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ZeoSync Makes Claim of Compression Breakthrough
Posted by
michael
on Tue Jan 08, 2002 08:09 AM
from the claims-easy-proof-hard dept.
from the claims-easy-proof-hard dept.
dsb42 writes: "Reuters is reporting that ZeoSync has announced a breakthrough in data compression that allows for 100:1 lossless compression of random data. If this is true, our bandwidth problems just got a lot smaller (or our streaming video just became a lot clearer)..." This story has been submitted many times due to the astounding claims - Zeosync explicitly claims that they've superseded Claude Shannon's work. The "technical description" from their website is less than impressive. I think the odds of this being true are slim to none, but here you go, math majors and EE's - something to liven up your drab dull existence today. Update: 01/08 13:18 GMT by M : I should include a link to their press release.
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ZeoSync Makes Claim of Compression Breakthrough
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Re:Current ratio? (Score:5, Informative)
For lossless (e.g. zip, not jpg, mpg, divx, mp3 etc etc) you are looking at about 2:1 for 8-bit random, much better (50:1?) for ascii text (e.g. 7-bit non-random).
If you're willing to accept loss, then the sky's the limit, mp3 @ 128kbps is about 12:1 compared to a 44k 16bit wave.
Re:Current ratio? (Score:5, Informative)
Bit-mapped graphic files (BMP) vary widely in compressibility depending on the complexity of the graphics, and whether you are willing to lose more-or-less invisible details. A BMP of black text on white paper is likely to zip (losslessly) by close to 100:1 -- and fax machines perform a very simple compression algorithm (sending white*number of pixels, black*number of pixels, etc.) that also approaches 100:1 ratios for typical memos. Photographs (where every pixel is colored a little differently) don't compress nearly as well; the JPEG format exceeds 10:1 compression, but I think it loses a little fine detail. And JPEG's compress by less than 10% when zipped.
IMHO, 100:1 as an average (compressing your whole harddrive, for example), is far beyond "pretty damn good" and well into "unbelievable". I know of only two situations where I'd expect 100:1. One is the case of a bit-map of black and white text (e.g., faxes), the other is with lossy compression of video when you apply enough CPU power to use every trick known.
how can this be? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:how can this be? (Score:4, Insightful)
Try compressing a wav or mpeg file with gzip. Doesn't work too well, becuase the data is "random", at least in the sense of the raw numbers. When you look at patterns that the data forms, (i.e. pictures, and relative motion) then you can "compress" that.
Here's my test for random compression
$ dd if=/dev/urandom of=random bs=1M count=10
$ du random
11M random
11M total
$ gzip -9 random
$ du random.gz
11M random.gz
11M total
$
no pattern == no compression
prove me wrong, please
Re:how can this be? (Score:5, Funny)
So a perl programm can't be compressed?
Re:how can this be? (Score:5, Funny)
Simple, it can't be (Score:5, Insightful)
1:100 average compression on all data is just impossible. And I don't mean "improbable" or "I don't belive that", it is impossible. The reason is pigeon hole principle, for simplicity assume that we are talking about 1000bit files, although you can compress some of these 1000bit files to just 10bits, you cannot possibly compress all of them to 10bits, as with 10 bits is just 1024 different configurations while 1000bits call for representations of 2 different configurations. If you can compress the first 1024, there is simply no room to represent remaining 2-1024 files.
So every loseless compression algorithm that can represent some files with other files less than original in length must expand some other files. Higher compression on some files means number of files that do not compress at all is also greater. Average compression rate other than 1 is only achiveable if there is some redundancy in original encoding. I guess you can call that redundancy "a pattern." Rar, zip, gzip etc. all achieve less than 1 compressed/original length on average because there is redundancy in originals : programs that have some instructions, prefixes with common occurance, pictures that are represented with full dword although they use a few thousand colors, sound files almost devoid of very low and very high numbers because of recording conditions etc. No compression algorithm can achive less than 1 ratio averaged over all possible strings. It is a simple consequence of pigeon hole principle and cannot be tricked.
Re:how can this be? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:how can this be? (Score:5, Informative)
Well firstly I'd say the press release gives a pretty clear picture of the reality of their technology: It has such an overuse of supposedly TM'd (anyone want to double check the filings? I'm going to guess that there are none) "technoterms" like "TunerAccelerator" and "BinaryAccelerator" that it just is screaming hoax (or creative deception), not to mention a use of Flash that makes you want to punch something. Note that they give themselves huge openings such as always saying "practically random" data: What the hell does that mean?
I think one way to understand it (Because all of us at some point or another have thought up some half-assed, ridiculous way of compressing any data down to 1/10th -> "Maybe I'll find a denominator and store that with a floating point representation of..."), and I'm saying this as not a mathematician or compression expert : Let's say for instance that this compression ratio is 10 to 1 on random data, and I have every possible random document 100 bytes long -> That means I have 6.6680144328798542740798517907213e+240 different random documents (256^100). So I compress them all into 10 byte documents, but the maximum variations of a 10 byte documents is 1208925819614629174706176 : There isn't the entropy in a 10-byte document to store 6.6680144328798542740798517907213e+240 different possibilities (it is simply impossible, no matter how many QuantumStreamTM HyperTechTM TechoBabbleTM TermsTM) : You end up needed, tada, 100 bytes to have the entropy to possibly store all variants of a 100 byte document, but of course most compression routines put in various logic codes and actually increase the size of the document. In the case of the ZeoSync claim though they're apparently claiming that somehow you'll represent 6.6680144328798542740798517907213e+240 different variations in a single byte : So somehow 64 tells you "Oh yeah, that's variation 5.5958572359823958293589253e+236!". Maybe they're using SubSpatialQuantumBitsTM.
Re:how can this be? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:how can this be? Answer: BitPerfectTM (Score:4, Insightful)
"Singular-bit-variance" and "single-point-variance" mean errors.
The trick is that they aren't randomly throwing away data. They are introducing a carefully selected error to change the data to a version that happens to compress really well. If you have 3 bits, and introduce a 1 bit error in just the right spot, it will easily compress to 1 bit.
000 and 111 both happen to compress really well, so...
000: leave as is. Store it as a single zero bit
001: add error in bit 3 turns it into 000
010: add error in bit 2 turns it into 000
011: add error in bit 1 turns it into 111
100: add error in bit 1 turns it into 000
101: add error in bit 2 turns it into 111
110: add error in bit 3 turns it into 111
111: leave as it. Store it as a single one bit.
They are using some pretty hairy math for their list of strings that compress the best. The problem is that there is no easy way to find the string almost the same as your data that just happens to be really compressable. That is why they are having "temporal" problems for anything except short test cases.
Basicly it means they *might* have a breakthrough for audio/video, but it's useless for executables etc.
-
100:1 ? I don't think so... (Score:5, Insightful)
compress(A) = B
Now, B is 1/100th the size of A, right, but it too, is random, right (size 100).
On we go:
compress(B) = C (size is now 10)
compress(C) = D (size 1).
So everything compresses into 1 byte.
Or am I missing something.
Mr Thinly Sliced
Re:100:1 ? I don't think so... (Score:5, Insightful)
ZeoSync has developed the TunerAccelerator(TM) in conjunction with some traditional state-of-the-art compression methodologies. This work includes the advancement of Fractals, Wavelets, DCT, FFT, Subband Coding, and Acoustic Compression that utilizes synthetic instruments. These are methods that are derived from classical physics and statistical mechanics and quantum theory, and at the highest level, this mathematical breakthrough has enabled two classical scientific methods to be improved, Huffman Compression and Arithmetic Compression, both industry standards for the past fifty years.
They just threw in a bunch of compression buzzwords without even bothering to check whether they have anything to do with lossless compression...
Re:100:1 ? I don't think so... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:100:1 ? I don't think so... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:100:1 ? I don't think so... (Score:4, Funny)
01101011
Pop that baby in an executable shell script. Its a self extracting
./configure
./make
./make install
Shh. Don't tell anyone.
Mr Thinly Sliced
Re:100:1 ? I don't think so... (Score:4, Funny)
So everything compresses into 1 byte.
Duh, are you like an idiot or something?
When you send me a one-byte copy of, say, The Matrix, you also have to tell me how many times it was compressed so I know how many times to run the decompressor!
So everything compresses to *two* bytes. Maybe even three bytes if something is compressed more than 256 times. That's only required for files whose initial size is more than 100^256, though, so two bytes should do it for most applications.
Jeez, the quality of math and CS education has really gone down the tubes.
Re:100:1 ? I don't think so... (Score:4, Funny)
You're the moron, moron. When you get the one byte compressed file, you run the decompressor once to get the number of additional times to run the decompressor.
What are they teaching the kids today? Shannon-shmannon nonsense, no doubt. They should be doing useful things, like Marketing and Management Science. There's no point in being able to count if you don't have any money.
Re:100:1 ? I don't think so... (Score:5, Funny)
Step 1: Steal Underpants
Step 3: Profit!
We're still working on step 2
Time for a new law of information theory? (Score:5, Funny)
Tech details from the crappy Flash-only website (Score:5, Informative)
Given a number of pigeons within a sealed room that has a single hole, and which allows only one pigeon at a time to escape the room, how many unique markers are required to individually mark all of the pigeons as each escapes, one pigeon at a time?
After some time a person will reasonably conclude that:
"One unique marker is required for each pigeon that flies through the hole, if there are one hundred pigeons in the group then the answer is one hundred markers". In our three dimensional world we can visualize an example. If we were to take a three-dimensional cube and collapse it into a two-dimensional edge, and then again reduce it into a one-dimensional point, and believe that we are going to successfully recover either the square or cube from the single edge, we would be sorely mistaken.
This three-dimensional world limitation can however be resolved in higher dimensional space. In higher, multi-dimensional projective theory, it is possible to create string nodes that describe significant components of simultaneously identically yet different mathematical entities. Within this space it is possible and is not a theoretical impossibility to create a point that is simultaneously a square and also a cube. In our example all three substantially exist as unique entities yet are linked together. This simultaneous yet differentiated occurrence is the foundation of ZeoSync's Relational Differentiation Encoding(TM) (RDE(TM)) technology. This proprietary methodology is capable of intentionally introducing a multi-dimensional patterning so that the nodes of a target binary string simultaneously and/or substantially occupy the space of a Low Kolmogorov Complexity construct. The difference between these occurrences is so small that we will have for all intents and purposes successfully encoded lossley universal compression. The limitation to this Pigeonhole Principle circumvention is that the multi-dimensional space can never be super saturated, and that all of the pigeons can not be simultaneously present at which point our multi-dimensional circumvention of the pigeonhole problem breaks down.
Re:I think their investment model requires pigeons (Score:5, Interesting)
If you look at this sequence as a one-dimensional series: 00101101, it's pretty hard (at least for a processor) to distinguish a pattern there... it's a pseudo-random sequence. But if I paint it this way, in 2d: (0,0) (1,0) (1,1) (0,1), I can step back and see a square with sides of length one.
AFAIK, what these people are claiming is that they've developed a way to step WAY back, to n-dimensions, and have patterns emerge from seemingly random data.
It's not the random-number generation that's significant here... it's the purported ability to compress a seemingly random sequence. RLE typically doesn't fare very well with pure random data because it only looks for certain types of redundancy.
If I haven't missed the boat here, it's really a very interesting achievment.
Is this April 1st? (Score:3, Informative)
The punchline to the joke was always along the lines of
The proofs in the pudding. (Score:5, Funny)
ZeoSync announced today that the "random data" they were referencing is string of all zero's. Technically this could be produced randomly and our algorythm reduces this to just a couple of characters, a 100 times compression!!
The pressrelease (Score:4, Informative)
International Team of Scientists Have Discovered
How to Reduce the Expression of Practically Random Information Sequences
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - January 7, 2001 - ZeoSync Corp., a Florida-based scientific research company, today announced that it has succeeded in reducing the expression of practically random information sequences. Although currently demonstrating its technology on very small bit strings, ZeoSync expects to overcome the existing temporal restraints of its technology and optimize its algorithms to lead to significant changes in how data is stored and transmitted.
Existing compression technologies are currently dependent upon the mapping and encoding of redundantly occurring mathematical structures, which are limited in application to single or several pass reduction. ZeoSync's approach to the encoding of practically random sequences is expected to evolve into the reduction of already reduced information across many reduction iterations, producing a previously unattainable reduction capability. ZeoSync intentionally randomizes naturally occurring patterns to form entropy-like random sequences through its patent pending technology known as Zero Space Tuner(TM). Once randomized, ZeoSync's BinaryAccelerator(TM) encodes these singular-bit-variance strings within complex combinatorial series to result in massively reduced BitPerfect(TM) equivalents. The combined TunerAccelerator(TM) is expected to be commercially available during 2003.
According to Peter St. George, founder and CEO of ZeoSync and lead developer of the technology: "What we've developed is a new plateau in communications theory. Through the manipulation of binary information and translation to complex multidimensional mathematical entities, we are expecting to produce the enormous capacity of analogue signaling, with the benefit of the noise free integrity of digital communications. We perceive this advancement as a significant breakthrough to the historical limitations of digital communications as it was originally detailed by Dr. Claude Shannon in his treatise on Information Theory." [C.E. Shannon. A Mathematical Theory of Communication. Bell System Technical Journal, 27:379-423, 623-656, 1948]
"There are potentially fantastic ramifications of this new approach in both communications and storage," St. George continued. "By significantly reducing the size of data strings, we can envision products that will reduce the cost of communications and, more importantly, improve the quality of life for people around the world regardless of where they live."
Current technologies that enable the compression of data for transmission and storage are generally limited to compression ratios of ten-to-one. ZeoSync's Zero Space Tuner(TM) and BinaryAccelerator(TM) solutions, once fully developed, will offer compression ratios that are anticipated to approach the hundreds-to-one range.
Many types of digital communications channels and computing systems could benefit from this discovery. The technology could enable the telecommunications industry to massively reduce huge amounts of information for delivery over limited bandwidth channels while preserving perfect quality of information.
ZeoSync has developed the TunerAccelerator(TM) in conjunction with some traditional state-of-the-art compression methodologies. This work includes the advancement of Fractals, Wavelets, DCT, FFT, Subband Coding, and Acoustic Compression that utilizes synthetic instruments. These are methods that are derived from classical physics and statistical mechanics and quantum theory, and at the highest level, this mathematical breakthrough has enabled two classical scientific methods to be improved, Huffman Compression and Arithmetic Compression, both industry standards for the past fifty years.
All of these traditional methods are being enhanced by ZeoSync through collaboration with top experts from Harvard University, MIT, University of California at Berkley, Stanford University, University of Florida, University of Michigan, Florida Atlantic University, Warsaw Polytechnic, Moscow State University and Nankin and Peking Universities in China, Johannes Kepler University in Lintz Austria, and the University of Arkansas, among others.
Dr. Piotr Blass, chief technology advisor at ZeoSync, said "Our recent accomplishment is so significant that highly randomized information sequences, which were once considered non-reducible by the scientific community, are now massively reducible using advanced single-bit- variance encoding and supporting technologies."
"The technologies that are being developed at ZeoSync are anticipated to ultimately provide a means to perform multi-pass data encoding and compression on practically random data sets with applicability to nearly every industry," said Jim Slemp, president of Radical Systems, Inc. "The evaluation of the complex algorithms is currently being performed with small practically random data sets due to the analysis times on standard computers. Based on our internally validated test results of these components, we have demonstrated a single-point-variance when encoding random data into a smaller data set. The ability to encode single-point-variance data is expected to yield multi-pass capable systems after temporal issues are addressed."
"We would like to invite additional members of the scientific community to join us in our efforts to revolutionize digital technology," said St. George. "There is a lot of exciting work to be done."
About ZeoSync
Headquartered in West Palm Beach, Florida, ZeoSync is a scientific research company dedicated to advancements in communications theory and application. Additional information can be found on the company's Web site at www.ZeoSync.com or can be obtained from the company at +1 (561) 640-8464.
This press release may contain forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that such forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including, without limitation, financing, completion of technology development, product demand, competition, and other risks and uncertainties.
In this house we obey the 2nd law of thermodynamic (Score:3, Insightful)
Been there, done that... (Score:4, Informative)
This isn't limited to the field of compression of course. There are people that come up with "unbreakable" encryption, infinite gain amplifier (is that gain in V and I?), and all sorts of perpetual motion machines. The sad fact is that compression and encryption are not well understood enough for these ideas to be killed before a company is started or stacked on the claims.
Some background reading: (Score:5, Interesting)
Not random data (Score:4, Redundant)
ZeoSync is not claiming to reduce random data 100-to-1. They are claiming to reduce "practically random" data 100-to-1, and Reuters appears to have misreported it. What "practically random" data should mean is data randomly selected from that used in practice. What ZeoSync may mean by "practically random" is data randomly selected from that used in their intended applications. So their press release is not mathematically impossible; it just means they've found a good way to remove more information redundancy in some data.
The proof that 100-to-1 compression of random data is impossible is so simple as to be trivial: There are 2^N files of length N bits. There are 2^(N/100) files of length N/100 bits. Clearly not all 2^N files can be compressed to length N/100.
Egads... (Score:5, Funny)
The company's claims, which are yet to be demonstrated in any public forum...
Call the editors at Wired... I think we have an early nominee for the 2k2 vaporware list.
ZeoSync expects to overcome the existing temporal restraints of its technology
Ah... So even if it's not outright bullshit, it's too slow to use?
"Either this research is the next 'Cold Fusion' scam that dies away or it's the foundation for a Nobel Prize," said David Hill...
Somehow I think this is going to turn out more Pons-and-Fleischmann than Watson-and-Crick. Almost anytime there's a press release with such startling claims but no peer review or public demonstration, someone has forgotten to stir the jar.
When they become laughingstocks, and their careers are forever wrecked, I hope they realized they deserve it. And I hope their investors sue them.
I should really post after I've had my coffee... I sound mean...
OK,
- B
Re:Egads... (Score:5, Funny)
See you all later - I have some coding to do!
OK,
- B
What is compression (Score:3, Interesting)
So, if there is no redundancy, there is nothing to remove (if you want to remain lossless).
When you use some text, you may compres by remving some letter evn if tht lead to bad ortogrph. That is because English (as other langages) is redundant. When compressing some periodical signal, you may give only one period and tell that the signal is then repeated. When compressing bytes, there are specific methods (RLE, Huffman's trees,...)
But, in all these situations, there was some redundancy to remove...
A compression algorithm may not be perfect (it usually has to add some info to tell how the original data was compressed). Then, recompressing with another compression algorithm (or sometimes, the same will do the trick) may improve the compression. But the information quantity inside the data is the lower limit.
Now, take a true random data stream of n+1 bits. Even if you know the value of the n first bits, you can't predict the value of n+1. In other words, there is no way that could allow the express these n+1 bits with n (or less) bits. By definition, true random data can't be compressed.
And, to finish, compression ratio of 1:100 can be easily archived with some data... take a sequence of 200 bytes at 0x00... It may be compressed to 0xC8 0x00. Compression ratio is really only meaningful when comparing different algorithms compressing the same data stream.
Might be possible... but I doubt it... (Score:3, Interesting)
Take very large prime numbers and the like, huge strings of almost random numbers that can often be written as a trivial (2^n)-1 type formula. Maybe the massaging of the figures is simply finding a very large number that can be expressed like the above with an offset other than "-1" to get the correct "BitPerfect" data. I was toying around with this idea when there was a fad for expressing DeCSS code in unusual ways, but ran out of math before I could get it to work.
The above theory maybe bull when it comes to the crunch, but if it could be made to work, then the compression figures are bang in the ball park for this. They laughed at Goddard remember? But I have to admit, I think replacing Einstein with the Monty Python foot better fits my take on this at present...
What happens when you run it backwards? (Score:4, Funny)
They are using time travel! (Score:5, Funny)
Using time travel, high compression of arbitrary data is trivial. Simply record the location (in both space and time) of the computer with the data, and the name of the file, and then replace the file with a note saying when and where it existed. To decompress, you just pop back in time and space to before the time of the deletion and copy the file.
Directed evolution (Score:5, Funny)
Just think of it as an innumeracy tax on
venture capitalists.
ZeoTech Scientific Team fake? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've not even had time to check the rest yet.
Re:ZeoTech Scientific Team fake? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, that's because they mis-spelled his name. Seriously, I bet they are really trying to refer to Wlodzimierz Holsztynski, who posts to Polish newsgroups from the address "sennajawa@yahoo.com". His last contribution to the one Usenet thread that mentions "zeosync" and his name uses the word "nonsens" a lot [google.com], also the phrase "nie autoryzowalem", and the sentence "Bylem ich konsultantem, moze znowu bede, a moze nie, z nimi nie wiadom." Somebody who really knows Polish could probably have a field day with this and other posts...
I'm getting the idea that some people on the scientific team might be better termed "random people we sent email to who actually responded once or twice".
Re:ZeoTech Scientific Team fake? (Score:5, Informative)
Their claims are 100% accurate (Score:3, Interesting)
Their claims are 100% accurate (they can compress random data 100:1) only if (by their definition) random data comprises a very small percentage of all possible data sequences. The other 99.9999% of "non-random" sequences would need to expand. You can show this by a simple counting argument.
This is covered in great detail in the comp.compression [faqs.org] FAQ. Take a look at the information on the WEB Technologies DataFiles/16 compressor (notice the similarity of claims!) if you're unconvinced. You can find it in Section 8 of Part 1 [faqs.org] of the FAQ.
--Joeteam members (Score:3, Interesting)
so either someone has lent their names to weirdoes without paying attention or there is something of substance hidden behind the PR ugliness. after all the PR is aimed toward investors, not toward sentient human beings, and is most probably not under the control of the scientific team.
How to compress ANY data to one bit (Score:3, Funny)
(Of course, this DOES create all sorts of other problems, but I'm going to ignore those, because they'd go and spoil things.)
Infinite monkey compression. (Score:4, Funny)
It's rare to see such a baldfaced scam (Score:4, Interesting)
The beauty of this scam is that zeospace claims that they can't even do it themselves, yet. They've only managed to compress very short strings. So, they can't be called to compress large random files because, well gosh, they just haven't gotten the big file compressor work yet. So, you can't prove that they are full of shit.
Beautiful flash animation, though. I particularly like the fact that clicking the 'skip intro' button does absolutely nothing -- you get the flash garbage anyway.
thad
Not possible (Score:5, Informative)
The proof goes like this:
- Assume someone claims a compressor that will compress any X-byte message to Y bytes where Y<X
- There are 2^(8*X) possible messages X bytes long.
- There are 2^(8*Y) possible messages Y bytes long.
- Since Y is smaller than X, this means that no 1 to 1 mapping between the two sets can exist, because they're not equally large.
You see this simply if I claim a compressor that can compress any 2-byte message to 1 byte.There are then 65536 possible input-messages, but onle 256 possible outputs. So It is mathemathically certain that 99.7% of the messages can not be represented in 1 byte. (regardless of how I choose to encode them)
These claims surface ever so often. They're bullshit every time. It's even a FAQ-entry on sci.compression
From the press release: Huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyone remember the OWS hoax? (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in 1991 or 1992, in the days of 2400 bps modems, MS-DOS 5.0, and BBS'es, a "radical new compression tool" called OWS made the rounds. It claimed to have been written by some guy in Japan and use breakthroughs in fractal compression, often achieving 99% compression! "Better than ARJ! Better than PKzip!" Of course all my friends and I downloaded it immediately. Now we can send gam^H^H^Hfiles to each other in 10 minutes instead of 10 hours!
Now I was in the ninth grade, and compression technology was a complete mystery to me then, so I suspected nothing at first. I installed it and read the docs. The commands and such were pretty much like PKzip. I promptly took one of my favorite ga^H^Hdirectories, *copied it to a different place*, compressed it, deleted it, and uncompressed it without problems. The compressed file was exactly 1024 bytes. Hmm, what a coincidence!
The output looked kind of funny though:
Compressing file abc.wad by 99%.
Compressing file cde.wad by 99%.
Compressing file start.bat by 99%.
etc. Wait, start.bat is only 10 characters, that's like one bit! And why is *every* file compressed by 99%? Oh well, must be a display bug.
So I called my friend and arranged to send him this g^Hfile via Zmodem, and it took only a few seconds. But he couldn't uncompress it on the other side. "Sector Not Found", he said. Oh well, try it again. Same result. Another bug.
So I decided that this wasn't working out and stopped using OWS. Their user interface needed some work anyway, plus I was a little suspicious of compression bugs. The evidence was right there for me to make the now-obvious conclusion, but it didn't hit me until a few *weeks* later when all the BBS sysops were posting bulletins warning that OWS was a hoax.
As it turns out, OWS was storing the FAT information in the compressed files, so that when people do reality checks it will appear to re-create the deleted files, as it did for me. But when they try to uncompress a file that actually isn't there or has had its FAT entries moved around, you get the "Sector Not Found" error and you're screwed. If I hadn't tried to send a compressed file to a friend I might have been duped into "compressing" and deleting half my software or more.
All in all, a pretty cruel but effective joke. If it happened today somebody would be in federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison. Maybe it happened then too...
(Yes, this is slightly off-topic, but where else am I going to post this?)