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The Stick of Jan Sloot (2004)

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Re: The Stick of Jan Sloot (2004)

#11

Post by adamgordonbell »

I once had an idea for a file transfer system based on digits of pi that sounds the same as this idea.

You'd give everybody DVDs of digits of pi (or they could calculate them themselves) , and then transfer files faster by just sending them the offset into pi.

At the time I thought it could work with a big enough bank of digits of PI on both sides. If transfer was expensive, and calculating digits was cheap then you could give everyone an infinite supply of digits of pi and have a nearly infinite compression system.

I discovered that often the offset into pi is much larger than the data you are sending. Turns out it's an expensive way to sent things.

Also, it turns out that this area was already well understood. There are no free lunches with entropy.

But it was a fun idea to kick around.

Re: The Stick of Jan Sloot (2004)

#12

Post by karmakaze »

daveguy wrote: post #10
karmakaze wrote: post #8

> The whole problem of Pieper's way of thinking (and of every other person who believes that Sloot actually could compress movies with a factor of two million) is that he believes that the key does not need to contain every detail of a movie. Unfortunately, it does. I wonder if one was scammed and bought a Blu-ray with everything, only to find out they got novels rather than movies. After the initial disappointment t…

> How about we get GPT to turn good movies into great books? Like a large inverse prompt engineering problem. GPT has trouble making great sentences, much less great books from a data type completely different from its training. GPT, at the core, is a "likely next word" generator. No great literature came as a process of "likely next word" in a vacuum. Likely next word from complex experiences of a decade and plot de…

What is the limiting factor though? I could make a bad sketch and get a description of that used to render a better picture right? We currently don't optimize for this as a goal so could get better, no?

Re: The Stick of Jan Sloot (2004)

#13

Post by troupe »

adamgordonbell wrote: post #11

I once had an idea for a file transfer system based on digits of pi that sounds the same as this idea. You'd give everybody DVDs of digits of pi (or they could calculate them themselves) , and then transfer files faster by just sending them the offset into pi. At the time I thought it could work with a big enough bank of digits of PI on both sides. If transfer was expensive, and calculating digits was cheap then you…

Glad to hear I'm not the only person who tried this. :)

Re: The Stick of Jan Sloot (2004)

#14

Post by alfanick »

adamgordonbell wrote: post #11

I once had an idea for a file transfer system based on digits of pi that sounds the same as this idea. You'd give everybody DVDs of digits of pi (or they could calculate them themselves) , and then transfer files faster by just sending them the offset into pi. At the time I thought it could work with a big enough bank of digits of PI on both sides. If transfer was expensive, and calculating digits was cheap then you…

It "exists" at https://github.com/philipl/pifs

Re: The Stick of Jan Sloot (2004)

#15

Post by tzs »

adamgordonbell wrote: post #11

I once had an idea for a file transfer system based on digits of pi that sounds the same as this idea. You'd give everybody DVDs of digits of pi (or they could calculate them themselves) , and then transfer files faster by just sending them the offset into pi. At the time I thought it could work with a big enough bank of digits of PI on both sides. If transfer was expensive, and calculating digits was cheap then you…

Another potential problem with that approach is that it is possible that not all finite files appear in the digits of pi. It is believed that all appear but it hans't been proven.

Re: The Stick of Jan Sloot (2004)

#16

Post by tzs »

A little OT: do the information theory based proofs of limits on how effective compression can be also prove that backwards time travel is impossible?

If backwards time travel were possible then your "compression algorithm" could simply be deleting the file. To recover the file go back in time to before it was deleted and make a copy.

With this you can "compress" giant files down to just a short description of a place and time where the file was on your computer.

Re: The Stick of Jan Sloot (2004)

#17

Post by Mattasher »

tzs wrote: post #16

A little OT: do the information theory based proofs of limits on how effective compression can be also prove that backwards time travel is impossible? If backwards time travel were possible then your "compression algorithm" could simply be deleting the file. To recover the file go back in time to before it was deleted and make a copy. With this you can "compress" giant files down to just a short description of a plac…

Interesting idea, but you're not getting any entropy for free by going back in time. If you wanted to map every possible file of a set length to a specific time and location where it's stored, you'd still need, in general, the same number of bits as you would for the file itself, because you'd have to describe that many distinct time/location pairs.

Re: The Stick of Jan Sloot (2004)

#18

Post by projektfu »

Weird, I once read about Roel Pieper, completely randomly, in a trade magazine for Unix that I think had very few issues. He had just become head of Unix Systems Laboratories. I don't know why that article stuck with me for so long. I didn't know he was also a professor, I thought he was just an exec. Turns out he was professor of business, not computer science, though his original university education was in CS.

Re: The Stick of Jan Sloot (2004)

#19

Post by [deleted] »

adamgordonbell wrote: post #11

I once had an idea for a file transfer system based on digits of pi that sounds the same as this idea. You'd give everybody DVDs of digits of pi (or they could calculate them themselves) , and then transfer files faster by just sending them the offset into pi. At the time I thought it could work with a big enough bank of digits of PI on both sides. If transfer was expensive, and calculating digits was cheap then you…

[deleted]

Re: The Stick of Jan Sloot (2004)

#20

Post by bsza »

If the laws and initial state of the universe can be expressed in few enough bits, then all you need to store is a title and a date. Run a simulation of the universe, fast forward to the date the movie was released, use an AI to find a theater playing it, and digitize the tape. It may take longer to run than the current age of the universe, but eventually you’ll get it.
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