On 10/17/06, Tom A. <tarnautovic at speakeasy.net> wrote:
> Storage media (hdd) is getting cheaper and larger. I really do not
> see the need
> for a new compression algorithm these days. Especially from MS.
>
I find this argument (which I have been hearing for years now) to be
fairly specious. The fact is that while storage may be cheaper digital
images are much bigger than they used to be and there are lots more of
them. Nor has bandwidth speeded up in proportion to the bulking up of
image sizes. And as for storage getting so much cheaper: having put
down 70K dollars this year for a 3.2 TB EMC system and facing ongoing
maintenance fees in the thousands per year, plus management software
for the drives, etc., I'm not so sure that disk has gotten all that
much cheaper, at least if you're talking about secure, robust storage.
