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Slashback: Squashing, N'Synch, Yopy
from the unseasonably-warm dept.
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."
You know it's just a cover up.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You know it's just a cover up.... (Score:5, Funny)
Attack of the Clones (Score:5, Funny)
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
George Lucas actually listened to his fans? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:George Lucas actually listened to his fans? (Score:4, Redundant)
Yes. My sources indicate that a wookie will rip his arms off.
That's too bad .... for George.... :) (Score:4, Insightful)
Whose arms shall the wookie rip off: Jar-Jar Bites or George "This-space-for-rent-or-product-placement" Lucas?
Jar-Jar is an enormously annoying figure to adults, beloved of children, and therefore killing him in a bloody mass of dismembered limbs, although satisfying to the adults, would make the movie traumatic for the young-uns.
If the wookie was to tear off George's arms, it'd be some measure of justice for Episode 1, Jar-Jar, etc. and it could be done in a backroom so no kiddies need be traumatized. And the adults would still be satisfied.
The great story of good and evil and redemption evolved in the middle 3 movies (Ep IV-VI) with Campbellian overtones is being sold down the river by a man whose vision has lost its way in favour of a big paycheck. There were a lot of worthwhile Mythic elements amidst the entertainment of the original movies, and the story had a certain power. Jar-Jar the rastafarian doppelganger and even fancy high-kicking Darth Maul (of few words, and a cheesy death) can't conceal the deeper emptiness in Episode 1, which is about to be (by all appearances) surpassed in its vaccuity by Episode 2: Attack of the Clowns.
George... how could you? How did they ever get to you man....?
Jar-Jar is next (Score:5, Funny)
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...
Democracy is... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Democracy is... (Score:5, Insightful)
No more clones (Score:3, Insightful)
Another one... (Score:5, Informative)
Way to support the community, guys.
Re:Another one... (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, settle down. If you actually read your own link [slashdot.org] you would notice that SourceForge disabled the download because the file size was unreasonable. Would you sacrifice d/l rates for all of sf.net just so people can transfer 200GB/day worth of Simply GNUStep?
Besides, one of the SF guys posted a solution that would allow them to distribute the load.
Re:George Lucas has lost it, for sure. (Score:5, Funny)
The Star Wars franchise went into the toilet with their first Muppet.
What, that thing in the trash compactor? "into the toilet" indeed!
Yopy is a sacrifice to the Beast of Redmond (Score:3, Flamebait)
Re:Yopy is a sacrifice to the Beast of Redmond (Score:4, Interesting)
It's all about the golden rule. Who has the gold, makes the rules.
At least they were going to die... (Score:5, Insightful)
"* 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?
Of course it's an hoax... (Score:5, Insightful)
PPA -- the girl next door.
Re:Of course it's an hoax... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is easy to prove that it is impossible for any lossless compression scheme to compress every file, or to compress random data more than half the time. This is why their claims to get around entropy and supercede Shannon's work are so ridiculous.
The informal version of the proof is something like:
Digital files are essentially numbers.
Bigger files have more bits.
There are 2^n possible files n bits long.
Compression is essentially using shorter numbers to index longer numbers.
There are many more longer numbers than shorter numbers.
So, no matter what indexing scheme you choose, there won't be enough short numbers to go around.
So, you can only index some of the long numbers.
So, you can only compress some files.
And that's it... For any encryption method, there are files it can't compress. Period. In fact, for any encrytion method, there are so many more big numbers than small numbers that you won't be able to compress most files.
The reason you don't notice this, and gzip and Zip and the rest actually work really well in practice is that humans tend to be interested in a very tiny fraction of all the possible numbers/files out there.
We don't usually have large random files. Our files tend to have lots of structure, lots of repetition... this is "entropy", and Shannon's proofs about information entropy are very deep and very brilliant.
Personally, I think it's more likely that someone will find a way to bypass Einstein's theory of relativity than to bypass Shannon's theory of information entropy.
.
Yopy is still out there... (Score:5, Informative)
Linux PDA (Score:3, Informative)
"Royal Consumer Information Products, best known for low-cost commodity appliances like shredders and postal scales, this week became the first to announce a low-cost color PDA based on the Linux operating system.
The $299 device, set for launch in the U.S. by the middle of this year, will be one of the cheapest color handhelds on the market, and also promises to bring Linux to a wider potential market. New color devices from Palm, for example, cost about $100 more than Royal's handheld. "
ReplayTV show sharing site. (Score:3, Interesting)
Nsync got the shaft (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:Nsync got the shaft (Score:5, Funny)
Well I'm glad you control the stereo in your house. Some of us have 13 year old sisters :(
Re:Nsync got the shaft (Score:5, Funny)
MTV Exec: Evidently, the thing people who read this slashdot web-thingy hate most is when puppy dog eyed young men sing bubblegum and dance in unison.
MTV VP: Ex-cellent. (ala Monty Burns) Cancel 'Daria' and run a four hour special on where O-Town buys their jeans. That'll show 'em.
MTV Exec: After that, they hate AOL.
MTV VP: We'll stream babble from an AOL chatroom across the bottom of the screen.
MTV Exec: Yes, my master. Soon it will be time to reveal ourselves.
What, are you so insecure you can't stand it that some boy band is more popular with teenage girls than you are?
Yes, but I judge women purely on their secondary sexual characteristics, so on the pop music front it pretty much balances out.
N'Sync isn't running around the country raping your girlfriends and daughters.
That's a tautology, since we slashdotters have neither.
Re:Nsync got the shaft (Score:5, Informative)
I hate them because they are a symbol of modern pop culture, the marketing machine that calculates what you should think and then creates it. I hate that the fans, my fellow Americans, who are completely ignorant to the fact that they were atrifically created, a T-1000 of the year 2000, a puppet, a robot to suck money out of the pockets of young teen's parents and to sway the fragile and youthful minds into a 'market share'.
I hate the fact that they are the drug of the industrailist machine that keeps its workers happy and ignorant, a 'soma' in this Brave New World.
I hate the fact that they are the icons of conformist pop culture, a culture that spits on any other ideas, a culture that breeds ignorance and a culture that so typifies America.
"N'Sync" is the marketing term for this. It is the name of the symbol. It is a buzz word more then a band, the shwastika of music industry.
The people in the band are probably cool kids and they got the shaft as soon as they signed up for the band. Their lives are probably controlled by "image" and "popularity" however that was the deal with the devil that they accepted when they willfully signed.
If my burger sucks I'll complain to the waitress. She didn't make the burger, 'I shouldn't take it out on her' but if I put pressure on her to make a better burger, she'll go to the cook and proxy the pressure. I don't have access to the cook.
I hate pop culture because I hate mass ignorance and I hate the pressure that so many teen agers go through to 'conform' with twig-thin bodies, cool clothes and the perfect attitude. I state my disdain with this to the waitress of pop culture, "N'Sync" so that the back-line cooks, the marketing gurus of pop culture may hear it through proxy.
It's all about the ad $$$ (Score:5, Insightful)
-----
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 [imdb.com] 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 [imdb.com] well before 1985, yet the vast majority of targets*^*^* do not (even today, even with his help).
It's hilarious.
-----
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" [freelanceent.com] (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}
Re:George Lucas did what? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think part of that is because the first SW movie came out in 1977. Most of us who were even born then had to have our parents drive us to the movies to see it. And then we prayed for a ton of SW stuff for birthdays and X-Mas so we could make our own version of the SW universe in the living room with our best friend. Now let those memories sit in the nostalgia machine for 20 years, you've got some powerful mojo working there.
So now, when we think 'new Star Wars movie' we relate it to when we were little kids and in absolute awe of these movies. It's like it's YOUR movie, and it's still your own universe for you and your best friend. So, one is highly polarized about the subject, there's very little middle ground. Aspects of these new movies are either loved or hated, and people get very vocal, especially since we're all so easily heard on the 'net.
At least that's what I think. Me, I'm still kicking myself for not keeping all the original Star Wars toys I got as a kid.
Sorry to burst your bubble but N'Sync is ... (Score:5, Informative)
theforce.net : Bye, Bye, Bye 'NSync? Not So Fast [theforce.net]
Re: compression (Score:5, Informative)
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
Re: compression (Score:4, Informative)
2) there's no reason to assume you gain anything by doing these transforms. On average, you will have 1:1 compression ratio. Unless...
3) your functions are not just generic CRC, MD5, etc. but rather some smart functions that allow to describe some patterns in the original file in a compact way. I this case, what you described is just another way of modelling of your original data.
JFYI, most of the current compressor algorithms work logically in 2 steps:
a) find the optimal way to model the original data; transform the original data using the new "alphabet" (in other words, map it into the new parametric space)
b) apply one of the entropy coding schemes (Huffman, arithmetic, range-coding, etc.)
The (b) part is easily presented/solved mathematically (btw, the arithmetic coding is the optimal one). However, the (a) part is complex. Most importantly, modelling it context-dependent. IMHO, the standard hash functions will not work well
Re: compression (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Gee, is college worthwhile? Was: Re: compression (Score:5, Insightful)