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.ZIP Standard to Fragment?
fudgefactor7 writes "As IDG.NET tells us, the venerable .ZIP compression standard is about to undergo a bit of a schism. PKWare and WinZip, the "big two" in the .ZIP format biz are (unfortunately) going to be making their respective releases incompatible (to an extent) and an archive made with one may not be accessible from another. The problem lies with PKWare not giving information to WinZip, thus making WinZip to go it alone."
What will my unix *zip programs be compatible with?
Trolling is a art,
I'm hoping that WinZip changes the file extension for their new format to make it clear to anyone who gets ahold of such a file that it is not a standard Zip file.
And how much time will it be before someone just writes a program that handles both formats natively? RAR, ACE, and all the other compressors already do handle Zip file just fine.
How much does this really matter? First of all, I bet most people are still using their unregestered shareware winzip from ages ago. Most people know that the zip encryption is pretty much worthless, so they don't bother. The people who want an encrypted zip file are probably going to encrypt it with a quality encryption program, such as gpg or pgp, AFTER they have it zipped. The person on the other end unencrypts it and then opens it. I know the article said "95% of the time it'll work", but I bet it will be more like "It'll work 99.9999% of the time".
Also, the basic format isn't changing. It's just the encryption part, so zip files will still be usuable by nearly everyone.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/State/may00/katz21052 000a.asp
I used to know a PKWare. Let's see. I think the last time I used it was back in Win31 days! Until now I didn't care much about which one I would use. Now that they are diverging, it appears that WinZip will be the one I use since I can find it more readily than PKWare. Besides, I seem to remember a while back something about PKWare ceasing to be. Guess I was wrong.
.tar.gz files, I'll stick with it. So in effect, instead of not caring, I just have to care enough to make a mental note to only remember WinZip and forget PKWare. And if I run across a PKWare-only file, either I'll have to trash it or download a trial PKWare long enough to convert the file, and then discard it.
Also, since WinZip is compatible with
LHA was much better even ten years ago. It was standard on Atari ST and Amiga computers. And it generally got better compression, too. To this day it's still installed by default on most Linux distros but nobody uses it any more.
I personally try and use winrar as much as I can. The only times I even use the "zip" compression is when I have to send a file to someone who can't use or doesn't have winrar installed.
Personally I would like to see this issue resolved because there really is no need two have two different zip formats out there. My hope is that winrar will implement both (if possible) and just let it be.
Microsoft bashing aside for the moment, since Windows XP has built in support for .zip files, does this even matter? Your average windows user doesn't use encryption, and those in the know, use better formats of security.
For that matter just use tarballs. I have tar, gzip, and bzip2 all working just fine in XP. Tarballs made with either gzip or bzip2 will be smaller than zip files most of the time anyway.
Besides I get really sick of having to provide multiple copies of source code just because Windows programmers can't figure out what to do with a tarball. C'mon! Programmers should know these things.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
It does ZIP, ACE, RAR, ...
.sit (I love the fact that OS X has tar.gz built in) Hell I never send Mac friends .sit files. tar.gz all the way baby!
tar zxvf
gzip
What else exists?
Oh yea I forgot
Frankly, with the popularity of Winzip, PKWare is making a grave error. PKZip, while perfectly good, is running a distant second in popularity based on my observations. Making their product produce incompatible ZIP files is a sure way of eroding their market share even further.
.DOC files that Microsoft would not be able to read. The result would be that Corel would lose their remaining six users of their word processor.
You do that sort of thing when you are the industry leader. This would be like Corel deciding that they were going to set a new standard for
Windows users rejoice! Use 7-zip (click here) and end the WinZip-PKWare monopoly ;).
Mod away, but remember.. it's open source MWUAHAHA!
Goodbye PKWare.
Odd point of view because PKWare created the standard.
How's AES for serious encryption format? That's what the new WinZip 9 beta boasts.
The greatness of ZIP has been it's compatibility across platforms. It's so widely spread tool one finds it hard to image that a file couldn't be opened by receiver on some other system. When it comes to encryting files, it'd be important for ZIP to adopt one solution for strong encryption.
And no, in the real world, there is most likely no PGP or GPG where you have to send that important document encrypted outside your organization. Will they install because you ask? Most likely not. So go ahead, cross you fingers and send away unencrypted. That way you know the data will be readable by (at least) one receiver.
(This sig intentionally left blank)
Zip encryption has always been a joke,
espically now. I recoeverd 3 Zip files last week from an employee's laptop who was "let go" and "forgot" what the password was.
Most of the zip cracking apps on the net are trivial and quite powerful when you put a 3ghz P4 behind it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
That may be the unix way, but it's not the efficient way.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Maybe we should just use formats based on open standards. Then the actual software people use is irrelevant.
yep, and for a stupid reason
The company firewall will not allow certain kinds of files though (read things like source code and exes) - fair enough, but even if you zip the file, the block it. This not only occurs through the firewall, but inside the company too. So when we want to send a file, we zip with encryption. They can't open it to see what is inside, so they let it through
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
I haven't used .zip in a long time. There's, quite simply, much better stuff out there. My overall favorite solution is .tar.gz, but there are always times on Windows machines I want to split a file into multiple parts (like to post it on a newsgroup), so then I use WinRAR. Everything I've mentioned has better compression algorithms than Win/PK Zip, and I just can't imagine going back.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
many of you have already mentioned, I personally would rather stick with .tar.gz and .tar.bz2, while not touching the .zip so called "standard" with a mile long stick.
If (by which I mean IF)
this .zip thing was a standard,
it would not be going to "fragment,"
period.
I think everyone will agree with me.
Gzip is a standard. Bzip2 is a standard.
Tar is a standard. Zip is NOT
a standard. And I see absolutely no reason to
use slower, compression-ratio-wise poorer,
proprietary,
as well as otherwise inferior "standard"
(notice the quote marks), when we have
real standards available.
I frankly agree with most of people
about this subject.
It's a good thing, that this news has been posted
on Slashdot.
Karma: Positive (probably because of superiour intellect)
How's this news? From the Help in the Winzip Beta that I have been using for a while:
Note that the Zip file format extension used by WinZip to store AES-encrypted files is not supported by earlier versions of WinZip and is not yet supported by most other Zip file utilities. In order to extract a file encrypted with AES, WinZip 9.0 is required. Because the technical specification for WinZip's AES format extension is available on the WinZip web site, we anticipate that other Zip file utilities will add support for this format extension.
What I find funny is that PKWARE will basically die off from this, no one I know from the workplace, friends, or even home users use anything PKWARE related. They all use Winzip or another windows tool. Hell it's been 10 year's since I even used PKZIP from PKWARE, and back then I was on a 486 machine with DOS 5.
It's also funny how people are still using a archiving format thats been around since 1988 at least, it's OLD and compresses like crap. Especially when there are SUPERIOR and much better compression formats out there such as
ARJ
JAR
RAR
UC2
ACE
All of these formats compress better then ZIP, yet you are hard pressed to find ARJ/ACE/JAR/UC2 files on the net, RAR files you may find here and there.
You must master your joystick like a fisherman masters bait! - Gimpy
you mean like DeCSS lets users decrypt and watch dvd's in the roughly the same manner the licensed technology does?
First of all ... No matter what we all think about the multi-billion dollar making machine back in Redmond ... .Zip is included in their latest making "XP" and will probably be supported for as long as they ever wish.
.zip application they have used as long as they use the built-in compression stuff (they could even use a Markov algorithm and call it .zip, 99% would ever know).
... Who cares? I'm not interested, just pack those files into one archive and I'm satisfied - no matter what the compression ratio is.
... The .PNG format. A viable option? Already handled, let's call it .CNG (or something similar). Same procedure, just different views.
No one will ever need to fuzz about what
WinZip and PK are dying and they probably need some cash, that's why they're starting this. But
Lempel-Ziv (Welch) and Huffman codes are taught to every CS undergrad so why bother?
One interesteing this was mentioned, though
The DCMA explicitly allows reverse engineering for interoperability
The DMCA explicitly allows you to go broke defending against frivolous lawsuits, trying to educate the judicial system about what constitutes interoperability.
After all, if it is compatible with the new format, then you must have stolen intellectual property, violated a trade secret, or done some other dastardly deed. After all, the proof of your crimes is obvious and evident: it goes against the wishes of a corporation.
The price of freedom is eternal litigation.
Ah, there is a big difference between this and DeCSS.
The CSS encryption standard was well known, so one could easily write a functioning DeCSS program without violating the DMCA---with one significant exception: the encryption keys were not made public. Reverse engineering was used to retrieve those keys and thereby make DeCSS a functioning program.
With PKZip, the encryption method is not known and must be reverse-engineered, but the encryption keys are externally supplied by the user. Therefore, you aren't circumventing any copy protection by reverse-engineering PKZip's protection, because you still can't "break" the copy protection of any ZIP file whose key you do not know.
Anyone who assumes that the way a law is written is the same as its implementation, or better yet, its ability to be used as a legal bludgeon, REALLY needs to get a clue.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
You can stick with the tape archiver if you want. You'll have the pleasure of waiting for your massive single file to finish decompressing, so you can then sequentially search the resulting decompressed archive for the files you actually wanted.
In the meantime, I'll be plucking decompressed files right out of the middle of my zip archives, in a fraction of the time.
Incidentally, if you're so anal about your compression ratio, why not compress with a good compressor (like bzip2) and archive with a good archiver (like zip)?
The FUD density is getting pretty high here...
The necessity of having DeCSS to allow Linux users to view DVDs is questionable? By whom? On what grounds? What's the alternative? I don't know of any way to play a DVD on Linux that doesn't involve DeCSS.
DeCSS gives people the ability to copy DVDs? What was keeping me from copying them before? Put the DVD in the drive, copy the file(s) to your hard drive. Burn to another DVD if you like. No DeCSS required. The copied DVD plays just fine.
Limiting playback to devices with licensed keys is quite reasonable? As I demonstrated in the last paragraph, it's total bullshit to say that it prevents privacy. All it does is let the MPAA control who can create DVD players and let them obsolesce DVD as a format whenever they want, let them control when videos can be released in different markets, and let them charge the DVD manufacturers for the privilege of making hardware that plays DVDs.
Are you employed by the MPAA or an MPAA affiliated studio? Your responses certainly don't look like those of someone with Joe Public's interests in mind.
Or are you just a troll?
"a compressed file is, in theory, non-repetitive and is therefore less crack-able"
Sorry, a compressed file is very repetitive. The algos are well known. Compression is done prior to encryption because the resulting file is smaller then if it hadn't been compressed. The encrypting of files makes them much larger.
*sigh* computer people don't know history.
Back in the DOS days (1986?) there was a format called ARC used by the program arc. Everyone used it on the BBSes. Phil Katz came up with his own programs, pkarc and pkxarc. One created, one extracted. He added a new compression scheme and his apps were *much* faster.
BBSes converted. When everyone is on 8088s and 2400 baud, every bit and cpu cycle counts.
arc sued PK and won. PK had some arc code in pkarc/pkxarc or something. PK vowed neither he nor anyone else would be in that position and released the zip format.
At the time, there was zoo, lha also competing. zoo was cross platform (DOS, Unix, VMS). lha was small and fast, producing small archives. zip aimed to be both.
BBSes converted overnight. The arc format disappeared. Other formats persisted for awhile, but zip stayed mainstream.
It's sad that PKware is on the other side of this...
I'm not a big fan of asymmetric cryptography for stuff that is going to just sit around. As far as archive stuff, if it doesn't use blowfish, IDEA, or AES I probably just won't use it.