Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't fractal image compression a real technique?

However, I did read about a hoax in the 90's where there was a claim of a fractal compression technique that could reduce a file down to 1% of its original size, which turned out to just be a program that stored a reference to the file's location instead of an actual compressed file.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_compression http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=885055