Question about Byte-Pairing for data compression. If byte pairing converts two byte values to a single byte value, splitting the file in half, then taking a gig file and recusing it 16 times shrinks it to 62,500,000. My question is, is byte-pairing really efficient? Is the creation of a 5,000,000 iteration loop, to be conservative, efficient? I would like some feed back on and some incisive opinions please.

Dave, what I read was: "The US patent office no longer grants patents on perpetual motion machines, but has recently granted at least two patents on a mathematically impossible process: compression of truly random data." I was not inferring the Patent Office was actually considering what I am inquiring about. I was merely commenting on the notion of a "mathematically impossible process." If someone has, in some way created a method of having a "single" data byte as a placeholder of 8 individual bytes of data, that would be a consideration for a patent. Now, about the mathematically impossibility of an 8 to 1 compression method, it is not so much a mathematically impossibility, but a series of rules and conditions that can be created. As long as there is the rule of 8 or 16 bit representation of storing data on a medium, there are ways to manipulate data that mirrors current methods, or creation by a new way of thinking.