ericmurphy
Posts: 2460
Joined: Oct. 2005
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Just to get you started, Dave, you might want to read this little snippet:
| Quote | hi roger
this is essential reading. although i hadn't read shannon's work before i wrote about binary exchange, it is an excellent discussion of the ideas.
the important concept is entropy (as in the second law of thermodynamics). basically it's a measure of messiness (i explain to non
scientists/engineers as "weeds grow"). in a closed system entropy increases. the only way to make entropy decrease is to add energy. that
was the criticism of my paper on binary xml - entropy applies to energy.
well it's also used in information theory as a measure if order. something that is well ordered (has little information) has low entropy. something that has a lot of information (not well ordered) has high entropy. this then dictates the degree to which something can be compressed. if there is a lot of information you can't compress it very well. if there's not much information then it compresses very well. |
(my emph.)
Now, let me ask you this, Dave? Which is more "well ordered": a Winston Churchill speech, or a digital recording of broadband white noise?
I can see now that this is going to turn into another "Portuguese moment" for Dave, where he will never, ever admit he's wrong here, and months from now will claim he's "won" this particular debate. That's okay, though. At least he answered my question, even though he answered it wrong.
I wonder if he'll ever answer my question as to whether 500 is a larger number than sixteen, or smaller…
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2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
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