Re: Had an idea - looking for a math buff to tell me if it's possible with today's technology.

[Steven Bellovin <smb () cs columbia edu>]

On May 18, 2011, at 4:07 32PM, Landon Stewart wrote:

> Lets say you had a file that was 1,000,000,000 characters consisting of
> 8,000,000,000bits.  What if instead of transferring that file through the
> interwebs you transmitted a mathematical equation to tell a computer on the
> other end how to *construct* that file.  First you'd feed the file into a
> cruncher of some type to reduce the pattern of 8,000,000,000 bits into an
> equation somehow.  Sure this would take time, I realize that.  The equation
> would then be transmitted to the other computer where it would use its
> mad-math-skillz to *figure out the answer* which would theoretically be the
> same pattern of bits.  Thus the same file would emerge on the other end.
>
> The real question here is how long would it take for a regular computer to
> do this kind of math?
>
> Just a weird idea I had.  If it's a good idea then please consider this
> intellectual property.  LOL

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity

                --Steve Bellovin, https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb