[UFO Chicago] CEO's Report for January 24th, 2002

[Nick Moffitt]

One successful metric for "what is compression" is this:

	Any method by which a smaller volume that *can be
deterministically expanded to the original with no extra information*
can be considered compression.

	This of course, leads to discussions about lossy vs lossless
compression.  Is the original the exact string of bits, as in a
gzipped text file or binary, or is it the experience of the original,
as in a vorbis file made from a CD?

	I would say that, since one could take a linear-encoded
laserdisc and turn it to an angular-encoded disc, that this can be
considered a form of compression.  It's necessarily going to be lossy,
though, since you lose 2/3 of the outer ring's resolution (preserving
the overall experience of the information).

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