Slashback: Squashing, N'Synch, Yopy 351
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."
Another one... (Score:5, Informative)
Way to support the community, guys.
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. "
Re:Yay... (Score:3, Informative)
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:Yopy is a sacrifice to the Beast of Redmond (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Linux PDA more info (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS4430982785.h
I always associated Royal with low-quality, but if they're not actually building the hardware themselves, and if there will be Linux synching, well that might be pretty cool. Nothing about Mac software though.
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:George Lucas actually listened to his fans? (Score:3, Informative)
Have fun...
Re:Damnit it doesn't matter (Score:3, Informative)
"amerika" (uncapitalized, and with a k) is the only way to make it come out right in a Japanese editor.
¥¥á¥ê¥
N'Sync Not Out of the Picture Yet (Score:2, Informative)
And there you have it.
Sorry to burst your bubble but N'Sync is ... (Score:5, Informative)
theforce.net : Bye, Bye, Bye 'NSync? Not So Fast [theforce.net]
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.
Re:Of course it's an hoax... (Score:1, Informative)
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.
Small nit to an otherwise great post. Lots of stucture and repetition is _lack_ of entropy (remember, entropy is disorder). Otherwise, one of the best english-language summaries I've seen of the issue.
OT: Wookiee! (Score:3, Informative)
I try to keep my pedantic tendencies under control, but sometimes...
GTRacer
- Wouldn't have bitched if any of the previous 10 uses had been correct...