Interviews > david a scott

Mr.David A Scott has been working on data compression + encryption and introducing and polishing the bijective BWT compressors time to time. From his discussion-forum talks and reviews Mr.David seems to be too concerned about today's Computer Science education. His personal website entailing his work may be found here. Let's find out more about Mr.David in the interview.

Interview with Mr. David A Scott


Q. Mr.David - tell us some about your work / job, and some about your hobbies.

A. I am no longer working. It's hard for a laid off ex government enigneer to find work. If you not working and over 60 you are not wanted.

Q. Tell us some about your major education. And, do you teach somewhere or have taught somewhere?

A. I got my BSEE in fields and Waves and Arizona State it was a good school I got my MSEE in control theory at the University of Southern California I taught such things as Univac assembly language at China Lake. I taught baby math adding positive and negative numbers at a community college in Texas. It's as if we go out of or way in Texas to keep the kids dumb. But because of EEO they will most likely go to some other University still barely knowing how to count when they finish. Don't expect the US to ever get a man to the moon again it's not going to happen.

Q. While looking through "BWT" related writings we came across your website link http://bijective.dogma.net/ which has most of "scottified" versions of many compression algorithms along with source codes. For how long you have been programming especially with compression technology?

A. I have been programming for over 40 years.

Q. Do you still have the source / binary of very first program that your wrote for data compression?

A. I don't save things very well. So no I don't even have the code of the one I wrote last month.

Q. What are your "best of all" compression algorithms speed-wise and compression ratio-wise? And which one amongst all your resources may fill today's data compression needs (if improved further)?

A. Since I have been playing with stuff you see I have not cared about speed. I think my interests are actaully more in the crypto field than compression. I like the concepts of bijective compression. I think the BWTS the bijective Burrows Wheeler Transform could help expand the filed of compression but not sure if many will give it a serious look.

Q. Do you think, the compression technology still needs a lot of work?

A. As machines get faster and large in memory and the types of files keep increasing there will always be more work.

Q. Will ever we see a compression algorithm that brings down our file to ONE or ZERO bytes? We read about this theory in Dr. Mathew Vincent Mahoney's website at Data Compression Benchmark page (Something called BARF - Better Achiever with Recursive Functionality). Please provide us some simple answer that a student of Graduate level can understand.

A. "NO" is that simple enough.

Q. Let's talk about today's education and the content taught to the students. Isn't learning compression technology is like controlling spaceship for today's students? Please put some light on the books of science we had in previous century and the ones our students are learning from, today.

A. I no longer have many old books I have moved around quite a bit. But I can say this the text books used here are crap. I even looked at a nephews geometry book it was MTV crap no wonder they don't learn anything and the dam books are expensive. A simple search of Google Books ( and I am not a fan of google ) you can find books out of print that are far superior to any of the money making books the kids are forced to buy.

Q. Many teachers we consulted and talked about today's computer science studies, blamed the TEXT books lacking "knowledge" but having tons of unorganized "information" that student gets lost in, and fancy designs only. What do you say about it?

A. Todays books are crap! However I have seen some good ones in Spanish I suspect the Chinese and Russians still have books that one could use. In fact I use to have a set of books translated from the russian when I was a kid. I have yet to see any set as good in English. Sadly the math teahers in school here don't know, Can't understand. Can't inspire even good students to learn math. Just this last week a neighbor girl came over. My wife and I helped teach her in math. This year her parents sadly lacking money had to send her to a public school. She corrected the teacher and got punished. I had to tell her that I really believe they don't want smart people and just to pretend the teacher knows what shes doing and be quite and just pass. She thinks they are doing baby math. Example: 3+2*2 = 10 teacher. 7 student the teacher to dumb to know that multiplying is first. One more point this is a ture story. Not matter what lever of math I was teaching at the communitry college. There would be a point in the semister that we try to teach fractions. Example 1/2 + 1/3 many student would get 2/5. They claimed thats what they learned in high school. One of my teaching friends who also taught high school claimes it was grade school. In fact he with a another teacher got so mad they went to the school where several of there students had gone. To confront the teacher. The school principal was there (typical overpaid undereducated idiot that runs a school) the principal stated he did know high powered math and asked his teacher if she was doing it correctly. The teacher stated no it was not quite right but the students enjoyed doing it that way. The principal ended that meeting stating well since the students enjoy doing that way when they get it in high school they can wait to then to learn the high school way of doing it. Sadly this is typical based education crap most likely because of people like Dr. Jean Piaget who totally screwed up math education in this country. Here is a web address all should read. http://www.time.com/time/time100/scientist/profile/piaget.html The kids learn to add and subtract by counting and thus never learn to get past that point in there development he helped to create a lost generation of people. The math teachers where I live think this guy is a hero.

Q. Do you ever realize, if we bring the students to a level where they have complete basic knowledge of computer science can take compression technology forward with simple techniques that a scientist never works on?

A. No.

Q. Any institutes that you think are doing perfect in this regard and producing next scientists? any recommendation for the students may be motivated to travel to get most out of computer science?

A. No. but I suspect the best schools in China or India. The US schools since they are being forced to teach to lowest level are all going down the tubes.

Q. We ask you a question, that we asked Dr. Matt Mahoney; Providing your research and sources free and keeping them open to general public, don't you think they might have already been embedded and used in several software products and you might have not been given even few words of credit or any type of support for doing this?

A. In ten years when I am dead and gone who cares.

Q. After a big spread of websites and web-development, majority of developers and new comers are deeply into it, rather than learning the core of programming and using low-level languages. Do you agree that these web/scripting languages (where providing flexibility and facilitating) have somehow faded the interest of developers in system programming / platform-dependent application development?

A. Yes, and thats not a good trend.

Q. And yes, one important thing we need you to review is, E-books everywhere, If you start searching web for (say) E-books on data compression, you might end-up with a number of pages you cant review in one sitting, but yet millions of downloaders do not learn anything from them? WHY?

A. They don't learn because they are lazy. And they tend to only use the useless books they have to buy in school.

Q. Did you ever plan to document your findings and research? in an organized form and later format them as a book that may benefit many readers. Because thousands read your website pages monthly, they download your stuff, well if they wish to learn from website do you think it perfectly categorizes everything that one can go through and call it a track of learning data compression technology?

A. I planned to write a bok on crypto my way including using my bijective compression as the main part. Since I think thats the only legal way you can post new crypto. But I am not good at writting so its unlikely it will every get done. I am unable to organize I change directions and my mind to often on what I do.

Q. How easily a student can reach you for guidance?

A. Actually very easy.

Q. Any message for our readers, students, & researchers willing to get into your field of technology and take learning to optimum level for production.

A. My advice is do it as a hobby. I think that its to hard to break into it on your own. I would also say learn to code and test programs yourself don't trust your teachers or bosses they really could care less about you.

Q. At the end of our interview, what compression & archiving tool you suggest to our readers so that they save money, keeping in view the today's computer user wants fast application.

A. I currently just use pkzip or somtimes whatever version of paq is hot.

At the end - Mr. David, it is an honor for APITalkto publish your interview.