"Connor McDonald" <connor_mcdonald_at_yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:3F27A186.29E6_at_yahoo.com...
> Tanel Poder wrote:
> >
> > > What I really like about lossless compressors is the fact that you can
> > > compress a file, then compress it again and again and again until you
> > > end up with a 1 KB file (roughly). This can be copied to a floppy and
> > > your entire database cold backup sent to whoever you like. No need for
> > > all that NFS stuff - just a few passes through the compressor program
> > > does the trick.
> >
> > Is this a joke?
> >
> > Tanel.
>
> Yes and no.
>
> Yes, Norman is joking.
>
> No, there have been products through the ages that have claimed
> 'infinite' compression, where any sequence of bits can be compressed to
> a smaller amount over and over...such products tend to make it to the
> marketing stage, but not the production stage :-)
He may also be making reference to the fact that you cannot make a lossless
compression program that will guarantee that the compressed file is smaller
than the source data, if you could the joke would be possible.
--
Niall Litchfield
Oracle DBA
Audit Commission UK
Received on Wed Jul 30 2003 - 06:34:44 CDT
