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Schedule

• Lecture 2
• Recitations 2 and 3

Lecture Handouts

• Lecture Notes - Chapter 3: Compression (PDF)
• One-page excerpt from Bell, T. C., J. G. Cleary, and I. H. Witten. Text Compression. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1990. ISBN: 0139119914. Shutter telegraph.
• MP3 overview, pp. 3
• Six-page excerpt from JPEG FAQ
• Graphics Interchange Format (GIF87) Specification (complete, pp. 8)
• GIF Patent Controversy
  • Statement by League for Programming Freedom
  • Two Unisys statements: License Information and Web Site LZW Licenses
• J. Chaitin, Gregory. "Computers, Paradoxes and the Foundations of Mathematics." American Scientist 90, no. 2 (March-April, 2002): 164-171.
  Chaitin invented algorithmic information theory and is probably the world's leading expert on what randomness means. This article is intended for a general scientifically-literate audience.

Assignment

• Problem Set 2 (PDF)
• Problem Set 2 Solutions (PDF)

Resources

Laboratory

• MIT EECS MATLAB® Tutorial, used in 6.003, 1999 (PDF)
• Control Tutorials for MATLAB®, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Michigan; August 11, 1997

Technical

• Flag of Germany, the perfect example for run-length encoding. Flag courtesy of ITA's Flags of All Countries, used with permission.
• Lots of data compression links
• MP3 overview
• JPEG FAQ, (Part 1) and Part 2
• LZW and GIF explained . . site. . . another
• LZW description with example
• Another good LZW reference
• GIF Specification from W3C
• PNG, an alternative to GIF

Historical

• Wilson, Geoffrey. The Old Telegraphs. Phillimore and Co., Ltd., London and Chichester, U.K. 1976. ISBN: 0900592796.
  Describes several telegraph systems, in many countries, that predate electrical telegraphs.
• J. Holzmann, Gerard, and Björn Pehrson. "The First Data Networks." Scientific American 270, no. 1 (January 1994): 124-129.
  Describes French and Swedish optical telegraphs, from the 1790s.
• ———. The Early History of Data Networks. IEEE Computer Society Press, November 1994, pp. 304. ISBN: 0818667826.
• ———. The Early History of Data Networks.
• Standage, Tom. Chapter 1 in The Victorian Internet. Berkley Books, 1998. ISBN: 0425171698.
• Unisys/Compuserve GIF Controversy
  • Statement from League for Programming Freedom
  • More general Software Patents Statement by LPF
  • Unisys statements: License info. . for Web sites
  • One person's outrage