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- Newsgroups: comp.compression
- Path: sparky!uunet!metaflow!rschnapp
- From: rschnapp@metaflow.com (Russ Schnapp)
- Subject: John Toebes' Dealings With W. E. B. Technology
- Message-ID: <BsxIoG.K0D@metaflow.com>
- Keywords: WEB Technologies 16:1 compression
- Sender: usenet@metaflow.com
- Nntp-Posting-Host: habu
- Organization: Metaflow Technologies Inc.
- Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 15:50:39 GMT
- Lines: 166
-
- Since John's attempt at posting this message appears to
- have failed, he has authorized me to post it. This ought
- to put a solid three penny nail in the coffin of the WEB
- Technologies story:
-
- =============================================
-
- From uunet!BNR.CA!TOEBES Tue Aug 11 09:13:40 1992
- Date: 11 Aug 92 11:51:00 EDT
- To: <metaflow!habu!rschnapp>
- From: John (J.) Toebes <uunet!BNR.CA!TOEBES>
- Subject: re:WEB Tech?
- Sender: John (J.) Toebes <uunet!BNR.CA!TOEBES>
- Content-Length: 7225
-
- If it doesn't show up, you might try inserting it for me. Here
- is what it says on our newsgroup here:
-
-
- Article: 2064 of comp.compression
- Newsgroups: comp.compression
- Path: brtph560!bnr.ca!toebes
- From: toebes@bnr.ca (John Toebes P030)
- Subject: My Dealings With W. E. B. Technology
- Message-ID: <1992Aug10.144745.11721@brtph560.bnr.ca>
- Sender: news@brtph560.bnr.ca (Usenet News)
- Organization: Bell-Northern Research, BNR-RTP
- Distribution: all
- Date: Mon, 10 Aug 1992 14:47:45 GMT
-
- With the statements being posted about WEB, I felt it appropriate to
- post a chronological summary of our experience in attempting to deal
- with them. I make no attempt to validate any of the claims or refute
- any of the technology involved.
-
- 19MAY92 - Obtained Article from Computer Shopper.
-
- 20MAY92 - Downloaded Microbytes article from BIX in order to locate the
- phone number.
-
- 21MAY92 - Contacted WEB Technology. Neither I nor my Manager (on a
- subsequent call) were able to get any significant information
- about the product. Another manager in the division was able
- to extract the name and phone number of Earl Bradley who
- turned out to be local. He called Earl Bradley and left a
- message to return the call.
-
- 22MAY92 - Earl Bradley returned the call and agreed to meet with us on
- May 28 to discuss the technology.
-
- 28MAY92 - Meeting with Earl Bradley. During this meeting he indicated
- that they had some technology which could indeed perform the
- compression claims presented in the articles. Specifically:
-
- *) Anything greater than 64K can be compressed to under 1K.
- *) They can compress the output of the the compressor as long
- as the file was > 64K.
- *) The algorithm can be tuned for levels of lossyness and will
- work even for analog data.
-
- He claimed that there were several beta testers for the
- product with no known cases at that time of files that could
- not be compressed. When asked about the byte article by Russ
- Schnapp, claimed that the version of the program sent to him
- was flawed due to a miscoding of the algorithm when they
- downcoded it to assembler for the PC. He claimed that the
- data Russ ran through the algorithm was of a particular form
- that caused 'four numbers in a matrix to be the same value'
- which the downcode algorithm could not handle.
-
- Claimed that they could not release any versions of the
- software until at least two patents for hardware were in
- progress due to legal reasons. Also indicated that they were
- in intensive testing with a major silicon manufacturer in an
- attempt to license the technology to them. Stated that this
- manufacturer had already done a number of tests on the
- technology without finding any flaws and were in the process
- of creating a test environment to ensure that nothing 'behind
- the scenes' was going on. Indicated that this manufacturer
- was seriously interested in the technology and did not want to
- get burned on a false claim as they had in the past.
-
- He also related that the technology stems from an earlier
- company that was using the compression in order to send real
- estate pictures from a central site to multiple remote sites.
-
- He agreed to run a test compression of our sample software and
- report back the compression ratio. He indicated that because
- of the heavy demand on the programmers involved in the
- project, they might not be able to run the test until they
- were finished with the testing by the 'silicon manufacturer'.
-
- 30MAY92 - Created a test set of data and brought the 4 diskette set to
- Earl's home. He assured me that I would hear something at the
- end of the next week.
-
- 05JUN92 - Called to Check Status. Was told that the testing was
- continuing and there was not enough time to run our data. Was
- told to call back in about a week.
-
- 12JUN92 - (This date might be off, I called several times in this time
- frame and reached an answering machine at Earls lake house).
- Called to Check Status. Was told that testing uncovered a
- flaw they had not known about and would require some
- preprocessing to handle the case where 'four numbers in a
- matrix were the same value' which they had not seen before.
- He stated that this was on the very last test case that the
- manufacturer had given to them - a file consisting only of a
- single value repeated multiple times. He agreed to provide
- the test results on 09JUL92.
-
- 09JUL92 - Called to Check Status. Left several messages on answering
- machine. Attempted to contact WEB number in Georgia to find
- that it had been disconnected.
-
- 10JUL92 - Called to Check Status. Was told that testing had uncovered a
- new problem where 'four numbers in a matrix were the same
- value' and that the programmers were off attempting to code a
- preprocessor to eliminate this rare case. I indicated that he
- had told me this story before. He told me that the
- programmers were still working on the problem. I asked for a
- time when the data would be run through the algorithm and was
- told that I would get a status update on 31JUL92.
-
- I also pointed out that the phone number for WEB had been
- disconnected. He claimed that it was not and it was only a
- problem with the phone company because the number was a
- 'Foreign Exchange'. He said he would check into it and make
- sure that the number worked again.
-
- 13JUL92 - Called Georgia number. Still disconnected.
-
- 31JUL92 - Final Call to Check Status. Called Earl in the morning and
- was told that he still had not heard from the programmers. He
- stated that the company was letting the programmers go off on
- their own without bothering them in order to get the best
- utilization of resources. Stated that if they could not
- resolve the problem then there would probably not be a
- product. He agreed to contact me by the afternoon with a
- definite status.
-
- No return call that day. A call to his secretary informs me
- that he has left on emergency business for the day.
-
- 03AUG92 - Final Call. Earl claims that the programmers are unable to
- resolve the problem. I asked if this meant that there would
- not be a product as a result and he said yes.
-
-
- Note that in all of this time, I have never seen the product nor any
- evidence of the compression by the product. We have not seen any
- results of the single compression test that we gave to them nor any
- indication that they had attempted to run the test file through the
- compression utility.
-
- The above statements are not a reflection of my employer.
- --- Working for but not representing BNR, INC. ---
- John A. Toebes, VIII toebes@bnr.ca
-
- =============================================
-
- PLEASE NOTE: If you wish to reply to the author of this article for
- whatever reason, DO NOT USE THE REPLY FUNCTION of your news reader.
- Instead, send your mail to toebes@bnr.ca.
-
- ...Russ
-