@nothings@mastodon.gamedev.place
Post #1985387
2026-04-30 03:00 UTC
@pervognsen I dunno, I realize RAM compression is totally different from hard disk comperssion, but the way MS shit on Stac in the 90s as they pushed their monopoly--which I was there for, in my 20s--left a really bad taste in my mouth on this subject area, to the point where this sort of blog post starts to feel too hagiographic for me.
Replies (1)
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@rygorous@mastodon.gamedev.place 2026-04-30 04:08
@nothings @pervognsen Noteworthy context here that AFAIK the thing Stac sued MS over for DoubleSpace was the now-expired US4701745A https://patents.google.com/patent/US4701745A/en?oq=4701745 aka "the Wentsworth patent", which, noteworthily, wasn't even their invention (it was originally filed by Ferranti Inc.), they just bought it in 1993 when Ferranti went under. This is the "LZ string match with direct-mapped hash table" patent I talked about in the Wookash podcast.