unless all its activity is used in the act of prediction (the universe predicts itself in real time, but does nothing else).
It will be always difficult for humans to openly predict the behavior of humanity. The reason is simple: if you openly predict accurately the future, the margin to profit from that knowledge is so big, that the market will modify the trend, and your prediction will meaningless.
The only way to predict the future with a high degree of accuracy, without influencing it with the prediction you must do two things:
- do it secretly, in a small group, so that there is no "market"
- do not use your knowledge to alter in a big way your prediction. That is, you can profit from your prediction, but not too much compared to the quantity being predicted.
A concrete example: I predict rightly that the price of oil will be 200$ in one month. If I make that prediction open, and the market trusts me, the market will immediately adjust to that prediction. Those market forces will render my prediction completely moot. If, on the other hand, I keep that prediction to myself, I can profit from it as long as my profits are not affecting in a big way the price of oil.
Somebody has said, referring to the second law of thermodinamics, that ethanol is an energy sink. It is not so, if we consider the energy provided by our sun as a free source of energy (as it is for us humans).
Ethanol is produced using mainly two energy sources: petrol (to move the machinery and to produce the related fertilizers/pesticides), and solar energy (the crops are energy collectors).
The ultimate question is: "How much energy can we extract from ethanol for each unit of energy of petrol invested?"
It is not clear that we get less that we put in. And even if it was, there is still an argument in favour of ethanol: it is a perfect substitue for gas, and we could become energy independent if we started producing ethanol using a trully renovable energy source (solar, or whatever).
Is it maybe you the one who is not thinking clearly? What the greens are doing in this case is rising awareness about a very important issue for the OS/FS community. They are not against Linux - on the contrary.
Next time you post, read first, breath twice, and then write.
I'm not sure they are happy and dancing: tt is possible that this event is what the European Parlament needed to think twice about SW patents. And if they are not accepted, or only accepted in a very reduced scope, the MS strategy of killing OS/FS with lawsuits (directly or by proxy) will be severely undermined.
It seems this event is showing the world how dangerous software patents are. It's better to put a project at risk and rise awareness about this issue, than go on doing business as usual and wait until MS decides to shut OS/FS down using an unjust patent system.
I think you misunderstand me: my opinion is that MS will not change their pricing policy - short term - because of the ruling. They can not increase it (see below), and they are not yet forced to decreased (too small competition on the desktop - but growing)
What the market bears is directly related to the number of players that a given market has. Keeping some players alive ensures that MS must consider competitor's products (in features and pricing terms) in order to price their products.
Even when a company has a virtual monopoly, it is healthy to encourage the creation of competitors, however small they may be. Even though MS has a monopoly on the desktop, they must very carefully price their Longhorn offerings, otherwise their TCO FUD will just explode.
So I think the ruling will have the effect of decreasing MS OS prices in the long term. They will also have to price separately the Windows Media Player, and eventually they will have to make money out of it (that is, above production costs); the same will happen to other MS products (XBox...) as they are forced to reduce margins in their cash cows (Windows and Office) by an increasing competition.
In essence, you kill the cash cow, and then you get a normal company doing decent business once again. The question is how many people will want to make business with MS once they are not forced to.
The story below is so full of errors and intentional mistakes that I can only imagine it has been thought up with an agenda in mind.
I am a linux user and enthusiast, and in no way I feel myself associated to the creators of the myDoom virus. I can not assure that the creator has nothing to do with linux, but neither can you assure the contrary, as you repeatedly do in your article.
The fact that one of your reporters plainly lied about the government reports on the war to Iraq (mind you, I am in no way supporting that invasion), has not led to the conclussion that the BBC systematically makes up reports, has it?
Well, now I start to think that maybe that is the case. You can count me as one customer less.
After this and the Hutton inquiry, they are done - for me at least.
I stopped watching CNN because of the Iraq war, now I will stop watching BBC. Hopefully Euronews will remain objective, otherwise I will get my news exclusively through slashdot (not specially objective, but at least there is no "master plan" behind it)
Subject: Your article in Syllabus To: howard@princeton.edu
Dear Mr. Howard,
I will not comment on the statements that you are making on your article about the open source movement (version control, accountability, quality control, support...) It is very shocking that you are able to make such statements, so much that I nearly think that you have not taken a look at the computing industry for the past fifteen years. And what is even more schocking is that you are able to present such an article when you clearly have a big lack of knowledge about the subject. But I do not want to comment on these issues because other people have already done it before me, showing you the facts that you should be aware of before writing such an article.
What worries me is how can it be that a supposedly competent senior technology strategist is making such plain false statements. I can only think of a plausible answer: you are on the payroll of the powerfull interests which feel threaten by the rise of the open source movement. To you and to those powerfull economic interests I say the following: prove that your model is better and that you can serve better the customers than the open source projects by *delivering* software. Stop the PR campaigns and convince the industry that you can deliver faster, better and cheaper. Stop talking and start coding.
And one more thing: we are creating a mature infraestructure which will power the information technology of the (near) future. People like you, who are only looking for their own short term economic interest (as all good citizens of a capitilist system should be doing, right?) do little service to the common good. You have a daunting task in front of you, though: just try to wipe out all distributed knowledge that our society has accumulated, in which we base our open source movement. I wish you luck!
Best regards,
Daniel Gonzalez Independent Real Time Software Consultant
The fact that the police does not catch the big scary guy menacing inocent citicens does not mean that he is not doing it. He's got the right of presumption of inocence, but if too many people are scared to go out on the street because they have heard stories about a big scary guy, then at some point the government has to intervene and look for him.
Let us then test this supposed 'Free Speech' issue.
You said 'when a corporation indirectly discourages people making public their scientific opinion'
So, then, all scientists are should be free to say anything they want, regardless of their employers wishes or policies?
What about 'trade secrets?'
I am not talking about trade secrets here. If he has been breaking the law, he should be brought to court. I do not think that was the case.
What about information that would harm the corporation, but which doesn't reflect anything that would put life or health at risk, or hide a violation of law? Do I have a right to 'go public' with that without risking being fired?
Well, if it is the truth, why wouldn't you be able to do that, if that is your job? Remember, we are talking here about a security specialist, and he was making public the result of his investigations. Was that harming a corporation? Who cares! Look, if my job is to give people parking tickets, I do not care about those tickets harming the people who receive them. I do my job and give the parking ticket.
What about something that is more inflammatory than factual (such as Microsoft's position making it responsible for internet security vulnerabilities which, though it may be true is as much a matter of opinion as of established fact)?
A matter of opinion? Well, that's a report: opinion based on factual analisis; he studies the case, he puts in some figures, he makes some analisis, and at the end of the day he makes public his opinion based on the studies he has made. If you think his conclussion is wrong, offer a contrareport (as has happened several times with the MS funded reports about TCO)
This 'pure science' stuff is just so much pap and pablum. It reflects a schoolboy understanding of human rights which can do little more than jump up and down and shout 'Free Speech! Free Speech!'
That's interesting! So you belong to the camp who thinks that there are no facts, only opinions? Well, I think there is an actual 'pure science', and I believe in discussion based on facts. I do not think that finding those facts is an easy task, but hey, that's what the report was for!
while failing to understand that an employee owes a large measure of loyalty and subordination to his employer, whether he likes it or not.
He was loyal to his employer: he was doing his job as security analist. It happened to be that the conclussion of his report didn't please (or his employer thought wouldn't please) a party affected by the report. It is difficult to imagine a report about computer security that would not touch heavily on the effects of the Windows platform.
That's exactly the point: he has been fired for doing his job, and precisely that is what should not be allowed.
On the rest of your post, I won't comment because I am not that aware of american politics.
It is relevant because of the prevalence of the institution which is forcing people to shut up. We are not talking about a small corporation with local power: we are talking about a corporation which manages a bigger budget than most of the governments of the world, with a huge media power, and thus with the possibility of seriously distort the way academics, professionals, students make public their opinions. When you have a company using maffia tactics to make their opinion prevail, you have a free speech issue.
The big difference between Windows and OSS is that OSS, by design, can not be turned into a monopoly. There will be big companies and small companies offering OSS solutions, but none of them will capture most of the market; it's as simple as this: if the OSS market is big enough and a company is starting to dominate it - and to generate big proffits - the low entry cost will allow any other company to start directly competing. And we know what competition means forto customers: lower prices, listening to what the customers want... And we know of other beneffits inherent to OSS: no vendor lock-in (secret formats,...) The only questionable issue is that of innovation, but we are seeing each day that innovation is possible in the OSS world: some will even say that certain technologies are moving faster in the Open Source world that in the propietary world.
Look at the irony: MS, carrying the flag of capitalism and american ideals, is forced by its very structure to use communist tactics (secretism, propaganda,...) to try to avoid people adopting an open standard which more clearly embodies the principles behind any open society.
I am not american, but I'll tell what I see: not only because of the issues related to SW, but because of the general political climate, the USA are on the brink of taking an important decission: you have the choice now of keeping an open society, or you could turn your contry into the next soviet union. The choice is yours.
Well, I think it is indeed a free speech issue when a corporation indirectly discourages people making public their scientific opinion: of course those scientists can legally sign the reports they want to, and the government will not punish them for doing so (i.e. they can legally exercise their free speech right), but if they know that doing that has bad consequencues for them, and thus restrain themselfs from signing a given report, there you have a very clear free speech issue.
I do not know if BSD is dying, I am not too aware of the current situation. But I can tell you one thing: if I develop code, I want the people that use it to contribute back, so I would use a license that guarantees that. I think this is quite fair, and a lot of people see it this way. And sticking to this model, the code base release under the GPL can only increase with time.
This can not be said of BSD, which allows for propietary derivatives, and thus for propietary competing products which start on the work made by others.
I mentioned before that BSD guarantees self-destruction, and that is actually a wording mistake. The thruth is that it does not guarantee self-survival, which being in the world we live, I think in the end amount to practically the same thing: self-destruction; it would very well be that FreeBSD et al stay free for years to come, but the I think that at some point a propietary derived product will get them out of the market. That will of course only happen if there is enough commercial interest in BSD, and by enough I mean the interest that the market is showing right now on Linux.
The war SCO/Linux that we are winessing would be played very differently with a BSD license: a new product would come out, with huge funding behind it (read Canopy Group if you want), and the free product would starve in matter of years. No need to go to court, no need to point at supposed copied lines of code. Just nice new features developped with a propietary license which add commercial interest to this propietary derivative.
If you want your free software to be free in years to come, use a copylefted license.
I do not know about you, but I would love to find something to do with my life in what I profoundly believe, something that I can do really well and that makes me feel good. If I found that, no doubt I would be passionate and I would use my "big mouth" to defend my ideas. Doing otherwise would be a waste of my time and my capacity.
I *do* think about emacs, gdb and gcc, mainly when I daily use them to pay my rent.
Your opinion is that the Free SW movement is based on technical merit. I think right now propietary software is technically superior (in some aspects like usability) to Free SW. It will change in the years to come, and the reason why it will change is the filosofy lying behind the movement. A filosofy legally crafted on the GPL (and other free SW licenses) which guarantees that no step backwards is taken.
The BSD license is so free that it guarantees self-destruction: misappropiation of SW by third parties without contributing back.
It's the same kind of freedom that you would have if your contry would throw the Constitution away: anybody can do what they want, no strings attached. You can kill your neighbour, you can steal: you are FREE.
Are you new, misinformed, or do you have any other kind of problem?
Any of the advocates that you mention have made contributions to the Free Software comunity and, in some cases, in big amounts. They have written code - although code writing is not the only way to contribute (and not even the most difficult one)
Specifically, Mr. Stallmann has contributed dozens of programs to the Free Software world. He is one of the initiators of the movement. You can disagree with his views, but you can not say that he does not practive what he preaches. He has practiced a lot before preaching. If you do not know who started emacs, gcc, gdb, glibc, and so many other projects, you would better read a bit before posting such ignorant comments. If you do not know what those projects are, you should probably go back to school.
And pay attention to this: if the free software movement is to play an important role, it won't be thanks to its technical achievements (you can reach those achievements using other aproaches). It will be thanks to the freedom that it returns to its users.
A lot of comments focus on the problems that a global search and replace will pose to the technique. I think we can improve the agorithm by doing the following:
What we are looking for here are pieces of code with the same structure: the same for loops, while loops, variable assignment, function names, and so on. The idea would be to substitute all literals by a standard placeholder, and then generate the md5 checksums on the block level (as somebody has previously suggested).
To be able to cheat this technique, a modification in the structure of the code is required. And in the case that exactly that has been done, it is arguably wether that can be considered copyright infringement.
Slashdot Mirror
unless all its activity is used in the act of prediction (the universe predicts itself in real time, but does nothing else). It will be always difficult for humans to openly predict the behavior of humanity. The reason is simple: if you openly predict accurately the future, the margin to profit from that knowledge is so big, that the market will modify the trend, and your prediction will meaningless. The only way to predict the future with a high degree of accuracy, without influencing it with the prediction you must do two things: - do it secretly, in a small group, so that there is no "market" - do not use your knowledge to alter in a big way your prediction. That is, you can profit from your prediction, but not too much compared to the quantity being predicted. A concrete example: I predict rightly that the price of oil will be 200$ in one month. If I make that prediction open, and the market trusts me, the market will immediately adjust to that prediction. Those market forces will render my prediction completely moot. If, on the other hand, I keep that prediction to myself, I can profit from it as long as my profits are not affecting in a big way the price of oil.
Somebody has said, referring to the second law of thermodinamics, that ethanol is an energy sink. It is not so, if we consider the energy provided by our sun as a free source of energy (as it is for us humans). Ethanol is produced using mainly two energy sources: petrol (to move the machinery and to produce the related fertilizers/pesticides), and solar energy (the crops are energy collectors). The ultimate question is: "How much energy can we extract from ethanol for each unit of energy of petrol invested?" It is not clear that we get less that we put in. And even if it was, there is still an argument in favour of ethanol: it is a perfect substitue for gas, and we could become energy independent if we started producing ethanol using a trully renovable energy source (solar, or whatever).
Is it maybe you the one who is not thinking clearly? What the greens are doing in this case is rising awareness about a very important issue for the OS/FS community. They are not against Linux - on the contrary.
Next time you post, read first, breath twice, and then write.
Not if MS is one of the biggest patent holders ...
I'm not sure they are happy and dancing: tt is possible that this event is what the European Parlament needed to think twice about SW patents. And if they are not accepted, or only accepted in a very reduced scope, the MS strategy of killing OS/FS with lawsuits (directly or by proxy) will be severely undermined.
It seems this event is showing the world how dangerous software patents are. It's better to put a project at risk and rise awareness about this issue, than go on doing business as usual and wait until MS decides to shut OS/FS down using an unjust patent system.
The instruction at "0x00000000" referenced memory at "0x00000000". The memory could not be "read".
In Windows 2000 Profesional
I think you misunderstand me: my opinion is that MS will not change their pricing policy - short term - because of the ruling. They can not increase it (see below), and they are not yet forced to decreased (too small competition on the desktop - but growing)
...) as they are forced to reduce margins in their cash cows (Windows and Office) by an increasing competition.
What the market bears is directly related to the number of players that a given market has. Keeping some players alive ensures that MS must consider competitor's products (in features and pricing terms) in order to price their products.
Even when a company has a virtual monopoly, it is healthy to encourage the creation of competitors, however small they may be. Even though MS has a monopoly on the desktop, they must very carefully price their Longhorn offerings, otherwise their TCO FUD will just explode.
So I think the ruling will have the effect of decreasing MS OS prices in the long term. They will also have to price separately the Windows Media Player, and eventually they will have to make money out of it (that is, above production costs); the same will happen to other MS products (XBox
In essence, you kill the cash cow, and then you get a normal company doing decent business once again. The question is how many people will want to make business with MS once they are not forced to.
M$ can increase products prices - and thus tax customers - to cover the fine _only_ if they do not have competition.
With competition, they are not able to do it, otherwise competitor's products become more attractive.
The EU ruling has the goal of keeping competition alive - indiretly making this fine a real fine, not a tax.
The story below is so full of errors and intentional mistakes that I can only imagine it has been thought up with an agenda in mind.
I am a linux user and enthusiast, and in no way I feel myself associated to the creators of the myDoom virus. I can not assure that the creator has nothing to do with linux, but neither can you assure the contrary, as you repeatedly do in your article.
The fact that one of your reporters plainly lied about the government reports on the war to Iraq (mind you, I am in no way supporting that invasion), has not led to the conclussion that the BBC systematically makes up reports, has it?
Well, now I start to think that maybe that is the case. You can count me as one customer less.
After this and the Hutton inquiry, they are done - for me at least.
I stopped watching CNN because of the Iraq war, now I will stop watching BBC. Hopefully Euronews will remain objective, otherwise I will get my news exclusively through slashdot (not specially objective, but at least there is no "master plan" behind it)
Subject: Your article in Syllabus
...) It is very shocking that you are able to make such statements, so much that I nearly think that you have not taken a look at the computing industry for the past fifteen years. And what is even more schocking is that you are able to present such an article when you clearly have a big lack of knowledge about the subject. But I do not want to comment on these issues because other people have already done it before me, showing you the facts that you should be aware of before writing such an article.
To: howard@princeton.edu
Dear Mr. Howard,
I will not comment on the statements that you are making on your article about the open source movement (version control, accountability, quality control, support
What worries me is how can it be that a supposedly competent senior technology strategist is making such plain false statements. I can only think of a plausible answer: you are on the payroll of the powerfull interests which feel threaten by the rise of the open source movement. To you and to those powerfull economic interests I say the following: prove that your model is better and that you can serve better the customers than the open source projects by *delivering* software. Stop the PR campaigns and convince the industry that you can deliver faster, better and cheaper. Stop talking and start coding.
And one more thing: we are creating a mature infraestructure which will power the information technology of the (near) future. People like you, who are only looking for their own short term economic interest (as all good citizens of a capitilist system should be doing, right?) do little service to the common good. You have a daunting task in front of you, though: just try to wipe out all distributed knowledge that our society has accumulated, in which we base our open source movement. I wish you luck!
Best regards,
Daniel Gonzalez
Independent Real Time Software Consultant
The fact that the police does not catch the big scary guy menacing inocent citicens does not mean that he is not doing it. He's got the right of presumption of inocence, but if too many people are scared to go out on the street because they have heard stories about a big scary guy, then at some point the government has to intervene and look for him.
or is MS actually collaborating in a GPLed product?
Have we actually reached the inflexion point were stupid confrontation will be slowly replaced by fruitfull collaboration?
When is MS going to release their own GNU/Linux distribution?
Let us then test this supposed 'Free Speech' issue.
You said 'when a corporation indirectly discourages people making public their scientific opinion'
So, then, all scientists are should be free to say anything they want, regardless of their employers wishes or policies?
What about 'trade secrets?'
I am not talking about trade secrets here. If he has been breaking the law, he should be brought to court. I do not think that was the case.
What about information that would harm the corporation, but which doesn't reflect anything that would put life or health at risk, or hide a violation of law? Do I have a right to 'go public' with that without risking being fired?
Well, if it is the truth, why wouldn't you be able to do that, if that is your job? Remember, we are talking here about a security specialist, and he was making public the result of his investigations. Was that harming a corporation? Who cares! Look, if my job is to give people parking tickets, I do not care about those tickets harming the people who receive them. I do my job and give the parking ticket.
What about something that is more inflammatory than factual (such as Microsoft's position making it responsible for internet security vulnerabilities which, though it may be true is as much a matter of opinion as of established fact)?
A matter of opinion? Well, that's a report: opinion based on factual analisis; he studies the case, he puts in some figures, he makes some analisis, and at the end of the day he makes public his opinion based on the studies he has made. If you think his conclussion is wrong, offer a contrareport (as has happened several times with the MS funded reports about TCO)
This 'pure science' stuff is just so much pap and pablum. It reflects a schoolboy understanding of human rights which can do little more than jump up and down and shout 'Free Speech! Free Speech!'
That's interesting! So you belong to the camp who thinks that there are no facts, only opinions? Well, I think there is an actual 'pure science', and I believe in discussion based on facts. I do not think that finding those facts is an easy task, but hey, that's what the report was for!
while failing to understand that an employee owes a large measure of loyalty and subordination to his employer, whether he likes it or not.
He was loyal to his employer: he was doing his job as security analist. It happened to be that the conclussion of his report didn't please (or his employer thought wouldn't please) a party affected by the report. It is difficult to imagine a report about computer security that would not touch heavily on the effects of the Windows platform.
That's exactly the point: he has been fired for doing his job, and precisely that is what should not be allowed.
On the rest of your post, I won't comment because I am not that aware of american politics.
It is relevant because of the prevalence of the institution which is forcing people to shut up. We are not talking about a small corporation with local power: we are talking about a corporation which manages a bigger budget than most of the governments of the world, with a huge media power, and thus with the possibility of seriously distort the way academics, professionals, students make public their opinions. When you have a company using maffia tactics to make their opinion prevail, you have a free speech issue.
The big difference between Windows and OSS is that OSS, by design, can not be turned into a monopoly. There will be big companies and small companies offering OSS solutions, but none of them will capture most of the market; it's as simple as this: if the OSS market is big enough and a company is starting to dominate it - and to generate big proffits - the low entry cost will allow any other company to start directly competing. And we know what competition means forto customers: lower prices, listening to what the customers want ... And we know of other beneffits inherent to OSS: no vendor lock-in (secret formats, ...) The only questionable issue is that of innovation, but we are seeing each day that innovation is possible in the OSS world: some will even say that certain technologies are moving faster in the Open Source world that in the propietary world.
...) to try to avoid people adopting an open standard which more clearly embodies the principles behind any open society.
Look at the irony: MS, carrying the flag of capitalism and american ideals, is forced by its very structure to use communist tactics (secretism, propaganda,
I am not american, but I'll tell what I see: not only because of the issues related to SW, but because of the general political climate, the USA are on the brink of taking an important decission: you have the choice now of keeping an open society, or you could turn your contry into the next soviet union. The choice is yours.
Well, I think it is indeed a free speech issue when a corporation indirectly discourages people making public their scientific opinion: of course those scientists can legally sign the reports they want to, and the government will not punish them for doing so (i.e. they can legally exercise their free speech right), but if they know that doing that has bad consequencues for them, and thus restrain themselfs from signing a given report, there you have a very clear free speech issue.
This can not be said of BSD, which allows for propietary derivatives, and thus for propietary competing products which start on the work made by others.
I mentioned before that BSD guarantees self-destruction, and that is actually a wording mistake. The thruth is that it does not guarantee self-survival, which being in the world we live, I think in the end amount to practically the same thing: self-destruction; it would very well be that FreeBSD et al stay free for years to come, but the I think that at some point a propietary derived product will get them out of the market. That will of course only happen if there is enough commercial interest in BSD, and by enough I mean the interest that the market is showing right now on Linux.
The war SCO/Linux that we are winessing would be played very differently with a BSD license: a new product would come out, with huge funding behind it (read Canopy Group if you want), and the free product would starve in matter of years. No need to go to court, no need to point at supposed copied lines of code. Just nice new features developped with a propietary license which add commercial interest to this propietary derivative.
If you want your free software to be free in years to come, use a copylefted license.
No, the GPL is a fair deal: use this nice code but give something in return (if you are redistributing work based on it)
Words have little value if you do the opposite than what you preach. Otherwise, you are just being consistent with your ideas.
I do not know about you, but I would love to find something to do with my life in what I profoundly believe, something that I can do really well and that makes me feel good. If I found that, no doubt I would be passionate and I would use my "big mouth" to defend my ideas. Doing otherwise would be a waste of my time and my capacity.
I *do* think about emacs, gdb and gcc, mainly when I daily use them to pay my rent.
Your opinion is that the Free SW movement is based on technical merit. I think right now propietary software is technically superior (in some aspects like usability) to Free SW. It will change in the years to come, and the reason why it will change is the filosofy lying behind the movement. A filosofy legally crafted on the GPL (and other free SW licenses) which guarantees that no step backwards is taken.
The BSD license is so free that it guarantees self-destruction: misappropiation of SW by third parties without contributing back.
It's the same kind of freedom that you would have if your contry would throw the Constitution away: anybody can do what they want, no strings attached. You can kill your neighbour, you can steal: you are FREE.
That is called anarchy, and it is not stable.
Are you new, misinformed, or do you have any other kind of problem?
Any of the advocates that you mention have made contributions to the Free Software comunity and, in some cases, in big amounts. They have written code - although code writing is not the only way to contribute (and not even the most difficult one)
Specifically, Mr. Stallmann has contributed dozens of programs to the Free Software world. He is one of the initiators of the movement. You can disagree with his views, but you can not say that he does not practive what he preaches. He has practiced a lot before preaching. If you do not know who started emacs, gcc, gdb, glibc, and so many other projects, you would better read a bit before posting such ignorant comments. If you do not know what those projects are, you should probably go back to school.
And pay attention to this: if the free software movement is to play an important role, it won't be thanks to its technical achievements (you can reach those achievements using other aproaches). It will be thanks to the freedom that it returns to its users.
A lot of comments focus on the problems that a global search and replace will pose to the technique. I think we can improve the agorithm by doing the following:
What we are looking for here are pieces of code with the same structure: the same for loops, while loops, variable assignment, function names, and so on. The idea would be to substitute all literals by a standard placeholder, and then generate the md5 checksums on the block level (as somebody has previously suggested).
To be able to cheat this technique, a modification in the structure of the code is required. And in the case that exactly that has been done, it is arguably wether that can be considered copyright infringement.