It is compelling, because it is probably true. I think Sloot did not manage to create a device that could play movies to be released in the future, without requiring an update to the device.
> But I don't why this would have us believe in the infinite movie device.
The infinite movie device was a ruse. A misinterpretation of the claims by media and investors, which the company did nothing to stop. Jan Sloot never claimed higher compression ratio's than 8x (you can compress the entire series of Lost better with a single code-book than each single episode with its own code-book). He talked more about encoding, not compression.
> Are the patent examiners greater authorities than the experts?
I think the information theory experts are railing against a claim that was never made. A device that holds every movie ever made, or to be made in the future, unlock-able by a tiny keycode, can not possibly exist. I think Pieper, Perkins and the Oracle DB experts knew this. Apparently there was more to this invention than this ridiculous claim of near infinite compression.
> human psychology and greed
I think this was a different pre-bubble time, where people thought they could invest and hype up companies, and have the technology build later. Speech recognition companies were worth millions before their tech was even proven to practically work. I suspect that such a force worked behind the scenes in this company too. Just see the corny time-capsule that is their flash site (warning, plays sound): http://www.davoc.com/indexnow.html
> my first presumption was that you were trolling, which I'd define as pretending to believe an untenable position to see if you can get a rise out of others
I am sorry for not making my ideas about this case more clear. For the record: I do not think that endless or recursive compression is possible. I am just trying to apply Occam's razor to this intriguing case: Was Jan Sloot the biggest conman of the 90s? Fooling the biggest venture capital companies in the world? Did he really romantically invent something special as an outsider? Or was his set-top box idea really worth something? I don't believe Pieper could be fooled by such a con. Maybe he knew?
> Without trying to be too offensive, who are you, and why did you write this comment?
I am anonymous. Not trying to rile you up, but prefer to keep it that way. I have, not too recently, abandoned an old HN account and starting over. I wrote this comment, because this case is intriguing, and for me, responsible for my attraction to compression and information theory. I first heard about the Pigeonhole principle in relation to this case.