Mike McNally writes:
Ray writes:
All of this is meaningless anyway. Information theory was proven wrong by WEB technologies when they invented a compression program that can recursively compress any input data down to 64k. Harddrives are now obsolete.
Either I'm really dense in one of two ways (this is a joke I don't get, or it's really true), or my pegging bullshit meter is right. Could you go into a little more detail?
It's a joke. WEB technologies is a company which announced a compression product about a year ago. They claimed that they had "violated the laws of information theory" (a simple counting argument proves what they claim was impossible) by producing a compressor which can compress its own output! Furthermore, the compression was ALWAYS 16:1, no matter what the input. (that's right, they claimed ALL files of a certain size were compressible by this ratio) Everyone knew it was BS, but BYTE magazine did a story on it which seemed to enhance its credibility. People called them and tried to get specs, or demo software but they were given the run around. Finally, WEB claimed that their engineer had made a mistake and their software wouldn't do what it claimed. A more accurate and detailed story can be found in the comp.compression faq. -- Ray Cromwell | Engineering is the implementation of science; -- -- rjc@gnu.ai.mit.edu | politics is the implementation of faith. --