Expert Compression Advice Sought

[Jurassic Fart 1]

I'm seeking the advice of someone who knows more than I do about file compression utilities. I am familiar with about twelve applications that manipulate a wider number of archive types / extensions, and I'm wondering how some users have managed to get the compression percentages I've seen—which I cannot duplicate.

Files can be compressed only so far with binary computers (and as far as I know, nobody has actually built a quantum state computer wherein a single data point may have one of four possible values). However, I've seen some incredible achievements I'd like to be able to emulate but can't, like a UHARC file that occupies less than one gigabyte of disk space unpacking WITHOUT ERRORS to over six gigabytes of uncompressed files.

Lately, I haven't even been able to get any discernible difference between an uncompressed directory and a packed archive on a Windows / NTFS drive; I should be able to appreciate a greater difference.

Like WinRAR: I specify Best compression, and comparing to an identical directory compressed with Fastest (least compression) parameter, there's no significant difference. Gzip, 7-Zip, A-Zip, KGB Archiver, WinZip, WinRAR, and others seem to perform pretty much the same—unremarkably pedestrian.

[R.A.T. Army *MST3K*]

Have you tried Pied Piper?

http://www.piedpiper.com/

[Jurassic Fart 1]

The site currently posts only rhetoric; it's not a site that actually DOES anything—they host no files, post no external download links…and they also do not detail licensing and cost. The one link they post leads to a venture capital site that is as equally functional, so, very fishy. The two sites they've posted has permanently warned me off those two domains and anything associated with them.

It is highly reminiscent of an Arab proverb regarding a frog and a scorpion.

[R.A.T. Army *MST3K*]

It got a Weissman Score of 5.2, almost double the theoretical limit. Middle out compression is the wave of the future. Keep an eye on that site for when it's back up.

[Jurassic Fart 1]

Well, then…I'll have to research it, then proceed cautiously when/if site goes back up. I'll see if I can find that report, or a similar one. I'm especially interested in how that algorithm was developed. Way back when I was studying Computer Science, the phrase that NEVER failed to motivate me was, "You can't do that."

Most people don't care what lies beneath the surface of an application. I think the guts are always more interesting than the outsides.