Differences between current version and predecessor to the previous major change of Unisys.
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| Newer page: | version 5 | Last edited on Friday, December 19, 2003 8:39:40 am | by JohnMcPherson | |
| Older page: | version 1 | Last edited on Tuesday, February 25, 2003 10:34:47 am | by JohnMcPherson | Revert |
@@ -1,5 +1,14 @@
-A large company that doesn't
seem to do much
:)
+A large, once respected IT consulting
company who nowadays
seem to dwindle into irrelevance. Apparently they mostly recommend MicrosoftWindows solutions. They earned a huge notoriety with the computing world with their [Submarine Patent | http
://www.unisys.com/about__unisys/lzw/] on [LZW] compression. __This patent is no longer an issue - it expired on Fri, Jun 20 2003 (in the United States... other countries may have different patent time limits and/or separately filed patents
).__
-"A friend" used to work there, and they mainly do IT consulting, invariably recommending windows NT solutions
. I think they are becoming increasingly irrelevant, which is why they started resorting to squeezing money out of the world from their bogus [GIF] patent
.
+!! The story goes thus
..
-Part
of [CategoryCompany
]
+In 1984, Terry Welch, working at [Unisys], extended the LZ78 algorithm with a few simple ideas to make it simpler and more efficient. Following standard procedures, a patent was filed on this new [Algorithm] dubbed [LZW]. However, [Unisys] didn't have much interest in it as it wasn't
of any use to their core business. They assured anyone who asked that they allowed free use of the
[Algorithm
]. Fatally, none of this was ever formally put in contract.
+
+The patent was almost forgotten by the time CompuServe were looking to make moving images across the typical 14k4 MoDem connections of the days easier. They decided to use the simple, elegant, and efficient [LZW] compression in a new FileFormat for images which they dubbed [GIF]. The format gained popularity quickly and became the defacto standard for publishing images online. It tagged along when the InterNet became big, and hung around for the era of the WorldWideWeb. Every other image on the web and then some was a [GIF] image.
+
+Eventually, [Unisys] woke up to the fact a lot of people had become dependent on [LZW]. They realized that their patent could make them a substantial amount of money from license fees if they asserted their ownership. Everyone was using it and noone could avoid doing so. This was too tempting; [Unisys] decided to break the surface and proceeded to make a huge amount of noise about their patent.
+
+Their hypocrisy led to the creation of the [PNG] FileFormat to fill the niche [GIF] traditionally held, including a lot of features [GIF] had been missing. [PNG] is now preferred over [GIF]. However, [Unisys] have made a lasting impression on the computing world that goes far beyond image formats. People have become very careful to examine whether anything proposed as a new standard is covered by existing patents. OggVorbis is an example of another format that was designed specifically to avoid patented algorithms.
+
+----
+Part of CategoryCompany
