New compression method

[Max Lobovsky]

Originally Posted by Joe Ross

I'm suprised that site doesn't have a file full of pseudo-random data. While very complete in testing different programs, the files it chooses seem rather arbitrary.

I'm not sure what you mean by "pseudo", but it's mathematically impossible for a compressor to consistently compress random data. I don't know much information theory at all, but i know that random data is essentially pure information, and there is no way to encode pure information into a smaller amount of information. (This is incidentally why already compressed files (including lossy media compression for images, sound, etc) don't compress well. They have already converted the data to near pure information.)

The site's choice of files seems pretty logical to me. It has a selection of files that are commonly compressed. It might be interesting if they tried recompressing some very common compressed file(s), maybe like the Fedora Linux distribution, or Microsoft Office 2k3.