Don't feel bad, bluto, I have many episodes when I can't find things I know I saw earlier... I usually decide the sightings were especially vivid hallucinations. ;-)

Thanks for the name tip!

Another set of links, for those interested:

On Proebsting's Law, by Kevin Scott

Self-Plagiarism in Computer Science, by Stephen Kobourov, Christian Collberg

Deducing Similarities in Java Sources from Bytecodes, by Brenda S. Baker and Udi Manber

Krakatoa: Decompilation in Java (Does Bytecode Reveal Source?), by Todd A. Proebsting and Scott A. Watterson

Finding Similar Files in a Large File System, by Udi Manber

(Say, that last one looks like it might help with our finding issues, at least on our own hard drives... ;-))

Say, that last one looks like it might help with our finding issues, at least on our own hard drives... ;-))

Most (all?) of these folks were from U of Arizona, IIRC (but again don't trust my memory :-) so I wouldn't be surprised if there was some collaboration. Udi Manber, who taught probably the best algorithms class I ever took, wrote or had his hands in agrep (a fast approximate grep) and the Glimpse/WebGlimpse/Harvest indexers. His old web page says he's a VP at Amazon, so perhaps he actually prospered during the dotcom saga...