, I hope they realized they deserve it. And I hope their investors sue them.
I should really post after I've had my coffee... I sound mean...
OK,
- B
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
A thought just occurred to me: If you can do 100:1 compression and compress something down to, say, 2 bytes, what would 'ab' expand to? My thought is "ZeoSync Rulz, Suckas"
Using time travel, high compression of arbitrary data is trivial. Simply record the location (in both space and time) of the computer with the data, and the name of the file, and then replace the file with a note saying when and where it existed. To decompress, you just pop back in time and space to before the time of the deletion and copy the file.
Please note they claim to be able to compress data 100:1, but do not say they can decompress the resultant data back to the original.
By the way, so can i.
Give me your data, of any sort, of any size, and i will make it take up zero space.
Just don't ask for it back.
-f
www.blackant.net
They're looking for investment money?
Just think of it as an innumeracy tax on
venture capitalists.
So everything compresses into 1 byte.
Duh, are you like an idiot or something?
When you send me a one-byte copy of, say, The Matrix, you also have to tell me how many times it was compressed so I know how many times to run the decompressor!
So everything compresses to *two* bytes. Maybe even three bytes if something is compressed more than 256 times. That's only required for files whose initial size is more than 100^256, though, so two bytes should do it for most applications.
Jeez, the quality of math and CS education has really gone down the tubes.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
(Of course, this DOES create all sorts of other problems, but I'm going to ignore those, because they'd go and spoil things.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Don't bother compressing it, just delete it, and then get an infinite number on monkeys on an infinite number of typewriters to re-produce the original.
Duh, are you like an idiot or something?
You're the moron, moron. When you get the one byte compressed file, you run the decompressor once to get the number of additional times to run the decompressor.
What are they teaching the kids today? Shannon-shmannon nonsense, no doubt. They should be doing useful things, like Marketing and Management Science. There's no point in being able to count if you don't have any money.
I get the idea that this part of the algorithm is perfected by them...its the decompresser that's giving them fits...
Step 1: Steal Underpants
Step 3: Profit!
We're still working on step 2
Check out my sysadmin blog!
Ok, say I want to compress "foo" 100 times over:
bash$ for i in $(seq 1 100); do gzip foo; mv foo.gz foo; done
Perl source is as close to truly random data as possible.
This is your sig. There are thousands more, but this one is yours.
*Reads FAQ* *Blushes*
OK, so I went the "negligable housekeeping route". Maybe I should get a job in the patent office.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
The pigeon hole principle says that you can't stick more than one pigeon in your hole. In fact, even trying to stick one pigeon in your hole is probably a bad idea
Maybe they just write all the 1s and 0s *really small*?
Beautiful flash animation, though. I particularly like the fact that clicking the 'skip intro' button does absolutely nothing -- you get the flash garbage anyway.
Actually, no. What you're seeing is their new compression methodology in action, applied to their website. By clicking on Skip Intro, you're actually hurtled through a registration process at lightning speed and signed up to several of their services, but for security purposes in order to validate those services you're redirected to the main page. However, in order to expediate the service, the exact location of the time of your click on the Skip Intro is kept in a data file in your cookies folder (you might not see it there because, you guessed it, it's compressed to a single byte), and when redirected the cookie is read to get the exact location of your click in the Flash Intro so that the intro fast-forwards to that point in time when you clicked, giving the impression of seemless, uninterrupted animation.
Go on, give it a try. Try clicking the Skip Intro button multiple times, and you'll notice that once you click it'll look like nothing's changing, with no trace in a cookie file of where that spot is. Now THAT'S impressive. And they've got all of your personal information from that registration which you didn't even know you did compressed to a single byte on the server, just waiting to be uncompressed so they can start sending you more information (they just need to work the decompression kinks out).
Cool, huh? I'm giving them all my money.
-------------------------------------------------
charlton heston is more of a man than yo
No, see, it's 100:1 in binary.
You know,
If you just remove the flashy buzzwords. Their press release compresses ~100:1
Here's the result:
Bullshit.
The (Hopefully) Great Slashdot Blackout
Heheh, I always wanted to write a "gainy compression" routine. It would probably have a special marker in there like the ascii string:
"The next three bytes are compressed!"
graspee
It is possible despite the many (uninformed) negative comments that have appeared concerning this truly amazing breakthrough in compression technology. I, myself, using my own patented compression technology - The Shannon-Transmogrificator (TM) have managed to compress the entire Reuters article to a mere 4 ASCII characters (!), with essentially no loss in meaning: 'C', 'R', 'A', 'P'. I wonder if anyone can improve on this ?
The output from a pseudo-random number generator is usually considered "random enough for practical purposes." So if you define "practically random data" as "data that is random enough for practical purposes," you can compress it by storing the random seed and the string length. ;-)
I think I can beat their 100:1 compression ratio with this scheme.
To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three persons, two of them absent.
I just ran another compression pass on that, and i got:
BS
- Have a picture
I don't need to encode the number of compressions, every decompression consists of decompressing 256 times.
I think you mean at most 256 times. Supposing I had to perform 10 compressions to compress to a singe byte. After you had decompressed 10 times, you'd have the data. the next decompression would make some other file 100 times larger than the Matrix. So if you could recognize the correct file when you saw it, I could avoid transmitting the decompression count.
So, I just have to prepend a string saying "This is it!" before compressing!
Also, it occurred to me after my previous posting (and to another poster, I saw) that if we can compress to a single byte, why not to a single bit? This is a great advance, which I believe I shall patent quickly before that other poster does, because now I can give you my copy of The Matrix over the phone! I can just tell you if it's a 1 or 0. For that matter, I don't even have to tell you -- you can just try both possibilities!
So my question now is, does the decompressor only produce strings of bits that exist somewhere and were once compressed, or does it produce anything? Can I just think "I want a great term paper..." and then try decompressing both 1 and 0 until I get it (in no more than 8 or ten iterations of the decompressor, 'cause I want a paper, not a novel).
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Quantum theory has everything to do with compression. Inside sources have revealed that this compression scheme works on the uncertainty principles key to quantum physics. You see, any strinng of 100 bits has a distinct probability of being compressable to a single bit. Of course, this means that this compression scheme will produce bogus results 99.999999% of the time, but think of the wonder of compression realized the other .000001% of the time! Furthermore, the system requirements for their technology are as follows: x86 PC running WindowsXP (to take advantage of DirectX in wickedly rendering the fractals neccessary for the compression), a particle accelerator, and a heavy dose of optimism combined with a complete lack of skepticism.
Therefore, I should easily be able to compress The Matrix into a single byte with 256 passes.
I'm not so sure about that...It takes a lot of bytes to represent our entire society (in 1999, at least). The AI for Hugo Weaving's character must have been a couple of gigs of code at least.
However, if you want to compress the movie "The Matrix" into a single byte...here goes:
<breathy_keanu_voice>Whoah...</breathy_ke anu_voice> (soundByte® compression...far from lossless compression, but this is as close as anyone will ever come to one byte compression).
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"