On Thu, May 19, 2011, Warren Kumari wrote:
Just wanted to say yes, this is entirely what I meant. Of course the smaller the file the more pointless it gets but still... If the file was 1GB instead of just 7 bytes I'm wondering if a regular old workstation could put it back together in any reasonable amount of time with the equation.
While many folk have said "You've just invented compression", I'm going to be a little more specific -- "Wavelet compression".
Well, yes. There's other types of function driven compression rather than dictionary driven compression (which is just function driven compression :-), eg iterated function systems. The problem is finding a method that works for a variety of data. From what I understand, (lossless) wavelet compression isn't fantastic for arbitrary types of data. I'd suggest the original poster pull up some literature introducing them to information theory and compression techniques in general. Heck, even the wikipedia article on lossless compression is a good starting point. I think once the original poster understands some of the basics of information theory and coding as it relates to representing say 1GB from 7 bytes as given above, they may be better equipped to ask more specific (and useful!) questions. HTH, Adrian