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A cautionary tail

Posted: Mon Aug 09, 2010 12:09 pm
by icarus
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/4006271 ... ond-conman

Judge David McKegg will tomorrow sentence a Richmond businessman convicted in Nelson District Court of cheating investors out of $5.3 million by claiming he had invented a revolutionary form of data compression - a key issue in computing.

The investments were based on Whitley's claims to investors that he had invented and patented a revolutionary "lossless" method of compressing data.

If the technology was genuine it would have been worth billions of dollars.

Posted: Mon Aug 09, 2010 3:30 pm
by JohnP
I remember a company claiming some years back that they had a lossless compression technique that made the file smaller and smaller with every additional pass. Unsurprisingly, turned out to be BS.

Posted: Mon Aug 09, 2010 4:32 pm
by Skipjack
Its "tale", not "tail". A tail would be a thing attached to a dog.
Otherwise, I agree, dont believe everything people tell you without a) understanding what they are claiming, b) having it reviewed by someone who does understand it and generally questioning their claims.
Some people are so gullible. That is why the nigerians still spam arround asking people to help them with the transaction of billions of dollars...
Sometimes I am wondering whether people that are that stupid really dont deserve any better though. When I look arround my hometown, where I see one casino, one gambling place, one strip club and one "contact bar" next to each other, I sometimes get the feeling that people really want this and deserve this. Maybe they really deserve getting ripped off like that.

Posted: Mon Aug 09, 2010 5:03 pm
by WizWom
The monkey was going through the forest, jumping from tree to tree, having fun, when suddenly he heard a voice behind him say, "Watch out, that branch is rotten!"
The advice was just in time, and he was able to grab a second branch as the first broke.

"Who said that?"

"Oh, it's just me. I'm a cautionary tail," said his tail.

Posted: Tue Aug 10, 2010 10:49 am
by MSimon
That is why the nigerians still spam arround asking people to help them with the transaction of billions of dollars...
I'll start to worry if they begin to offer low interest no collateral loans for a few of my pet projects.

Of course the loan arranger will need a fee.

Posted: Tue Aug 10, 2010 5:40 pm
by TallDave
These compression outfits pop up every couple years. They're a long-running joke in VC circles, as the mathematical limits of compression have been known for some time.

Posted: Tue Aug 10, 2010 5:49 pm
by GIThruster
The energy and propulsion fields are both full of this sort of stuff. There are dozens of active scams running at any given moment. The Searle scam has been running for years and years now, as has the Russian version of the same. Some are treading the line and hard to understand even over time. I still don't know what's with Steorn or EEStor.

Steorn should have been dead by now. Didn't they do Puthoff's "One-Watt Challenge"? Odd what must be happening to keep it alive.

Posted: Wed Aug 11, 2010 1:46 am
by bcolias
I developed an algorithm that will compress a gigobyte of data into one bit. Unfortunately it will only compress a specific gigobyte of data.

Posted: Wed Aug 11, 2010 11:58 am
by KitemanSA
bcolias wrote:I developed an algorithm that will compress a gigobyte of data into one bit.
GIGObyte? As in Garbage In Garbage Out byte?

Posted: Wed Aug 11, 2010 5:33 pm
by D Tibbets
Ha!
I can do better than that. I can compress twice that number of specific gigobyte long values into one binary bit!

Dan Tibbets

Posted: Wed Aug 11, 2010 10:22 pm
by MSimon
You gentlemen are obviously incompetent. I can compress TWO multigiabyte messages into one bit.

Any one want to raise some money for my latest advance in the field?

===

I see Dan beat me to it. What more proof is needed?

Posted: Wed Aug 11, 2010 10:38 pm
by Aero
Anyone for a googolplex of gigabytes?
And just how big is that anyway? How many bytes?

http://wapedia.mobi/en/Googolplex

And another question, "How long would it take for the fastest processor to write googolplex to high speed memory?" That is, without using scientific notation.

Posted: Wed Aug 11, 2010 10:42 pm
by MSimon
Aero wrote:Anyone for a googolplex of gigabytes?
And just how big is that anyway? How many bytes?
How much time do you have?

Posted: Wed Aug 11, 2010 10:48 pm
by Aero
MSimon wrote:
Aero wrote:Anyone for a googolplex of gigabytes?
And just how big is that anyway? How many bytes?
How much time do you have?
Not enough!

Posted: Thu Aug 12, 2010 12:33 am
by KitemanSA
Aero wrote:Anyone for a googolplex of gigabytes?
And just how big is that anyway? How many bytes?
10^(10^100 + 9)... I think :lol: