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 This story has been submitted many times due to the astounding claims - Zeosync explicitly claims that they've superseded Claude Shannon's work.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.
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!!
So a perl programm can't be compressed?
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
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.
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.
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!
Perl source is as close to truly random data as possible.
This is your sig. There are thousands more, but this one is yours.
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 ?