From: jazz@hal.com (Jason Zions)
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 93 18:57:51 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Statistics of Low-Order Bits in Images
Message-ID: <9312010256.AA02876@jazz.hal.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


   >Sounds like the simple solution is for people everywhere to replace
   >the low order bits of all of their pictures with good random noise. 

You're kidding, right? Image processing software, and music processing
equipment, are designed to get the maximum performance out of the storage
medium. I find it pretty unlikely that any developer of image processing
tools is going to deliberately drop one bit of precision off each n-bit
unit; sheesh, image files are big enough without software deliberately
wasting bits.

As for introducing noise into the low-order bit of music CDs, definitely
not; the trend is towards equipment that can extract the last dribble of
information from well-recorded sources, and towards recording equipment that
can meaningfully record every bit of every word. Why do you think there are
64x-oversampling players and the like?

Eric's right; you'll have to build your own tools to make things noisy, as
the trend elsewhere is to make things unnoisy.

On the other hand, have you looked at the new mini-disc technology? That
stuff already introduces audio compression, and the bits on a minidisc
should be pretty high in entropy; of course, twiddling bits in a compressed
audio recording may have dramatic effects on sound...

Jason