[140743] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Had an idea - looking for a math buff to tell me if it's
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (William Pitcock)
Wed May 18 16:58:25 2011
Date: Wed, 18 May 2011 15:40:11 -0500
From: William Pitcock <nenolod@systeminplace.net>
To: Landon Stewart <lstewart@superb.net>
In-Reply-To: <BANLkTimJ==S62Z=RbL+nciPwk-m5RVUWPQ@mail.gmail.com>
Cc: nanog <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
On Wed, 18 May 2011 13:07:32 -0700
Landon Stewart <lstewart@superb.net> wrote:
> Lets say you had a file that was 1,000,000,000 characters consisting
> of 8,000,000,000bits. What if instead of transferring that file
> through the interwebs you transmitted a mathematical equation to tell
> a computer on the other end how to *construct* that file. First
> you'd feed the file into a cruncher of some type to reduce the
> pattern of 8,000,000,000 bits into an equation somehow. Sure this
> would take time, I realize that. The equation would then be
> transmitted to the other computer where it would use its
> mad-math-skillz to *figure out the answer* which would theoretically
> be the same pattern of bits. Thus the same file would emerge on the
> other end.
>
> The real question here is how long would it take for a regular
> computer to do this kind of math?
>
> Just a weird idea I had. If it's a good idea then please consider
> this intellectual property. LOL
>
>
I believe they call this 'compression'.
William
