They do say it exhibits this behaviour (they don't elaborate on that). They just say it was ineffective at autonomous replication and i don't know about you but

They do say it exhibits this behaviour (they don't elaborate on that). They just say it was ineffective at autonomous replication and i don't know about you but i find that wording vague. Ineffective can mean at least two things. Did it attempt to do so and just couldn't figure it out with the given tools or no ?