How has the compression technology changed since it was first introduced?
In the 15 years or so that I’ve been dealing with compression it really hasn’t changed that much. There have been other algorithms and other commands that have come out and tried do a better job, like gzip in the open source world. But essentially the compress command in Unix and the tape drives that are compressing today, for the most part, aren’t that much different than they have been for 15 or 20 years. They may be a little bit faster and may compress the data a little bit more, but generally they’re the same.
