Random Data Compressed 100:1 (Guffaw)

[Eric Cordian]

Someone else needs to read the comp.compression FAQ.

http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=technologynews&StoryID=498720

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Florida research start-up working with a team of
renowned mathematicians said on Monday it had achieved a breakthrough that
overcomes the previously known limits of compression used to store and
transmit data.
   
If proven and successfully commercialized, the discovery asserted by
ZeoSync Corp of West Palm Beach, Florida could overturn half a century of
thinking in the field of lossless data compression and undermine business
assumptions on which the telecommunications and other digital industries
are based.
   
Lossless compression is the process by which computer data can be
compacted, stored and then restored with complete fidelity, or zero loss
of data. Existing compression techniques typically shed redundant data in
order to conserve space.
   
ZeoSync said its scientific team had succeeded on a small scale in
compressing random information sequences in such a way as to allow the
same data to be compressed more than 100 times over -- with no data loss.
That would be at least an order of magnitude beyond current known
algorithms for compacting data.

[Someone needs to learn the pigeonhole principle.  You can not give
 each member of a set of 2^(N*100) things its own unique identifier
 taken from a set of 2^N things.]
   
The company's claims, which are yet to be demonstrated in any public
forum, could vastly boost the ability of computer disks to store, text,
music and video -- if ZeoSync's formulae succeed in scaling up to handle
massive amounts of data.
   
The same compression technique might one day make make high-speed Internet
access cheaper and widely available across the globe, posing a threat to
huge investments in telecommunications network capacity, an industry
analyst said.
   
"Either this research is the next 'Cold Fusion' scam that dies away or
it's the foundation for a Nobel Prize. I don't have an answer to which one
it is yet," said David Hill, a data storage analyst with Boston-based
Aberdeen Group.

[David needs to read the comp.compression FAQ too.]
   
In 1990, a group of Utah researchers scandalized the scientific world with
claims -- quickly found to be unsupported -- that the long-sought answer
to the problem of Cold Fusion had been discovered.
   
Hill, the only independent analyst briefed ahead of the announcement, said
ZeoSync's claims were theoretically feasible, but years away from
definitive proof. He will require more information before evaluating
ZeoSync's claims, he said.

[You know, if you run the random data through the algorithm a second
 time, I bet you would get 10,000:1 compression.]
   
ZeoSync, whose Web site can be located at http://www.zeosync.com/, was
founded by Peter St. George, an Internet and financial services
entrepreneur, who has a background in telecommunications research.
   
ZeoSync, with 30 full-time employees, said it had collaborated with
experts from Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Stanford University and researchers in Warsaw, Moscow, and Beijing.
   
BREAK WITH CURRENT TECHNOLOGIES
   
Among the scientific team working with ZeoSync is Steve Smale, one of
America's most renowned mathematicians. Smale is an emeritus professor at
the University of California at Berkeley and the 1966 winner of the Fields
Prize, the Nobel Prize for researchers in this field. He could not be
reached for comment on his role in the project.
   
Peter St. George, ZeoSync founder and chief executive, said his company's
technique challenged the foundations of digital communications theory
spelled out by AT&T's Dr. Claude Shannon in his classic 1948 treatise on
Information Theory.
   
Shannon, who died in 1991, had proposed that any type of information, from
human speech to computer keyboards to storage disks is limited by the
capacity of the data channel over which it flows. This is the basis of
digital communications theory.
   
"What we've developed is a new plateau in communications theory," St.
George said. "We are expecting to produce the enormous capacity of analog
signaling, with the benefit of the noise-free integrity of digital
communications."
   
The techniques described by ZeoSync would mark a break with the dozens of
existing compression technologies, including MPEG for video and music and
JPEG for pictures and graphics are able to compact data at compression
rates up to 10 times the original. These algorithms typically work by
eliminating long strings of identifiable bits of data such as blue sky,
green grass or the white background of a snow-covered landscape.
   
In a statement, ZeoSync said its techniques, "once fully developed, will
offer compression ratios that are anticipated to approach the
hundreds-to-one range."
   
Using mathematical terminology, the company said its technique
"intentionally randomizes naturally occurring patterns to form
entropy-like random sequences."
   
ZeoSync said it had applied for patent protection for a technology it
calls Zero Space Tuner, and a related technique it calls
BinaryAccelerator, which encodes data into perfectly reproducible
compressed formats.
   
The company expects the technology to be in commercial use during 2003, it
said.

[It is much more likely that winged monkeys will fly out of 
 St George's nether regions.]

St. George told Reuters the company was in talks with unnamed potential
strategic partners, including a major supplier of computer chips used in
multimedia compression and also a leading Hollywood music studio, among
others.
   
Partnerships deals will be announced over the next several months, he
said, although no deals had yet been reached. The company said its
technology could be used to enhance existing compression techniques such
as fractals, a school of geometry that seeks to find order in the chaos of
the natural world.
   
"We would like to invite additional members of the scientific community to
join us in our efforts to revolutionize digital technology," St. George
said of the formerly secretive project.
   
"There is a lot of exciting work to be done."

-- 
Eric Michael Cordian 0+
O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division
"Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"