The quest for near-perfect compression

[pagemap]

In a tiny office in West Palm Beach, Fla., a handful of clunky computers are crunching through a software problem that many consider unsolvable. These are the offices of ZeoSync, a start-up that made a name for itself in January by claiming to have discovered a way to shrink virtually any digital file to a hundredth of its size--and then restore the file to its original size without error.

If true, it would signify a huge leap forward in computer science, comparable to the invention of a water-powered engine for automakers or cold fusion for power companies. With such a technology, a full-length feature film could be sent easily over a dial-up modem or stored on a floppy disk, for example. The discovery would ultimately transform data storage, networking and virtually any computing task.


http://news.com.com/2100-1023-839851.html?tag=dd.ne.dtx.nl-sty.0

[pagemap]

Just think, emailing divx movies.. Hehe

The MPAA would @&%# their pants

[Kevster]

I'm siding with the skeptics - I'll believe it when I see it. :disa:

To quote the article, " Robert Bristow-Johnson, an engineer at digital audio company Wave Mechanics, is one of those critics. He recently sent a letter to the United States Patent and Trademark Office warning them about ZeoSync's claims, saying that giving the company a patent would be as foolhardy as patenting a perpetual motion machine.

"Even I know better," said Bristow-Johnson. "There should be hundreds of thousands of people that know better. There should be dozens of patent examiners who should know better." "

[Stylish Sushiboy]

Maybe they just want to get into the news... even without having a working product.

Just my two bytes :D:heh::)

[Kevster]

I wouldn't be suprised if it was another cold fusion fiasco. :2far:

Go public in a huge press conference with "findings" without even verifying the experimental results with another research lab. It turned out their instrumentation wasn't calibrated correctly and they were in reality looking at nothing... :laugh:

Several people who were part of that became laughingstocks of the academic world. From what the article says about ZeoSync's CEO, this guy doesn't need any help in that department already.

[hapoo]

even if it was true it would only be good for archiving and transfering, it would probably take way too much cpu time to encode/decode in realtime. ohh wait... another reason to get the next Fast cpu :rolleyes:

[Cantacuzene]

They could solve all this by giving us POWERPLAY like they promised. We all get T1 speeds from our dialup. Now why didn't that ever happen?

[pagemap]

I did a small experiment on my own.. if you read the article it says they compressed 150bits of data down to 100. I made a file in notepad composed of 15 random characters which is 150 bits, and used winrar to compress the file, winrar at its maximum compression compressed it 0%.

I think if they really managed to compress 150 bits of random data down to 100 that is pretty impressive.

[hapoo]

Originally posted by pagemap
I did a small experiment on my own.. if you read the article it says they compressed 150bits of data down to 100. I made a file in notepad composed of 15 random characters which is 150 bits, and used winrar to compress the file, winrar at its maximum compression compressed it 0%.

I think if they really managed to compress 150 bits of random data down to 100 that is pretty impressive.


:confused: 15 random characters should only take 15bytes (1 byte per char) which translates to 120 bits

[ChrisMG187]

If that comes out, it will be amazing. I could back up my hard drive to a cd!

[BigJon]

Originally posted by pagemap
...The discovery would ultimately transform data storage, networking and virtually any computing task...


...AND cost big $$$$$$$$$ to use, sell, and operate! They wouldn't let technology like this out for free!

[attgig]

Originally posted by pagemap
I did a small experiment on my own.. if you read the article it says they compressed 150bits of data down to 100. I made a file in notepad composed of 15 random characters which is 150 bits, and used winrar to compress the file, winrar at its maximum compression compressed it 0%.

I think if they really managed to compress 150 bits of random data down to 100 that is pretty impressive.

from the article:


At the time of the company's first press release, it took more than a day to squash a random 128-bit file--about 16 letters in ASCII, the most basic computer character set--into just 100 bits.

[pagemap]

Ah well the fact is that winrar didnt compress it any, and this new method of compression compressed it approx 30%.

[Cantacuzene]

Originally posted by pagemap
Ah well the fact is that winrar didnt compress it any, and this new method of compression compressed it approx 30%.

...and took over 24 hours. On a bad ass computer no doubt.

[pagemap]

Originally posted by Cantacuzene


...and took over 24 hours. On a bad ass computer no doubt.

And your point is? If you read the article they mentioned that testing was done on old PIIs, and they are trying to get work with Intel for some testing hardware. This product is still in early alpha, the fact they can compress that much at all is phenomenal.

[Hoser]

I remember about five years ago when someone at work found a compression program on the net that was supposed to be the best thing around. When he tried it, the compressed file was a lot smaller than a zip file. We found out that it was a hoax. It would store a hidden file somewhere on your hard drive. It was noticed that when the program was run from a floppy, it still accessed the hard drive for no apparent reason.

[brainsmile]

Originally posted by Hoser
I remember about five years ago when someone at work found a compression program on the net that was supposed to be the best thing around. When he tried it, the compressed file was a lot smaller than a zip file. We found out that it was a hoax. It would store a hidden file somewhere on your hard drive. It was noticed that when the program was run from a floppy, it still accessed the hard drive for no apparent reason.
Yeah I recall that

[mojo]

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991780

Big data compression claim gets squashed


17:31 10 January 02

A US start-up company has attracted widespread attention by claiming to have developed a revolutionary new method for compressing data, but experts are sceptical.

ZeoSync says its compression technology can make data many times smaller than existing methods, and can even be used to efficiently compress "virtually random" data. Compressing truly random data is not possible according the current mathematical understanding of compression.

However the company has refused to release detailed information about its technique, citing pending patents, which leaves many many scientists cynical of the claims.

"It's not the first time a company or individual has made very inflated claims and it won't be the last," says Vinay Vaishampayan, a mathematics researcher a AT&T's Shannon laboratory in New Jersey, US. "I am inclined to be very sceptical."

ZeoSync claims that its new technique could revolutionise the computer industry, even though it is at an early stage of development and only tested on very small amounts of data.

The company says its technology will be commercially available in 2003 but says it will demonstrate the idea publicly within the next few weeks, to combat widespread scepticism.


Data fragments


Conventional data compression works by finding redundancy within information. Fragments of data that are repeated can be streamlined, and fragments that are unimportant to the final product removed. Some compression technology works by removing data that can be predicted.

John Dyer, of US computer consultants Radical Systems, claims to have successfully performed independent tests of the technology. He has signed an agreement not to reveal any details but says: "The approach does not attack redundancy but treats the data as a whole."

ZeoSync's press release also provides only partial clues as to the mystery technology with statements like "ZeoSync intentionally randomises naturally occurring patterns" and "the manipulation of binary information and translation to complex multidimensional mathematical entities".

Vaishampayan says this provides little to go on: "I've read it several times over and it refuses to make sense."

Data compression is crucial to digital communications and information storage. Finding better ways to compress video, audio and other forms of data could improve the efficiency of data transmission over the internet and increase computers' storage capacity.


Will Knight

[BigJon]

so, me thinks this is a scam? :hmm:

[Merlin]

In a time when data storage is getting cheaper by the day, access times are rapidly decreasing, and broadband/high speed connections becoming commonplace, I have to question the relevance of this product.

Yeah, today it seems like a good idea but as our capabilities expand the economies this product offers won't save us much in real terms.

Basically it will help us save in a place where additional capacity costs very little. Probably not worth it in the long run.