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Someone brought muffins in to work for everyone to share today. Chocolate ones. I am vainly trying to pretend that these are actually nutritious food and not just giant cupcakes. :-)
Also, I have one of those stupid techno questions that will have everyone rolling their eyes at the ignoramus. It's about file compression. For years I've downloaded and opened files that have been zipped or rar-ed, and all this time I have assumed that the files had been zipped or rared in order to make them smaller and easier to upload/download. With this idea in mind, I decided that since I had a large file I wanted to upload, I would rar or zip it first so it wouldn't take so long to upload and be easier to download by its recipient. So I do the rar thing and the final product is almost exactly the same size as the original file. Confused, I then try to zip the original file, with the same result. The 'compressed' file appears to be virtually the same size as the original. Am I doing something wrong or have I been mistakenly assuming all these years that zipping or raring a file will make it smaller? (And if it doesn't, why do people bother?)
Also, I have one of those stupid techno questions that will have everyone rolling their eyes at the ignoramus. It's about file compression. For years I've downloaded and opened files that have been zipped or rar-ed, and all this time I have assumed that the files had been zipped or rared in order to make them smaller and easier to upload/download. With this idea in mind, I decided that since I had a large file I wanted to upload, I would rar or zip it first so it wouldn't take so long to upload and be easier to download by its recipient. So I do the rar thing and the final product is almost exactly the same size as the original file. Confused, I then try to zip the original file, with the same result. The 'compressed' file appears to be virtually the same size as the original. Am I doing something wrong or have I been mistakenly assuming all these years that zipping or raring a file will make it smaller? (And if it doesn't, why do people bother?)
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Where zip archives come into their own is in:
a) forcing the file to download rather than stream
b) concealing the nature of the file: you can convert "House Episode 2.12" as "cake.zip", and your host will never know what it is without downloading and unzipping. If you simply *rename* the file, the file data can still be ascertained from the file header.
c) you can password protect zip archives, so that should your host wish to download your files to look at what you've uploaded, they'll need a password to unzip.
The downsides of zip archives:
a) they take time for the uploader to zip
b) they take time downloader to unzip
c) the downloader needs more than twice the actual file size of free disk space
d) they leave mess behind
e) partial downloads will not be playable (I can play avis missing MB, I can't unzip a zip file missing any bytes at all)
The advantages of rar files are similar to those of zip files, however the convenience of being able to chop the files up into easily uploadable/downloadable chunks is added.
The disadvantages of rar files are the same as the those of zip files, but additionally you also have to explain the unraring process every time and unraring requires extra software.
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