surprised all the comments here are about whether he achieved compression or not. Point = Missed!
the entire thing was an ingenious trolling exercise, as he says, to 'out trick the trickster'. his goal was to exploit the loose wording of the challenge, and prove a point (possibly winning $5k in the process); I found it an entertaining story along those lines.
it proves nothing (new) about compression, or lack of it; he even stats that the consensus at the time was 'unanimous' that no compression had taken place. that's not where the interest in this link/story lies.
the entire thing was an ingenious trolling exercise, as he says, to 'out trick the trickster'. his goal was to exploit the loose wording of the challenge, and prove a point (possibly winning $5k in the process); I found it an entertaining story along those lines.
it proves nothing (new) about compression, or lack of it; he even stats that the consensus at the time was 'unanimous' that no compression had taken place. that's not where the interest in this link/story lies.
thanks for the original link, OP.