rick@hanauma (Richard Ottolini) (08/15/89)
The patent claim is there is a FAST fractal fitting algorithm. Also, rumor from the applied mathematics world is there is a full and invertable fractal transform, analogous to the Fourier transform. That is, given enough terms, any image can be FULLY represented as a set of fractal transform coefficients and can be recovered from it. The rumor is from Bell Labs which intends to hide the algorithm until it can be patented like Karamarkar's linear optimization algorithm.