The file is not really random, though, since Mike generated it and had time to make sure it was a "good" file before sending it on. That is, if the file was tr

The file is not really random, though, since Mike generated it and had time to make sure it was a "good" file before sending it on. That is, if the file was truly random, it would have a chance of 1/(2^X) of being all 0, where X is the size of the file. But since Mike would reject that file, the chance is actually 0. Same for all files with easily exploitable patterns - for example, I am sure that Goldman checked that the file could not be compressed with gzip before sending it. So the EV is probably not positive, even if there is a small chance that a random file of size X can be compressed.