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From: uselton@orville.nas.nasa.gov (Samuel P. Uselton)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: How well does Barnsley's system perform?
Summary: What bothers ME about Barnsley...
Message-ID: <5538@amelia.nas.nasa.gov>
Date: 9 Apr 90 16:24:58 GMT
References: <3166@usceast.UUCP> <1571@dftsrv.gsfc.nasa.gov> <35410@brunix.UUCP> <13652@cgl.ucsf.EDU>
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Reply-To: uselton@nas.nasa.gov (Samuel P. Uselton)
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Organization: NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
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In article <13652@cgl.ucsf.EDU> seibel@cgl.ucsf.edu (George Seibel) writes:
>In article <35410@brunix.UUCP> cs001005@cslab9c.cs.brown.edu (Thomas Colthurst) writes:
>>The thing that disturbs me about Barnsley's claims is not that I don't
>>believe that he has something, but that the 'veil of mystery' around his
>>system prevents
>>me not only from implementing a compression system, but also to doubt
>>that any efficient means are possible.  That is, all of the IFS
>
>Now hold on there.  The only thing that Barnsley's secrecy is preventing
>you from doing is using HIS ideas and technology without giving him
>whatever credit/money/power/prestige that he wants.  There's nothing
>preventing you from sitting down for a few decades and figuring it out
>on your own.   No one should find this surprising or disturbing; this
>isn't science, it's business.  Try calling up Intel and asking them for
                     ^^^^^^^^
>the precise details of their latest process.  Their secrecy is, after all,
>preventing you from fabbing a few chips :-)
>
>George Seibel, UCSF
>seibel@cgl.ucsf.edu

I have two problems with Barnsley and his IFS based image encoding.  The first
is that he seems to want to be a business when it serves his purposes
(protecting trade secrets etc) and ALSO publish "technical" papers for
"academic" credit.  His 1988 presentation at SIGGRAPH in Atlanta was the most
obnoxious piece of commercialism masquerading as a "technical" talk I have
seen in 15 years of conferences.

My second difficulty is that he seems to want to sell you a product based on
his word that it does its job well, without letting anyone else with
expertise test the system.  This proves nothing, but it suggests several 
possibilities: (1) there are certain things the system does poorly, he is
trying to hide; (2) manual intervention, and expert choices may be required
to get good compression; (3) what he is doing is actually quite simple, and
would be figured out by an expert using the system.  (and other possibilties...)
I don't know if any of these are true, but I'M certainly not BUYING anything
from him until I FIND OUT.  

Sam Uselton
Disclaimer:
I work for CSC, but they don't hold these opinions; I do.
I work on a contract for NASA, but they don't hold these opinions either
(at least not as policy.  There may be some individuals...)