I Miss my Viewfinder !

Mxsmanic wrote:
Eric Stevens writes:

Off course infinitely long bit streams cannot be compressed: they
remain infinitely long.

Streaming compression alogirhtms regularly compress streams of infinite
length.

Complete bull. Unless you claim compression speed is infinite, they'll
only compress finite streams in the time from the invention of the computer
to the heat death of the universe.

You probably mean 'indeterminate length'.

The entire string is not compressed at once, but the number of bits
input over a finite period of time is larger than the number of bits output,
if the stream is non-random and the compression algorithm is appropriate.

Wrong. It is easy to prove that there can be (rare(?)) bit
patterns in a non-random stream that will be as large or larger
after compression. Even when the average "string" (you mean
stream)-parts are compressed well.

Also most compression algorithms don't compress entire
strings at once, even with known length finite strings.

This
will always be true, for eternity, so the infinitely long stream is still
being compressed.

And it will be infinitely long, too.
In other words, the compression ratio will be 1:1.

-Wolfgang