Well, folks, this one is going to be boring for most of you. But the
compression jackass, Jules “Julie-baby-dumbass” Gilbert has been repeatedly
bugging me. And today, he replied to my latest “fuck off and stop sending me
mail” with a long-winded proselytizing response in which he requested that I
be courteous and not publicize the discussion of his “work”.

Fuck that

The entire correspondence is below.

Before I get to it: the short summary of what Jules is doing
is munging a file in a way that makes it amenable to recompression. In
the classic sense, this is removing a trivial bit of information from the
file, which thus allows is to be re-compressed just a tiny bit
more.

The catch is, of course, you can’t un-compress it without re-introducing
the information that you removed. In his case, you need to repeatedly
un-compress, un-munge, un-compress, un-munge, and so on –
exactly the right number of times. From some of his emails, he
does this hundreds to thousands of times.

You can’t un-compress his stuff without knowing how many times the compressor
ran. And how many times is that? Well, gosh, to know that, you need to know
some extra information. Anyone want to take a bet on what the
relationship is between the amount of additional compression he can get, and
the number of repetitions of his system? Anyone?

Ok. On to the transcript.

On August 11, he sent me the following (which was already in
response to my previous “stop sending me this bullshit” message of a week
earlier):

Hi Mark,

I’m the guy you don’t believe.

Well I have a question for you… What can I expect once you do believe me? I know what I want. I want a personal favor. I don’t care about a retraction, no, what I want is for you to do yourself! a
favor.

I’m pretty confident that in the next few weeks you’ll read that I have demonstrated my program, not just once, but again and again, to several people. And the demos will be done under “severe” circumstances, two machines connected by a floppy, etc…

So now, my favor…

I want you to read the Bible. That’s it.

I know, we live in a world that is incredibly corrupt — as soon as I wrote about “wanting a personal favor” I thought — he’ll think, but no. I want you to read the Bible.

If you are agreeable to this I will arrange for people I don’t know, actual strangers, to be in touch with you to verify the facts surrounding the demonstrations. Also, if you have someone in New England you would to suggest to attend, by all means, suggest away.

I am afraid that I am not a fan of Google. They are gay-friendly and also they suppressed lot’s of stuff about Obama before he was nominated, and again, before he was elected. So, if you please, no one from Google is welcome. Yes, I know, I use their net-mail.

I don’t like MS either — I admit, I’m pretty much an iconoclast. (If you worked for MS I’d be even less receptive.)

Mark, I know, you think I’m a fraud. And it is true that I have not made million’s in my career as a CS researcher. For years I worked as a consultant, doing compiler work and AI, and I made some great stuff but though I made a few VC deal’s, I never made million’s at one time.

So several years ago I identified repeatable compression as an interesting work area and have taken my time. But now I am trying to harvest what I have.

I hope you are well. If you are not, just disregard this note. But if someday you want to write me I will always be open to whatever you want to tell me.

Your friend,

Jules Gilbert

I replied on the 11th:

First of all: you are *not* my friend. You are a despicable schmuck who has no idea of what the fuck he’s talking about. I decide who my friends are, and regardless of what you think, you aren’t part of that group.

Second – What makes you think that I *haven’t* read the bible? I’m a religious Jew. My guess is that I’ve probably read the old testament in far greater detail than you have – and I’ve done it in the original language, not in translation.

Third – I don’t give a shit what kind of demo you can arrange. If you want to be taken seriously, you have to address the fundamental problem that makes what you claim impossible. Just suppose that you could use your system to compress things by *one byte*. Just one byte. If you could do that, you’d be mapping 256 inputs onto each compressed output. How, exactly, then, can you decompress an input? How does your system know *which* of those 256 inputs it should produce as the result of decompression? It’s very simple: If you can’t answer that – and I’m 100% sure that you can’t – then no demo matters. If you *can* answer that, then no demo is necessary. Answer that question, and I’ll admit that you’re right. I’ll even publicly apologize, and post regular updates on my progress re-reading the bible translation of your choice.

Fourth, I don’t think you’re a fraud. I think you’re an arrogant pig-ignorant idiot.

Finally – I can assure you that Google didn’t suppress *anything* about *anyone*. I can say that with absolute confidence – because I know about the technology we use, and actually picking specific information to exclude from the search database is quite *impossible*. Quite literally, impossible. We don’t have the ability to do excludes. Just indexing the data, without doing any kind of semantic filtering, is pushing the absolute limits of our technology. Semantic filtering would slow it down significantly – and any slowdown would destroy our ability to index data. I happen to believe that my employers ethics are strong enough that we *wouldn’t* do that if we could; but even if I was wrong about that, the fact is, we *can’t*.

So – put up or shut up and fuck off.

-Mark

As usual, Jules in incapable of respecting even a simple request. Yesterday, he
sent me:

Wow! Wow again.

I am sorry that you don’t consider me to be your friend.

You’ve said several things that I want to respond to, but let me deal
with the simplest first, about Google.

Although years ago I was heavily involved in mechanical language
understanding (I used CLIPS and built something that was used by CSC
for several years; I am not current today nor have I been for more
than a decade. So here I have to accept what you say, and, reading
your remarks, I am pretty sure that you are being sincere. So,…

I stand corrected. I will get back to the person who told me this and
advise them to look for a different explanation.

Now, about my being a “despicable smuck”, well, no, I don’t think so.
And I suppose I should be offended but I already knew that you don’t
believe what I say.

The problem you have is that I actually do have a system that
compresses previously compressed files. I know, you don’t believe me.
But it’s true, I do. Now, the issue here, I think, it this: You
think my claim must be false, that such a claim is false on it’s face,
while I know that it is indeed possible, in fact I do it all the time
when I am on my R&D machine.

And that is why a demonstration, assuming two machines, a floppy
interchange, no wireless, no wires, no memory sticks, turning one
machine off while the other is on, careful examination of the machines
— all of this means that either I am a great magician or that I
actually have done what I claim I have done. And truth, I am not
faking, also I’m not good with slight of hand stuff.

You seem to assume that I am attempting to defraud people, that I
haven’t done what I say I’ve done. I recognize now that I am not
going to convince you unless I send you my source code, or, at the
very least, announce my methods. (Though I am glad that you don’t
think me a fraud. I’m not.)

Well, gosh, I’m sorry, but I can not simply ignore the commercial
implications and tell you how I do what I do.. I have investors, I
have a wife who wants, when I die, to continue to be able to eat and
pay the electric bill. So if you don’t mind I will keep my
intellectual property to myself until I extract value from what I have
done.

This is why I don’t patent — because the moment I do, gigantic corps,
such as MS, will take what I have, even ignoring right and wrong. And
you’re pretty knowledgeable, you know this is exactly what they did to
Stack Electronics. And, as I look at those events, I would say MS got
away with it, that the penalties they paid in cash and stock were
nothing compared to the degree of damage sustained by Stack.

Now, about the Bible. Perhaps I have seriously misjudged you. But if
you are telling me that you are trying to be a good Jew, other than to
say that you are rare, I need to apologize to you and not trouble you.
I believe that things are soon going to get very bad for Jews in
Israel, and I notice their level of isolation is increasing. For
decades, because the US was a Christian nation, Israel received a
great deal of help from us. But I am doubtful that Obama and others
(Hillary Clinton, for example,) will help Israel the next time she
needs US assistance. As I see Obama, I see someone who is completely
godless and who has no intention of helping Jews.

But forget this — look, he won’t be able to run again, too many
people will be clamoring for proof of his citizenship. And I think
he’ll try to stay in office. How?, I have no idea… So I am
expecting real trouble ahead and one thing for sure, it’s important to
be on good terms with the God of the Bible.

I did know that you are Jewish, but the nature and kind of interaction
we’ve had led me to see you as a very different kind of person. None
the less, I do not want to offend you. Not one bit! I am a Jew, too,
at least by birth, but growing up (single parent,) I was not brought
up as a Jew, rather the religion of our household was atheism. It was
as an adult I looked around and decided that Jesus is the Messiah.

Consider Abraham and how, when he and Lot ran into trouble because of
the size of their flocks, how Abraham decided to split but graciously
allowed Lot to take the better land for his group, while Abraham and
his fellows made do with less good pasture lands.

My point: You just called me a “despicable smuck”, and I guess I
don’t associate such behavior with the kind of person Abraham was/is.
However, I can be wrong. And while I don’t agree with your
assessment, if you are telling me that you are a Jew and that you are
trying to be a good Jew, I need to respect that. If you do decide you
want to talk, say so.

As to:

> you have to address the fundamental problem that
makes what you claim impossible.

and also:

> Just suppose that you could use your system
> to compress things by *one byte*. Just one byte. If you could do that, you'd
> be mapping 256 inputs onto each compressed output. How, exactly, then, can
> you decompress an input? How does your system know *which* of those 256
> inputs it should produce as the result of decompression? It's very simple:

I have an answer. It’s just not the kind of answer you want.

First, I can not store more than 256 states in one byte. I hope that
I have never said anything that led people to think I thought that I
thought I could. I have said, in jest, that I use the space between
the bits, stuff like that, but I assumed that no one took me
seriously.

However, this DOES NOT relate to the core issue. The core issue is:
Can a previously compressed file be re-compressed. And like it or
not, Mark, even assuming the prior use of a good quality compressor,
the answer is “yes”, at least that’s the answer until the file/message
is pretty small.

I know, you don’t believe me.

Now, about being added to your friend’s list. If you have any
deletions, please consider adding my name. (How else can I say this?,
I’m trying to be your friend.) I suppose I can tell you that if
someday I patent I will make sure to notify you. But this is not
likely, that’s publishing, and invites violations, my only response in
such cases is to sue, and frankly my physical health isn’t so good, my
wife has mental health issues (now she’s fine,) and I don’t want to
spend years in and out of court.

I repeat, if you decide that you would like me as a friend, please do say so.

I can leave you with this, I have a friend who runs’ a conservative
website. He believes that Google did suppress information that wasn’t
favorable to Obama. I’ll tell him that someone I trust believes that
such actions could not have happened. I will not mention your name or
involve you in any way that could come back to you.

–jg

And, once again, my reply:

No one would argue that you can’t munge files in a way that allows you to recompress them. The question is, can you *uncompress* them afterwards?

And the answer is, no, you can’t.

“Repeated compression” like you’re doing is very simple: just throw away information. Less information, and presto, smaller files. And you can do that over and over and over again, as often as you want, until you get the files as small as you want.

But if you can’t decompress it afterwards, what good is it?

I can come up with a half dozen schemes by which you can take a compressed file, fiddle with it, and then compress it again. They range from the profoundly idiotic to the surprisingly subtle. But they all have the property that the way that they make the file compressible is by reducing the information content – they’re discarding information. And if you’ve discarded any information, you can’t decompress it.

And I think that on some level, you realize that. That’s why you wouldn’t actually answer my question. But that’s the key. If I give you a file that’s been repeatedly compressed by your system – the compressed file and nothing else – can you return the original file to me?

That question is just another way of phrasing what I asked you last time. If you could compress any file N bytes long into a file N-1 bytes long, that would mean that your “compression” process mapped 256 inputs onto one output. So how can you uncompress? How can you know which of those 256 files should be the result of your decompression?

And if you can’t answer that question for a process that would only reduce things by one byte, then how are you going to answer it for your system, where you claim to be able to map gigabytes down a tenth of a megabyte? You’re talking about a system where for any compressed file, there will be billions of possible inputs that produce one compressed output. How are you going to figure out which one is the correct result of un-compressing?

As for your self-defense: you *are* a despicable schmuck. You’ve ignored my repeated attempts to get you to leave me alone. You insist on repeatedly attempting to preach at me despite the fact that I have made it abundantly clear that I am not interested. You have shown nothing but disrespect and contempt for my wishes. Do you think that makes you a good person? Does your precious false messiah tell you that you’re really a great guy for doing it?

You’ve made slanderous claims about a company full of good people. You’ve made slanderous claims against the Jewish community. You’ve made slanderous claims about just about everyone who doesn’t share your own petty stupid ideas. Do you think that *those* things make you some kind of wonderful person?

You are a despicable, vile, hateful person with no respect for anyone but yourself. And you’re a pig-ignorant moron.

Do me a favor, and listen this time: fuck off.

Did he listen? No. This morning, in my mailbox:

I get it. You don’t want to talk.

Okay. I will make this as brief as I possibly can and I won’t discuss
any ancillary issues.

You recently offered to read the Bible, posting notes regarding your
progress online in exchange for my disclosing how I do what I do.

Unfortunately (as I explained,) doing this would make it impossible
for me to profit from my work. (I’ve got about 1/3 time, over a
fifteen year period invested. Five years.) So I can’t accommodate
you.

I am offering you a modification:

a) You don’t have to post your reading progress. In fact I thought
your offer to post unnecessary. I trust you, and although you have
made it plain that you are not my friend I am hoping to change that
and one thing I can do to help effect that change is to be your
friend, that means trusting you. So if you tell me you have reading
something, I will believe you.

b) For my part, I propose something similar. Yesterday I met with a
“money guy” — someone who is experienced at raising investment money.
Obviously he wanted to see the program, he understands that some
sharp people think that my claim has to be false, that it’s like
claiming perpetual motion or somesuch thing.

But not only did he insist on a demonstration, he further insisted
that everyone who was a candidate investor WOULD FIRST BE REQUIRED to
watch the demonstration. Not a video on YouTube or a simulation (I’ve
never faked a demo — that would be fraud, out and out — I’m a
researcher, what I do is real. That’s all I do. And a couple of my
investors, one particularly is a very accomplished C programmer, he
knows exactly what I do, he has compiled the code and run it.)

So here’s my modified offer; I will supply you the names of several
people, strangers, candidate investors, who have seen the demo (we
expect to start doing demo’s in October, the key guy is now arranging
for a hotel conference area for two days during the week for the month
of October.) So, if you are willing to accept, say a half dozen
people advising you they saw it — ie., to email you a very detailed
description, and I can ask one or two of them to phone you so that you
can ask questions, then you can be pretty certain that I have what I
say I have.

And once again, I respond in as hostile a manner as possible, hoping
to drive the stupid bastard away, so that he’ll stop spamming me:

You don’t fucking listen, do you?

As far as your super-duper compressor goes, as I keep saying to you: demos don’t matter. I don’t care whether you claim to be honest or not. I don’t care how many witnesses you have. None of that matters.

There’s one essential fundamental question about your system. If you can answer that one question – which I’ve asked you several times – I will absolutely accept that you’re able to do what you claim. I won’t need to see a demo. I won’t need to hear from witnesses about your demo. I won’t need to see your code. Answer that one question, and I’ll believe you. But if you *can’t* answer it, then you’re full of shit, you can’t do what you’re claiming, and no number of demos can possible change that.

Here’s the question, *again*, stated as clearly as I can possibly put it.

You claim to be able to compress *any* file down to something on the order of 40Kbytes by using your repeated compression system.

So let’s make the problem incredibly simple. Suppose I give you a set of files that each have 40,001 bytes, and your compression system can, somehow, compress all of those files to 40,000 bytes. At this point, it’s not particularly useful – but it makes the problem clear. If you can do this, that means that for *any* 40,000 byte compressed output, there are, on average, 256 possible inputs that could have been compressed to it.

If I give you a 40,000 byte compressed file, how can you determine which of the 256 possibilities is the correct result of decompressing it?

If you can’t, then what you have isn’t a compression system.

I can invent a “repeated compression system” that works wonderfully, if I don’t need to decompress. Just off the top of my head: break the input into 1024 bit chunks. For each 1024 bit chunk, compute the a 1024-bit SHA hashcode, and replace the original chunk with the computed hashcode. Then run it through your compressor again. Presto! It will, with near-100% probability, result in a smaller compressed file. And you can take the result of that, and repeat – and it will *still* likely result in a smaller compressed file. Evetually you’ll reach a fixed point – but you can easily take terabytes of data, and reduce them down to a couple hundred K at worst.

But it’s completely useless – because it’s not really compression. You can’t get back the uncompressed data. It’s gone.

That’s exactly what’s wrong with your system – unless you can explain to me, for my example, just how your decompressor knows which of those 256 outputs to generate.

If you can’t answer that question, then just go the fuck away and leave me alone. Don’t waste my time with your proposals, or with your inane babble about how you’re going to demo it, how you’ve got money people wanting to invest, or any of that crap. Answer the question, or shut the fuck up.

At last I’ve apparently made him angry, but alas, not angry enough for him
to be willing to stop pestering me.

Alright — now you are getting me angry, and although you and I have
been round and round on a couple of matters, until now, you haven’t
made me angry.

Mark, give me a couple of days and I will try to formulate a response.
For you. You haven’t promised me confidentiality but I hope you will
be a gentleman and not broadcast what you learn.

I don’t broadcast your remarks, please do me the same courtesy WITH
RESPECT TO compression issues.

I’m not sure this is wise, but I will assume that our conversation is
secure. (That’s a stretch, because of my work, I get people trying to
put worms, viruses, and other assorted animals on my little Apple
appliance.)

I hope Mark, that you and I do become friends. I don’t know if other
Christians have spoken with you about Jesus but my plan for you (if I
can get you to relax a little bit and be a little more gentle,) is not
to tell you all about Jesus or what you will read in the New Testament
(not that I think any of this is a bad idea, I’m just pretty sure that
at this moment it will get us nowhere.)

No, my plan is to ask you to read the Old Testament, such books as
Zechariah. As Psalms. And Isaiah. Here there is plenty of real
evidence as to identity of the Messiah — and besides, it’s God’s
“job”, not mine, to work inside your mind. He chooses who he wants
(yes, I think he wants you.) But my focus is to ask you to read the
writings of Abraham, of Moses, to read David and Solomon. And yes,
Isaiah and Zechariah.

God direct’s me. By the way, I think he directs you too. And
remember, he told us something, something very basic, something so
important that it transcends almost everything else.

It’s this: That God made us for fellowship with him. And as I
understand things, though I don’t speak Hebrew, I believe that’s what
he said, that he made us so we could be his friends.

In the Christian model, people who follow the Messiah are as small
cells in a body in which the Messiah is the head. By the way, Jesus
made this remark more than 1500 years before Louie Pasteur looked
through a microscope and discovered bacteria — which led to the
realization that we creatures are composed of cells.

And about this work thing, remember, even Adam before the fall was
given some work to do. God told him to tend the garden. Yes, God
made beaches and wants us to enjoy them, he also intends that we be
productive people. I mention this because some people (apparently,)
have no idea what to expect of God. Men such as Adam, Abraham, Moses,
Nehemiah, and (I think,) all the men of the Bible (the Patriarch’s,)
worked. Also Ruth and Naomi.

About my technical description…

I am not going to write anything that tells you how it’s possible to
squeeze 9 bits in a byte — if you really try and close your eyes.
(Now that’s a concept!!)

You know what I mean by “framing” how, in a discussion, it’s important
to frame the conversation so that both parties think what is being
said by the other person is useful. Are you with me?, well I messed
up very badly at the beginning of my internet career as a writer of
perpetual compression applications. (I went public with something
that was very weak and made just about every mistake I could possibly
make.)

Here is one very important thought, not merely my key thought — it’s
the foundation for everything I am doing.

My output files are only expected to produce, during decompression,
the prior output file. (ie., prior from the view point of
compression.) So a zlib file my program produces only has to produce
another file, yes, a zlib output file, somewhat bigger.

The last time this is done the just built file is a copy of the client
input file (if everything went well, I don’t provide checksums yet.)

Now, years ago I said this on the ‘net and everyone jumped all over
me, believing that I was lying. Nope.

I have to think very carefully about what I can say and what I need
not to discuss.

If I sign this “Your friend” please do not start cursing me. Okay?

Your friend,

–jg

PS: And yes Mark, I actually do read your email and consider what you
say very carefully.