[net.periphs] compression modems

jaw@ames.UUCP (James A. Woods) (04/12/85)

# Press those trousers! -- Roger Ruskin Spear
 
     So they're finally hitting the market, eh?  Of course, we don't
worry, because we do it in software (v.i.z. 'compress').  Long after
you have to junk the stat muxes and "accelerators" because 9600 usurps
the current rate of 2400 or whatever, USENET's very own code (and that
of BSD 4.3, it now seems) will be going strong.  If the hardy boys
want to find a market in the Unix world, they'll just have to price it
a bit lower than the freebie Lempel-Ziv stuff.

     Don't know about these Telebyte folks, but it's been fun following
the Chung modem mystery.  The guy used to claim eightfold compression
on "random" bits with a "patented" technique, but has toned down a little,
and even invokes Shannon theory in his sales literature.  Now that Chung
Telecommunications in Silicon Valley sells a 2-to-1 stat mux and 2-to-1
compressor in the same box, they have to be a little more circumspect.

     There was a rather content-free article in Electronic Products recently,
which prompted me to phone the author, May Chung.  She is vaguely aware
of LZ, but won't comment on the pending patent.  I'll patiently await
reportage in the wonderful and amusing patents column of New Scientist.

     By the way, the brochures benchmark the thing at 37-54% on text.
Sounds like an adaptive method ala LZ, but I doubt that a patent could
be issued on an algorithm.  David Chung is known mainly as the developer
of the Fairchild F8 micro, which harbored one of the ugliest instruction
sets known to humankind.  When will these hardware types give up?

     -- James A. Woods   (hplabs,ihnp4}!ames!jaw  (or, jaw@riacs)