Another slightly OT q...

[Gary Kline]

On Tue, May 08, 2007 at 11:22:31PM +0200, usleepless at gmail.com wrote:
> Gary,
> 
> On 5/8/07, Gary Kline <kline at tao.thought.org> wrote:
> >On Tue, May 08, 2007 at 09:16:11PM +0200, usleepless at gmail.com wrote:
> >> On 5/8/07, Gary Kline <kline at tao.thought.org> wrote:
> >> >
> >> >	Hey Guys,
> >> >
> >> >	Does anybody have any websites where I can look up the latest
> >> >	in compression technology?  I've got a very thin ISDL link
> >> >	so pulling streams over is like looking at postage-stamp images.
> >> >
> >> >	There were whispers about fractal-compression as being the golden
> >> >	goal, but I can't find much about this one.  Anybody have any
> >> >	clues here?
> >> >
> >> >	thanks up front,
> >> >
> >> >	gary
> >>
> >> see: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Sloot
> >>
> >> about the " Sloot Digital Coding System". great stuff.
> >>
> >
> >	Danke.
> 
> that seems to be German, in Dutch "Bedankt" would be appropiate. i
> appreciate the effort though.

	Yes.  As far as I know, on my father's side, I'm .5 German and .5
	Hollander.  But I'm also a linguistic moron.  So I'm infinitely
	grateful that so many folk are speak English..  ....

> 
> >I found the english wkik entry so I could understand the
> >	piece.  Since Sloot is dead, no way of knowing.
> 
> actually there is. the Dutch wiki-article has much more detail about the 
> case.
> 
> this Sloot guy claimed he could compress any movie into 1kb ( 1024
> bytes ). he stored this 1kb movies on smartcards, which he would feed
> into his magic machine to show the movies.


	Aha! Were these "smartcards" like microprint?  One of my favorite
	philsophy texts has 400+ pages and is compressible into one small
	thinfilm.  *Or*, by smartcard do you mean something non-optical?  

> 
> in The Netherlands there was press-coverage about this, and he was
> able to attract investors and even a ( up to then ) reputable IT-guru
> assiocated with Philips to back him. they found silicon-valley
> investors who were interested.
> 
> he died / killed himself / was murdered before his hoax could be uncovered.
> 
> sounds a lot like the perpetuum mobile stories.


	So it *was* a hoax?  Rats.  Some weeks ago on Public
	Broadcasting, a few sentences were spoken on the potential of
	fractal geometry to achieve [I'm guessing] data-compression on
	the order of what Sloot was claiming.  So far, no one has figured
	it out.  It may be a dream... .

> 
> >But this is the
> >	kind of leap forward that would save, oh, a few measly
> >	$Billions.  And give millions of us faster and broader access.
> 
> good luck!
> 
> regards,
> 
> usleep

	Same! and bedankt;

	ciao,

	gary



-- 
  Gary Kline  kline at thought.org   www.thought.org  Public Service Unix