Software
Solutions

Lossy Compression

The world's greatest revolution in data compression technology has arrived. Lossy Compression breaks the barriers and limits of every other compression software and algorithm available, pushing the performance to almost limitless orders of magnitude. Using Lossy Compression it is potentially possible to store the contents of all the world's libraries on a single floppy diskette.

The NCSA is making available to the world a licence and royalty free library of compression routines called LOSSYLIB that implement the Lossy Compression algorithms. The library is available for every type of operating system, firmware, embedded system, smart card and hand-held device. Versions for older valve or hand operated computers are available upon request.

"Lossy" compression has been available for images for many years, the JPEG format being one of the most familiar to Internet users. The NCSA Lossy Compression algorithms can be applied to arbitrary data, and it's this simple fact that makes this new technology such a breakthrough.

How it Works

Simply feed data into the algorithm, adjust the compression level and collect the output. The input can be anything: arbitrary files, whole CD-ROMs, satellite feeds, music signals, seismic data, anything you can imagine. Decompression returns a compressed file back to its original size.

The compression level can vary from 1 to 1 trillion (1 followed by 12 zeroes) and specifies exactly how much the input will be compressed. A level of 1 indicates no compression (copy without loss), and as the level rises, the output will be compressed by that ratio. For example, a level of 10 indicates that the output will be 1 tenth the size of the input. As the level rises, the compression is more aggressive and can result in space savings of astronomical proportions. The smallest possible output is a single binary bit.

By adjusting the compression level you can adjust how much data will be lost. For example, important data like your music collection and erotic images should be compressed using a low level so that only a small amount of data is lost. Less important data like religious literatue, modern art, disco and rap music, political broadcasts and advertising may be compressed with very high levels. This will result in large amounts of the data being lost on decompression, but in these cases it's not important.

Developers - Download LOSSYLIB

Watch this space for a world shattering announcement from the NCSA public relations and marketing departments...

Placebo-X
The world's most powerful and effective placebo

Soon to be in drug stores and pharmacies around the world