Slashdot Mirror
File Compression To Detect Life?
Tech writes "Until a few years ago, whenever geobiologists found an ancient rock looked like a fossilized stromatolite, they figured it was a stromatolite, a layered structure built by colonies of microorganisms. But in 1996 it was shown that stromatolite-like structures could be formed through a simple chemical process. So how does one separate the wheat from the chaff, the true stromatolites from the fakes? Frank Corsetti and Michael Storrie-Lombardi think they may have found a way. Their approach is simplicity itself: Create a digital image of the rock; then compress the image file. The more the file shrinks, the more likely it is that life was responsible for building the layers."
Yet another duplicate post... sigh
Is there a way we can use this amazing compression technology to detect duplicate posts?
Original here, still on the front page for science
Now if only they could use this technology to detect duplicate articles, we'd be set!
I'm starting to see reruns.
Yet Another Web Site
I e-mailed you, and CC'd michael, but still this story is posted. I'm trying to be a good subscriber, and point out dupes, but I don't know what else I'm supposed to do.
I want to help Slashdot avoid dupes (esp. obvious ones like this), but it seems like the system fails.
Colin Davis
April Fool!
...all year long.
Don't you think it's going to be difficult to convince people to give you their money when it's blantantly obvious that you people running this place don't exert a bit of effort?
Looks like the evil bit has struck again, which means the terrorists have already won.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
There should be on articles in the "Mysterious Future" the option for subscribers to mark it as a duplicate, avoiding this type of thing. Just a button / link somewhere in the blurb on the front page.
Just my 2 cents
Yesterday, I requested that the April Fool gag be continued beyond April 1. I also requested that more stories be duplicated.
I have been heard. My wishes have clearly been your command. Let's see, what shall I ask for now? How about...
Oh, yeah, here's a good one. HOW ABOUT SOME EDITORS WITH A FSCKING CLUE?
Dorks.
Ce n'est pas un vrai mouvement de robot!
April 1 is over.
Considering how jaded and uneducated most of the inhabitants of this planet have become, it has been decided that a single day of pranks is insufficient to commemorate the stupidity they can be capable of.
THEREFORE, the month of April is designated as National April Fool's month.
IN ADDITION, April 15th is designated as the National Ultimate Fool's Day. It is also the deadline for filing Federal Income Tax Returns. Please note that this is not a coincidence.
Yes, you can detect life by looking for duplicate patterns.
But does this technique correctly identify evil life forms and set their headers appropriately?
And does this mean that Slashdot is alive, or merely that the Slashdot editors are alive?
www.eFax.com are spammers
There must be some periodicity that allows the compression algorithm to go further with images from living things. Any fft-based compression algorithm would pick up on that. Kewl. You could probably do something similar with satellite images to pick out man-made structures, since these would have greater periodicity (think of sectioned fields in the midwest or city streets spaced by blocks) than natural structures such as the fractal-like shapes of rivers and mountains.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
In other words, things with patterns and redundancy compress better, so compression can be used to detect patterns and redundancy.
Now, what can we think of with lots of patterns and redundancy besides images of lifeforms? How about starting with...
SLASHDOT DUPES