I am getting a whiff of a fractal image compression.
It was developed by none other than Michael Barnsley (of "Barnsley Fern" fractal fame) and it was the compression technique du jour in the early 90s. It looked very interesting.
And then it got patented all over, which effectively inhibited any further academic research. The patent holding company (Iterated Systems) struggled with commercialization of the technology, so the practical applications never really took off either.
Too bad really. The idea of compressing an image down to a formula was both elegant and damn smart. And so are these genetic algorithms. I just really hope they don't follow the path of the fractal ones.
it's actually turned out much worse than that.
1) fractal compression never worked very well, not for lack of trying. it's just a bad idea if you actually think about it.
2) the company is now involved in penny stock scams
and is using the wikipedia to prop up their claims.
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fractal_compression where the conclusions from the definitive research and the FAQ are being kept out of the article. i tried to keep the page sane, and in return i got a campaign of assassination run against me and my edits all over the wp.... which i won but i was unable to fight 2 editors back on this page. and then i ran out of time and gave up. anyway, if you can help, please do!
It was developed by none other than Michael Barnsley (of "Barnsley Fern" fractal fame) and it was the compression technique du jour in the early 90s. It looked very interesting.
And then it got patented all over, which effectively inhibited any further academic research. The patent holding company (Iterated Systems) struggled with commercialization of the technology, so the practical applications never really took off either.
Too bad really. The idea of compressing an image down to a formula was both elegant and damn smart. And so are these genetic algorithms. I just really hope they don't follow the path of the fractal ones.