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Slashback: Squashing, N'Synch, Yopy
Waitaminute, what happens there between the "lead" stage and the "gold" stage again? HomerSimpson writes: "Recently on /. I read of a compression scheme reported to provide huge gains for the compression of random data. New Scientist reports, however, that the claims are unlikely at best."
Perhaps we can watch some other bands be slaughtered instead? eruditorium writes: "Apparently, the negative public reaction to n'sync's appearence in episode 2 has caused lucas to drop their cameo. See it here on Scifi Wire." san1701 links to another similar posting about this important issue at TheForce.Net.
On-again, off-again is not good for electronic projects. cd_Csc writes: "CNET is reporting on Samsung's newest Windows CE based PDA and mentioned (as a side note) that, 'A Samsung representative also confirmed the cancellation of Yopy, the company's planned Linux-based PDA.'"
Update: 01/11 02:41 GMT by T : Looks like it's not quite that simple: Bill Kendrick writes "LinuxDevices.com caught wind of today's Slashback regarding the Yopy PDA's demise.
Well, fortunately for Yopy fans, they got the real scoop directly from G.Mate..." Thanks for the quick response, Bill, and sorry for spreading false information.
Imagine explaining to your kids what VCRs were. jimmcq writes: "Slashdot previously ran a story asking about Hacking the New Replay TV Units. There have been several recent breakthroughs to allow a PC to emulate a Replay 4000 so that video can be shared in both directions. The source code has been released under the GPL. There are also several variations including a java version and an Apache/PHP Server."
The real reason N*Sync's cameo was dropped was because Natalie Portman can't keep up with the dance steps.
I am !amused.
Looks like the clones themselves are the ones being attacked. For once Hollywood (or Lucas at least) actually listened!
Maybe he's just planning on compressing them 100:1 with that new algorithm so that nobody can see them. Perhaps due to the repetitive and unoriginal nature of all "clone" (or "popular") music, a higher compression ratio would be achieved. Think of it, I only need to store one song to hear every 500 out there
A solution to the problem with music today
Come on slashdotters, get those anger votes in!!! We can change history and have a Jar-Jar-free Episode II and III. Let's get those Natalie Portman nude scenes in there while we're at it. Gee, I never thought mob rule could be more fun than good ol' democracy...
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
Sourceforge, part of VA Software, disables downloads from Simply GNUstep, a project they host....
...after Slashdot, another part of VA Software, posts a story about it.
Way to support the community, guys.
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
It's not like they were going to be in the whole movie. I think if Lucas had just done it and not let anyone tell the press, it would end up being one of those cool 'trivia' entries at IMDb:
"* 30 seconds into the first scene, the boy-band N*Sync can bee seen to the right of the transport. 5 seconds later, they are blown to bits."
Oh well. I mean, I hate all those processed-pop bands, but it would have been cool in retrospect if it had been done tounge in cheek. I mean, after all, 'Attack of the clones' and boy bands? Who can't see the irony?
It was not, then why stop at 100:1 compression? If the compression scheme was able to compress ramdom data at this ratio, then why not feeding it with its own output and get 10000:1 the second time, and do that a few more times?
PPA -- the girl next door.
-- I feel better now. Thanks for asking.
The Yopy was Dropped by Samsung, but was re-designed by g.mate the comapny that was in cortrol of the unit all along. It's got just about the same specs as most of the pda's coming out now, but with and odd keyboard layout. check out or Personally I'll be getting the Zaurus shortly, and from what I've seen this is the Linux PDA to get.
Ubuntu- Linux for human beings.
The problem with the millions of half-thought out compression ideas is exactly that: They're half thought out. It's easy to think "Well I'll just search for sequences in pi because pi is infinitely long and if you had an infinite number of monkeys....". It all comes down to entropy or the variability in a particular bit space (yup I yabbled about this in another post), and the simple cold hard reality is that 1 byte can represent no more than 256 different "realities", versus 2 bytes which can hold 65536 different values : 2 bytes cannot POSSIBLY represent every combination of values that could be contained by even 3 bytes (which has 16777216 different combinations): There is no trick or slight of hand to get around this basic mathematical fact.
That basic fact immediately discounts and proves impossible any compressibility of random data, absolutely and non-refutably. Imagine up ways to store floating point numbers, or to "3d encapsulate the space-time continuum", but it all comes down to entropy, and the limitation of it when trying to represent X amount of data in
3 Wolves and a Sheep voting on what's for dinner.
El Karma: excelente(principalmente la suma de moderación hecha a los comentarios de los usuarios)
I'm sure this will be a very unpopular view, but personally I think N'Sync got the shaft on this one, and it's apparently all because of insecure, immature Star Wars fanboys.
So George Lucas has a 14 year old daughter, and he thought he'd shut her up by giving N'Sync 3 seconds of screen time. Big fucking deal. It's not like this affects the integrity of the film in any way, shape, or form. It was a fucking cameo for God's sake, and a very short one at that. Rich and famous people get cameo's in movies and TV all the time. 99% of you wouldn't have even noticed it until the DVD came out, and you found the exact time refrence on the Internet.
I don't listen to N'Sync or anything like it, but I've never understood why anyone would hate them. Christ, they're a band. It's not like pop music should be taken as a personal affront by anyone. No one is making you listen to it. N'Sync isn't running around the country raping your girlfriends and daughters. What, are you so insecure you can't stand it that some boy band is more popular with teenage girls than you are?
You don't think N'Sync aren't big-time Star Wars fans? You don't think they weren't psyched to get this? Any of you people would be thrilled by an opportunity like this. Basically what this comes down to is petty jealosy, pure and simple. N'Sync is already rich and famous, why should they be so lucky. How dare they bespoil my movie, those bastards. Grow up, all you lamer fanboys who bitched and moaned about this. Don't you have better things to worry about besides who get's blown up by blaster fire in a movie?
It hurts when I pee.
The thing about hashes is that they're one-way functions, you have to have a copy of every possible message and its hash.
If you send *only* 16-byte messages, no larger, no smaller, that's 2^(8*16) = 2^128 possible messages. Each message is 16 bytes, so 2^132 bytes, or 5.4e39 bytes. Oops, twice that since you need to store what each message transform to, so call it an even 1e40 bytes.
Let's say a 100GB = 1e11 disk costs $100=1e2 in volume today. You'll need only 1e40/1e11 = 1e29 disks, costing a low, low $1e31. That's
$10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
I will leave other considerations - where will you store these disks, how will you power them, etc., as an exercise for the reader.
Fortunately, the sum total of all bit patterns of less than 16 bytes is the same. (Ignoring the storage requirements for the hashed value, I assume you'll create a 'bin' for each hash value.) Unforutnately, the price doubles again as you add each bit.
A second exercise for the reader: how may bits can you handle before you need more storage requirements than number of atoms in the earth? I haven't done the math, but I doubt it's more than a hundred bytes or so.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
The Star Wars franchise went into the toilet with their first Muppet.
What, that thing in the trash compactor? "into the toilet" indeed!
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
I'm going try and not sound too snide here, but I'm not sure I can help it. It's a simple fact that you cannot develop a lossless compression algorithm which will compress all inputs to smaller outputs. Period.
.gz or the lack thereof is included in the output of the program.
People sometimes ask if college is worthwhile for studying CS. One good thing about it is that you learn not to try and design impossible compression algorithms. This isn't like P=NP, or any other hard CS problem which isn't completely answered. Or like the speed of light being absolute, which may or not be true. You simply can't design an algorithm which will make all inputs smaller, and have it be reversable.
For those of you who have not had any 101 level CS classes, here's why. If all outputs from your algorithm are smaller than the inputs, then you have fewer possible outputs than inputs. If this is the case, there have to be multiple inputs which compress to the same output. When it comes time to decompress the output, you will have no way of knowing which input was used to generate the output. Hence your algorithm will not be able to properly decompress the output.
Compression algorithms work because they are designed to make the typical file smaller, while compressing the uncommon inputs into larger outputs. Usually the common files have lots of redundancy in them, which makes it fairly easy to design compression algorithms, especially for readable text.
Actually, most good compression programs cheat a little bit. If they detect that the output is going to be larger than the input, they don't compress the file at all. Which means that all outputs are one bit larger than the output file size, because one bit of information is stored in the fact that the program did or did not compress the file. Logically, that
Now lossy compression is a whole different story. You can compress as much as you want, based upon how much loss you think is acceptable. I could easily design a lossy image compression scheme that compressed all pictures down to a single bit, but some folks might find that simply calling pictures 'light' and 'dark' is a little too lossy to be useful. But the important fact is that in any lossy compression scheme, there are multiple inputs which map to single outputs. And that's fine because you don't care if you get the exact file back when you decompress the output.
If you're saying what I think you're saying, you are :)
If i get you right, you get a bunch of hashes (crc, md5 etc). You then transmit them to the recipient who generates a list of all files that each could represent, and finds the one that is in all lists. Superficial objections: very slow, large amount of disk space, hashes may not be reversible except by brute force which is unthinkable (hash all possible n-byte files and look for this).
Deeper objection: this does not seem to take advantages in patterns in the data, and this is the only way compression can work. If n bytes can be compressed into n-1, then the data is redundant. Therefore, if this method works, it should work for everything. This would then compress everything, which is impossible, even more so (!?) since every compressed file would have the same size. To see why, compress all 256^N n byte files into B byte concatenated hashes==compressed files (less than N bytes). For the process to be reversible, the compressed files must be unique, however there are only 256^B Executive summary: compress all possible files, they are all smaller. There are not enough smaller files, so compressed files are not unique. Thus it is not reversible.
The result of this is that compression will (on average) mean that there is more than one file satisfying all hashes. For a unique file satisfying all hashes, on average the total hashes will be at least as big as the file.
Free Java games for your phone: Tontie, Sokoban
... probably still in there.
theforce.net : Bye, Bye, Bye 'NSync? Not So Fast
- sigs are for wimps.
I completely agree with your post. I suggest, however that you move from hate to a more enlightened perspective- why hate idiots when you can laugh at them from a distance??? Both are perfectly futile as objective outlooks, but the seconds leads to lower blood pressure and fewer strokes/heart attacks/psychotic episodes.
:P
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IMUHO the truly funny thing about all of this is that anyone who understands classical science fiction understands that the relationship between Star Wars and SF is exactly the same as the relationship between N*sync and the thousands of excellent, non-manufactured musicians performing in bars and clubs across the world.
People who crave epic fantasy productions** (in the Campbellian sense****) have no modern epic fantasy productions to enjoy. Therefore they become excited by the most trite and pitiful semblance thereof, provided it is well advertised. I.E. Star Wars becomes the biggest smash hit in hollywood history, and people who should know better still worship it 23 years later. Mel Brooks understood it in 1987, yet the collective slashdot audience does not (even today, even with his help).
People who crave beautiful, passionate, exciting music** have no (readily apparent) beautiful modern music to enjoy. Therefore they become excited by the most trite and pitiful semblance thereof, provided it is well advertised. I.E. N*sync becomes becomes the biggest smash hit in music history, while Derek Dick, the greatest lyricist in the world, holds an estate sale to feed his wife and daughter. Weird Al understood it well before 1985, yet the vast majority of targets*^*^* do not (even today, even with his help).
It's hilarious.
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The original SW was vain, insipid, proselytizing, and fscking annoying- a symptom of a diseased culture- if for no other reason than that there is no better alternative. With all the incredible pieces of art which have been produced in that field, in the seminal literature which both defines and accompanies humanity as we progress towards our destiny, a story about a white trash farmer's son who blows up a space station is the best we can hope for??? At least the Good Guys(tm) win.
Star Wars was successful because 1) it was (fairly) well done (especially in comparison with other sf films of the time) 2) it was advertised like no other film in history and 3)Lucas understood enough about human nature to know what appealed to the people he was trying to sell to. EXACTLY the same reasons N*synch are successful. The reason you don't remember it is because your parents were the victims, not yourselves. Or, perhaps, because the advertising that was targetted at you was successful, while N*sync advertising is not successful b/c it is not targetted at you.
David Brin, back before the trolls drove him from slashdot, had an incredible post about this exact subject. Too bad I don't have time to try to find it...
6 prophecies:
[1] In 10 years, current N*sync fans will not be fans of (insert 2012 boy band name here). They will have children, and say that fans of (insert 2012 boy band name here) are vain, insipid, proselytizing, and fscking annoying. The reason they are fans of N*sync today is that the advertisements for N*sync(2002) are targetted towards them, while the advertisements for N*sync(2012) will be targetted at their children.
[2]You will pay to take your children to see Star wars Episode VII- and it will suck just as badly as I-VI. People who think Star Wars Episode I was awesome will agree that it sucks.
[3]Your children will love it. They will also have N*Sync(2012) posters above their beds.
[4]You won't understand your children's POV, and your children will think "parents just don't uderstand...".
[5]Lucasfilms/"Free Lance Entertainment" (lol) will laugh all the way to the bank
[6]Rev. Neh Scudder will still think 1-5 are hilarious.
Rev. Neh
First Prophet
**all people, as in, symptomatic of human nature. Endemic. See any Joseph Campbell book for details.
****either Joseph or John
*^*^* {that select portion of western civilization which has sufficient disposable income to purchase large quantities of compact disks, i.e. 14 year old girls}
... and there is no doubt, that one day he will be
where the eye of his telescope has already been