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 This story has been submitted many times due to the astounding claims - Zeosync explicitly claims that they've superseded Claude Shannon's work.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.

Comments

100:1 ? I don't think so...

[Mr Thinly Sliced]

They claim 100:1 compression for random data. The thing is, if thats true, then lets say we have data A size (1000)

compress(A) = B

Now, B is 1/100th the size of A, right, but it too, is random, right (size 100).

On we go:
compress(B) = C (size is now 10)
compress(C) = D (size 1).

So everything compresses into 1 byte.

Or am I missing something.

Mr Thinly Sliced

Re:100:1 ? I don't think so...

[arkanes]

I suspect that when they say "random" data, they are using marketing-speak random, not math-speak random. Therefore, by 'random', they mean "data with lots of repetition like music or video files, which we'll CALL random because none of you copyright-infringing IP thieving pirates will know the difference"

Re:100:1 ? I don't think so...

[MikeTheYak]

It goes beyond bullshit into the realm of humor:

ZeoSync has developed the TunerAccelerator(TM) in conjunction with some traditional state-of-the-art compression methodologies. This work includes the advancement of Fractals, Wavelets, DCT, FFT, Subband Coding, and Acoustic Compression that utilizes synthetic instruments. These are methods that are derived from classical physics and statistical mechanics and quantum theory, and at the highest level, this mathematical breakthrough has enabled two classical scientific methods to be improved, Huffman Compression and Arithmetic Compression, both industry standards for the past fifty years.

They just threw in a bunch of compression buzzwords without even bothering to check whether they have anything to do with lossless compression...

Simple, it can't be

[nusuth]

I have been pretty late to this thread, and I'm sorry if this is redundant. I just can't read all 700 posts.

1:100 average compression on all data is just impossible. And I don't mean "improbable" or "I don't belive that", it is impossible. The reason is pigeon hole principle, for simplicity assume that we are talking about 1000bit files, although you can compress some of these 1000bit files to just 10bits, you cannot possibly compress all of them to 10bits, as with 10 bits is just 1024 different configurations while 1000bits call for representations of 2 different configurations. If you can compress the first 1024, there is simply no room to represent remaining 2-1024 files.

...And that is assuming the compression header takes no space at all...

So every loseless compression algorithm that can represent some files with other files less than original in length must expand some other files. Higher compression on some files means number of files that do not compress at all is also greater. Average compression rate other than 1 is only achiveable if there is some redundancy in original encoding. I guess you can call that redundancy "a pattern." Rar, zip, gzip etc. all achieve less than 1 compressed/original length on average because there is redundancy in originals : programs that have some instructions, prefixes with common occurance, pictures that are represented with full dword although they use a few thousand colors, sound files almost devoid of very low and very high numbers because of recording conditions etc. No compression algorithm can achive less than 1 ratio averaged over all possible strings. It is a simple consequence of pigeon hole principle and cannot be tricked.