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From: grr@cbmvax.cbm.UUCP (George Robbins)
Newsgroups: net.news,net.mail
Subject: Re: Data compression to lower phone bills
Message-ID: <304@cbmvax.cbmvax.cbm.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 29-May-86 01:38:54 EDT
Article-I.D.: cbmvax.304
Posted: Thu May 29 01:38:54 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 31-May-86 05:05:31 EDT
References: <2519@columbia.UUCP> <327@spdcc.UUCP>
Reply-To: grr@cbmvax.UUCP (George Robbins)
Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA
Lines: 19
Keywords: data compression
Xref: watmath net.news:4929 net.mail:1647

In article <327@spdcc.UUCP> dyer@spdcc.UUCP (Steve Dyer) writes:
>You know, there's no free lunch.  I seem to remember that compressing
>and uncompressing a batch of news takes a significant chunk of a VAX 780,
[...]
>Steve Dyer dyer@harvard.HARVARD.EDU

This is partly because when compress is made as a part of news, it is
compiled with the large system defaults.  This implies a big tradeoff of
memory in favor of speed.  If you don't have the memory, or are actually
sharing it with other tasks, the resultant thrashing will put your machine
to sleep.

You can get effective compression by using a smaller number of bits either
at compile or execute time.  Of course, the other end shouldn't send you
data compressed to a greater extent than you compile your end for...
--
George Robbins - now working with,      uucp: {ihnp4|seismo|caip}!cbmvax!grr
but no way officially representing      arpa: cbmvax!grr@seismo.css.GOV
Commodore, Engineering Department       fone: 215-431-9255 (only by moonlite)