56k Times Five: Myth Or Moneymaker?

maxentius writes "InternetNews.com has an article on not-broadband-but-still-faster telephone internet access premiering soon in more than one commercial ISP venue. Compression and other techniques will improve speed by up to five times, so they say. Hi-tech or hogwash?"

I figured it out -

[bobdotorg]

EarthLink Plus uses a proprietary "Web Accelerator" from Propel Software which reduces the size of Web pages and elements sent to users' browsers.

Sounds cool, but in reality it's just Lynx for OSX.

Lzip Compression

[kdgarris]

Perhaps they are using the Lzip compression algorithm to speed things up.

http://lzip.sourceforge.net/

Hmm

[rmohr02]

Already, the erosion of AOL's dial-up base is starting to show. During the fourth quarter it lost 176,000 narrowband subscribers.

Now that's a shame.

Cmprsss txt b rmvng ll vwls

[hoggoth]

They have invented a new text compression method that is analogous to the pscho-acoustic models used to remove the sound the human ear doesn't notice anyway.

Thy smply rmv ll f th vwls n th txt. Ths wy thy cn gt a hghr cmprssn rt.

Thnk f t ths wy: Thy cn cmprss t 11. The thr gys cn nly cmprss t 10. S, 11 s bttr thn 10.

Re:Myth

[luzrek]

but it would speed up /.

Re:Myth

[AdamJ]

Most banner ads

Boy, I can't wait to download those even faster!

Re:Cmprsss txt b rmvng ll vwls

[CaffeineAddict2001]

By the sound of my modem it looks like the current compression scheme is to take out all the consonants:

eieoeaoueoeieoeoauoeoaoeoaoueoaoeuoaaaaaaaaaa

Here we go again....

[telstar]

Wow, all we need to do is combine this technology with this technology [slashdot.org] and we'll have our information before we even load the browser.

Re:Cmprsss txt b rmvng ll vwls

[farnsworth]

They have invented a new text compression method that is analogous to the pscho-acoustic models used to remove the sound the human ear doesn't notice anyway.

There's prior art for this. AOL IM and Yahoo's YM already do this.

user: h
me: hello.
user: wen r u gonna fix bug xxxx?
me: I'm working on it.
user: teh bug sux.
me: I know, I'll get to it soon.
user: k. syl.
me: see you later.

Same Name... Different Markets

[JohnA]

Propel Internet [propel.com] = "Turbocharged" Internet
Propel Fitness Water [propelwater.com] = "Turbocharged" Water

We're doomed.

More Compression Tricks

[duck_prime]

They have invented a new text compression method [...]

Yes ... they replace dark green pixels (#006400) with smaller black ones (#0). That's 1/6 the size! It also works with dark red, dark gray, dark brown, etc.

Bright sites, unfortunately, show very little improvements.

Re:Myth

[Anonvmous Coward]

"How about by not having the Flash plugin installed?"

If you're an IE user, you get nagged to death.

"Would you like to install this piece of software?"

[NO]

[Click on a link]

"Would you like to install this piece of software?"

[NO]

[Click on a link]

"Would you like to install this piece of software?"

[GUNSHOT]

That's the nasty thing about auto-installing plugins like ActiveX controls. They always send the request to be installed without any knowledge that they were turned down earlier. I wouldn't blame MS for this either. Back in the dot-com days, web developers thought their audience was incredibly incompetant when it came to using computers. If they didn't have an auto-installer, they wouldn't use it for fear that some wanker couldn't figure out how to hit save and okay a couple of times. Thanks to popular demand, this stupid auto-install feature was born.

So that's why uninstalling it doesn't fix it.

Re:Myth

[Professor Oompa]

I wouldn't blame MS for this either

That's got to be the first time I've ever seen that on slashdot...