ZeoSync Makes Claim of Compression Breakthrough 989
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 This story has been submitted many times due to the astounding claims - Zeosync explicitly claims that they've superseded Claude Shannon's work.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.
Conserve Bandwidth? (Score:2, Funny)
Time for a new law of information theory? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:100:1 ? I don't think so... (Score:5, Funny)
The proofs in the pudding. (Score:5, Funny)
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!!
Vaporware 2002 (Score:1, Funny)
I can do better than that! (Score:2, Funny)
The _real_ trick is getting 100% compression. It's actually really easy, there's a module built in to do it on your average unix.
Simply run all your backups to the New Universal Logical Loader and perfect compression is achieved. The device driver, is of course, loaded as
Re:how can this be? (Score:5, Funny)
So a perl programm can't be compressed?
Blah! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:scientific method, fact... goes out the window, (Score:2, Funny)
Re:100:1 ? I don't think so... (Score:4, Funny)
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
And they got funding ... (Score:2, Funny)
"It was just data, you know," the sobbing wretch was reportedly told, "just ones and zeros. And hey - you can look at it as a proof of principle. We'll have the general application out
Egads... (Score:5, Funny)
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
What happens when you run it backwards? (Score:4, Funny)
They are using time travel! (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:Is this April 1st? (Score:2, Funny)
Please note they claim to be able to compress data 100:1, but do not say they can decompress the resultant data back to the original.
By the way, so can i.
Give me your data, of any sort, of any size, and i will make it take up zero space.
Just don't ask for it back.
Directed evolution (Score:5, Funny)
Just think of it as an innumeracy tax on
venture capitalists.
Re:100:1 ? I don't think so... (Score:4, Funny)
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.
How to compress ANY data to one bit (Score:3, Funny)
(Of course, this DOES create all sorts of other problems, but I'm going to ignore those, because they'd go and spoil things.)
Infinite monkey compression. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:100:1 ? I don't think so... (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Re:100:1 ? I don't think so... (Score:5, Funny)
Step 1: Steal Underpants
Step 3: Profit!
We're still working on step 2
Re:Egads... (Score:2, Funny)
> Ah... So even if it's not outright bullshit, it's too slow to use?
No, my friend - you are missing the whole point. ZeoSync HAVE succeeded (in a limited sense.) You see, in order to achieve implausible compression rates on random data - all you need to do is overcome a few temporal issues - follow this line of thinking...
1) Each implementation of the compression algorithm will only be applied to (a relatively small finite number of) finite sequences of bits.
2) Encode exactly these sequences in the compression tool.
3) Astonishing compression is achieved - only a small ordinal need be stored to represent each compressed result.
So your data will always be small, but your compression program will grow rather quickly!
Puzzle solved.
Oh, that's easy. (Score:2, Funny)
Ok, say I want to compress "foo" 100 times over:
bash$ for i in $(seq 1 100); do gzip foo; mv foo.gz foo; done
Re:how can this be? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Egads... (Score:5, Funny)
See you all later - I have some coding to do!
OK,
- B
Re:No Way... (Score:3, Funny)
*Reads FAQ* *Blushes*
OK, so I went the "negligable housekeeping route". Maybe I should get a job in the patent office.
Re:The real "Pigeon hole principle" (Score:1, Funny)
Re:how can this be? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:It's rare to see such a baldfaced scam (Score:2, Funny)
Actually, no. What you're seeing is their new compression methodology in action, applied to their website. By clicking on Skip Intro, you're actually hurtled through a registration process at lightning speed and signed up to several of their services, but for security purposes in order to validate those services you're redirected to the main page. However, in order to expediate the service, the exact location of the time of your click on the Skip Intro is kept in a data file in your cookies folder (you might not see it there because, you guessed it, it's compressed to a single byte), and when redirected the cookie is read to get the exact location of your click in the Flash Intro so that the intro fast-forwards to that point in time when you clicked, giving the impression of seemless, uninterrupted animation.
Go on, give it a try. Try clicking the Skip Intro button multiple times, and you'll notice that once you click it'll look like nothing's changing, with no trace in a cookie file of where that spot is. Now THAT'S impressive. And they've got all of your personal information from that registration which you didn't even know you did compressed to a single byte on the server, just waiting to be uncompressed so they can start sending you more information (they just need to work the decompression kinks out).
Cool, huh? I'm giving them all my money.
Re:how can this be? (Score:1, Funny)
Re:100:1 ? I don't think so... (Score:2, Funny)
If you just remove the flashy buzzwords. Their press release compresses ~100:1
Here's the result:
Bullshit.
Re:Current ratio? (Score:2, Funny)
"The next three bytes are compressed!"
graspee
Re:how can this be? (Score:4, Funny)
"practically random data" (Score:3, Funny)
I think I can beat their 100:1 compression ratio with this scheme.
Re:100:1 ? I don't think so... (Score:3, Funny)
BS
Re:100:1 ? I don't think so... (Score:3, Funny)
I don't need to encode the number of compressions, every decompression consists of decompressing 256 times.
I think you mean at most 256 times. Supposing I had to perform 10 compressions to compress to a singe byte. After you had decompressed 10 times, you'd have the data. the next decompression would make some other file 100 times larger than the Matrix. So if you could recognize the correct file when you saw it, I could avoid transmitting the decompression count.
So, I just have to prepend a string saying "This is it!" before compressing!
Also, it occurred to me after my previous posting (and to another poster, I saw) that if we can compress to a single byte, why not to a single bit? This is a great advance, which I believe I shall patent quickly before that other poster does, because now I can give you my copy of The Matrix over the phone! I can just tell you if it's a 1 or 0. For that matter, I don't even have to tell you -- you can just try both possibilities!
So my question now is, does the decompressor only produce strings of bits that exist somewhere and were once compressed, or does it produce anything? Can I just think "I want a great term paper..." and then try decompressing both 1 and 0 until I get it (in no more than 8 or ten iterations of the decompressor, 'cause I want a paper, not a novel).
Re:100:1 ? I don't think so... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:100:1 ? I don't think so... (Score:2, Funny)
I'm not so sure about that...It takes a lot of bytes to represent our entire society (in 1999, at least). The AI for Hugo Weaving's character must have been a couple of gigs of code at least.
However, if you want to compress the movie "The Matrix" into a single byte...here goes:
<breathy_keanu_voice>Whoah...</breathy_ke anu_voice> (soundByte® compression...far from lossless compression, but this is as close as anyone will ever come to one byte compression).