Random Data Compressed 100:1 (Guffaw)

Ken Brown k.brown at ccs.bbk.ac.uk
Wed Jan 9 03:50:07 PST 2002


Eric Cordian wrote:
> 
> Declan opines:
> 
> > I'm naturally skeptical of this claim (until I can verify it for
> > myself), but I do not believe the claim is "we can encode random data
> > at 100:1."
> 
> >From the article:
> 
> "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."
> 
> Now of course it's possible they were horribly misquoted.  Still, it is
> worrisome that so many people quoted in the article think such algorithmic
> gymnastics are mathematically possible.

The overpowering stench of snake oil pervades the ether

I particularly liked:

"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."

Which sounds like someone who doesn't know what they are talking about
being misreported by someone who doesn't understand (*)

"ZeoSync said its scientific team had succeeded on a small scale"


"The company's claims, which are yet to be demonstrated in any public
forum"

"ZeoSync, whose Web site can be located at http://www.zeosync.com/" 


"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."

I bet. 



Ken Brown 

(*) clue for those who have too much of a life to bother with things
like file structures and encoding (though why would they be reading
cypherpunks?)  - JPEG is a lossy compression method that tries to recode
"real world" pictures  in a way that *looks* almost as good as the real
thing but takes up less space, by smoothing out gradual changes of
colour (and other stuff as well). It doesn't "typically work by
eliminating long strings of identifiable bits of data". And it doesn't
compress "up to 10 times", it compresses as much as you like, with a
trade-off between file size and image quality. MPEG, AFAIK, is similar.





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