Re: What is considered SUCCESS?

"Paul" <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
<earlcolby.pottinger@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:aad49050-03e0-4654-b6f1-e91c68d19fef@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Ah yes, another magic compressor without a working decompressor.

How many times have we seen this? Including the claim that with just
a little more work and the decompression will be fine?

Too many times to remember.

Paul stop posting until you have something that works and can past
honest tests, you will save time for everybody.

Then tell me Earl, what is success? How much compression do you
believe is even impossible on the million bit Random bin file? 1
byte? 2 bytes? How much?

Are we talking about the AMillionRandomDigits.bin file?

It's not a million *bit* file, it's a million *decimal digit* file
converted to binary.

A single decimal digit is equivalent to log(10)/log(2) bits, or about
3.32 bits. A million decimal digits are equivalent to just a hair
over 3321928 bits. The AMillionRandomDigits.bin file is 415241 bytes,
or 3321928 bits.

If I understand you correctly, you've claimed that you can compress
this particular file by 12941 bytes, or just over 3% (i.e., the
compressed file is about 97% the size of the original file).

If you can actually do this, using a compressor that doesn't take
advantage of the specific contents of AMillionRandomDigits.bin (i.e.,
one that will work about as well on any random file of the same size),
then I for one will be fairly impressed -- but *only* if you can also
decompress the resulting file and retrieve an exact copy of the
original file. As long as your decompressor will be done "soon", you
have nothing -- specifically, you have nothing more than the long line
of other claimants who have not been able to substantiate their claims.

I can compress it by 90% myself:
head -41524c AMillionRandomDigits.bin > AMillionRandomDigits.bin.compressed
Without decompressin, this means nothing.

Note that "fairly impressed" doesn't mean that I'd be convinced you've
beaten the counting argument, unless your compressor is substantially
smaller than 12941 bytes and/or you can demonstrate similar results
with other files. And even then, I'd remain as skeptical as I would
of someone who claimed to have demonstrated perpetual motion a
rational representation of the square root of two. But it would be a
start. And of course I speak for nobody else.

For now, I remain confident that you cannot do what you claim to be
able to do.

--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) kst-u@xxxxxxx <http://www.ghoti.net/~kst>
Nokia
"We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this."
-- Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, "Yes Minister"
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: In response to kernel compression e-mail a few months ago.
    ... For decompression, 50-70 MiB. ... Each have their pros/cons but nothing can compress the kernel any further than 7z, supports stdin/stdout and also has a native windows port. ... PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND ...
    (Linux-Kernel)
  • Re: Compression Utilities
    ... E.g. Winzip and WinRar offer to compress to a .EXE instead of .ZIP and .RAR files. ... I believe they use something really simple like run-length encoding, to allow for fast decompression, random seeking within the file, and other stuff that one would typically want to do with the uncompressed contents of a file, that might be prohibitively expensive or difficult to do with the compression schemes used by the other formats. ... The "useful contents" of the CDs are relatively small, but they contain padding files of sizes around 600MB which just contain the byte 0x00 over and over again; the reason for this is to place the useful content near the outer edge of the CD, thus allowing for faster data reads. ...
    (comp.lang.java.softwaretools)
  • Re: C:winntServicePackFiles
    ... George Hester ... >> No you don't compress it. ... >> there if needed and SFC does not "do" de-compression. ... > Where have you got the idea that SFC does not "do" decompression? ...
    (microsoft.public.win2000.general)
  • Re: C source code for demonstration repeatable compressor is available
    ... But it does compress previously compressed files, ... decompression step must begin at the end of pseudo-random series and ... XOR the client input with RAD, for example, ...
    (comp.compression)
  • Insert EOF marker into file
    ... I have decompression function which opens compressed input file, ... grabs the header containing the original file size and the date compressed ... starts decompressing data into output file.... ...
    (comp.lang.c)