Slashdot Mirror

you should try Tufts University, they've got a pretty good engineering school AND females.

The Roman Empire was not conducive to intellectual development. Read what Suetonius has to say about the emperor Claudius if you don't believe me. In particular, Suetonius mocks Claudius for writing books, employing ex-slaves as advisors, attempting language reform, and not engaging in enough military conquest.

You may not be a fan of medieval Europe, but if you knew much about ancient history you would realize that it was a huge step up in terms of human rights. The Romans were ruthless. These were the people who crucified 6,000 slaves along the main highway in 71 BCE. Or perhaps you have heard of the Third Punic War, which basically amounted to a campaign of genocide.

Of course the Romans may have been outdone in scale of depredation by Genghis Khan. They are certainly no match for the butchers of the 20th century. But they were not the nice people you seem to imagine.

Please do read some Plato in detail before you post about the Socratic method again! Try Plato's Gorgias and Apology of Sokrates (Apologia means "defense" in Greek), as well as Xenophon's version of the same Apology of Sokrates (neither Plato's nor Xenophon's version is strictly an accurate representation of Sokrates' defense speech (in his trial for "corrupting the youth of Athens" and "denying the existence of the gods"), but both, along with Gorgias, the best of Plato's shorter works, give a good flavor of the Socratic method.

Please do read some Plato in detail before you post about the Socratic method again! Try Plato's Gorgias and Apology of Sokrates (Apologia means "defense" in Greek), as well as Xenophon's version of the same Apology of Sokrates (neither Plato's nor Xenophon's version is strictly an accurate representation of Sokrates' defense speech (in his trial for "corrupting the youth of Athens" and "denying the existence of the gods"), but both, along with Gorgias, the best of Plato's shorter works, give a good flavor of the Socratic method.

Please do read some Plato in detail before you post about the Socratic method again! Try Plato's Gorgias and Apology of Sokrates (Apologia means "defense" in Greek), as well as Xenophon's version of the same Apology of Sokrates (neither Plato's nor Xenophon's version is strictly an accurate representation of Sokrates' defense speech (in his trial for "corrupting the youth of Athens" and "denying the existence of the gods"), but both, along with Gorgias, the best of Plato's shorter works, give a good flavor of the Socratic method.

There are actually a few online (no snide comments needed, I already realize how worthless all of this information is), though my personal favorite would be the morphology tool provided by the perseus project at Tufts.

I'm such a geek... :-)

Virus is not a Latin word, it's an English word, and therefore follows English conventions: one virus, many viruses. It is based on the Latin 'vir' but is as English as all get out.

It's so goddamn easy, yet stupid, stuck-up computer geeks try to make themselves sound important by going around saying "virii" as if it were a Latin word.

Ultrasonic testing uses sound waves to detect imperfections in material and to measure material properties.

Ultrasounds can be used for testing material imperfections in other things besides people (though of course things like x-rays are better and are often used on non-living objects). All the same, I'd be interested in seeing how cheap this is. If it's significantly less expensive than previous ultrasounds (and it looks like it might be) then drop in cost can make a lot of things 'possible' that weren't before. DNA fingerprinting was possible before PCR in 1992, but PCR made it cheap enough for common use.

Ultrasound does have engineering applications

"The comparison between the original and final thickness converted to strain readings and plotted on thickness strain diagrams. The thickness is measured by pointed micrometers, or by ultrasound gage. From the final thickness and original thickness ratio, TF / TO, an actual strain level can be developed based on constant volume and plotted on a thickness strain diagram." (Hogarth, D.J., Gregoire, C.A., Caswell, S. L., 1991, p. 88).

http://nsmwww.eng.ohio-state.edu/Stamping_Glossary /html/t.html

Abstract: Circulation calculations, which have traditionally been performed by taking the line integral of the velocity around a closed path, require detailed knowledge of the flow field. An ultrasound method for circulation measurements has been under development at WPI for several years and it has the advantage of allowing for the direct measurement of circulation without the need for the velocity field data. This time-of-flight method employs counter-propagating ultrasonic pulses. The time difference between the counter-propagating pulses around the closed path is linearly proportional to the circulation enclosed by the ultrasound path. The ultrasound method of circulation measurement does not require any calibration constants and can be non-invasive. The reliability of the method was assessed by comparing the directly measured circulation values with those deduced from the lift of a symmetric airfoil. Examples will also be presented where the ultrasound technique has been applied to the vortical flow over a delta wing and a tip vortex. Owing to its simplicity and ease of operation, the technique may be utilized in the future as a sensor in closed-loop active flow control systems.

http://ase.tufts.edu/mechanical/calendar/mar99.htm l

The original greek zeus has the stem iov

Could you explain this? Looking through Liddell-Scott, all attested forms begin with a D or Z (Zeus, Deus, Dieos, Dios, Diei, Dii, Di, etc.) Some forms could be explained by a digamma, but I don't see where the o went, and as it tends to dominate contractions, I ought to see some remnant of it.

Economically viable? Hard to say. Necessary? Yes, eventually. Legal? No, but then again, treaties with USA aren't worth the paper they're written on.

Environmentally friendly? CHRIST NO! Why bother, if you launch it from the moon? The moon (and the rest of space for that matter) is a dead pile of ashes, perfect playground for boys and the big toys. Space is the place where maniacs with giant guns and bombs can do some good!

Ne delere orbum rigidium meum.

"Truely, my deprived, rigid self is obliterated by you"?

(With assistence from The Perseus Digital Library and a very rudimentary knowledge of Latin. This dictionary doesn't believe in the word "rigidium", but does believe in "rigidum".)

Well, try with a proxy then. Maybe there's something funny about the way Opera is setting the user agent string. Could you check (and post here) what the strings are. This site will tell you what you user agent string is.

You've been told by your government and your biased media that Bin Laden is indeed responsible, and that the talibans have supported him. Now, pray tell, have you seen any proof?
No.

Perhaps you were misinformed. That's the only non-insulting explanation I can think of. If you read this entire post and don't believe any of it then I'd be truely fasinated to hear your explanation. Don't forget to explain why anyone would go through all this effort against uninvolved parties.

I did this search using evidence+linking+bin+laden. 3,360 matches returned. I quit after the first 20 results. I'm sure you'll dismiss some of these items, but don't overlook the guilty verdicts in the embassy bombings near the bottom. :) The only reason Bin Laden wasn't tried in court years ago is because the Taliban are protecting him. Note, any link below longer than 1 line is merely to provide the source of the quote.

"Federal authorities have identified more than a dozen hijackers of Middle Eastern descent in Tuesday's bombings and gathered evidence linking them to Osama bin Laden". Oh yeah, US gov and US media are all lying. Ummm, could you remind me why they'd want to let the actual guilty parties keep blowing stuff up? " Within 48 hours some 4,000 special agents and 3,000 support personnel were assigned to the case, with about 400 FBI laboratory specialists deployed to examine the forensic evidence." There must be over 10,000 people involved in this conspiracy, not even counting everyone in the media.

"A German government spokesman said Wednesday that German, British, French and Israeli secret services had also linked the Saudi dissident to the world's worst terrorist atrocity." Ummm, I guess that means Germany, England, France, and Isreal are part of the conspiracy too? Could you give me a clue why?

During an active investigation eveidence is kept confidential. Here's the leak that prompted a major lockdown on information: "A US Senator Orrin Hatch has said that FBI official intercepted telephone calls, which indicated bin Laden had been involved in plotting the attacks on New York and Washington." Damn, would have been helpful if other operatives in the US phoned Al-Qaida too. I guess that's the end of that source of evidence.

The specific evidence may not be public, but governments are getting to see it. "Meanwhile, the U.S. began providing its allies with what some governments said is clear evidence linking Saudi-born Osama bin Laden to the Sept. 11 attacks. Some reports said that evidence includes records of communications by bin Laden's aides, notes left by suicide hijackers before the attacks, and reports that some of the hijackers received training in bin Laden's military camps."
and "information linking Osama bin Laden with the terrorist's plot. Britain's Tony Blair has seen it. Pakistan's top leaders have seen it. Some evidence has even been published on the Internet." I guess we have to add Japan and Pakistan to the conspiracy list.

"Authorities are also reported to have been gathering evidence that some of those involved in Tuesday's attacks may also have been behind, among others, the bombing of the USS Cole off Yemen and the Millennium bombing plot on U.S. soil." Oh yeah, must be more dis-information.

Specific public evidence hard to come by on in any active investigation, but there's plenty of evidence on the 1998 embassy bombings available. Take a look at this declassified summary of findings of the FBI investigation into the Kenya and Tanzania embassy bombings on August 7, 1998. Written November 18, 1998. There was enough evidence to indict Bin Laden and others on murder and other charges. "In total, the U.S. government has public indictments against 26 members of bin Laden's international group, Al Qaeda. Of those men, three have pleaded guilty and are cooperating with the U.S. government as witnesses. Four were tried this year [and convicted]. Six are in custody in the U.S. or abroad and are awaiting trial. Thirteen, including bin Laden himself, are fugitives. The six other bin Laden associates in custody include several high-ranking members of Al-Qaeda." August 1997 raid on El Hage's house in Nairobi yielded this letter linking Bin Laden to the cell that bombed the embassy.

And Bin Laden implicates himself: "journalists with access to bin Laden said he and his followers openly boasted in recent months that they were preparing for attacks against the United States in retaliation for American support of Israel.
A videotape has been circulating in the Middle East for several months in which bin Laden recites a victory poem about the Cole bombing, and then issues a call to arms: 'To all the Mujah: Your brothers in Palestine are waiting for you; it's time to penetrate America and Israel and hit them where it hurts the most.'" and I still say the video Bin Laden released afterwards amounts to a confession and promise to continue.

Well, that's nice, Thrasymachus, but we are speaking of ideal forms here (or, for pansies, here.

Well, that's nice, Thrasymachus, but we are speaking of ideal forms here (or, for pansies, here.

My own record of yowling about privacy and the First Amendment ad nauseum is clear enough

It seems that somebody is already planning to do that.

-

The USA does not have to "break" the ABM treaty. See Article 15, Section 2 of the treaty. The text of the treaty can be found here. Either side can withdraw from the treaty after giving six months prior notice.

I once ran a similar site at RumorsDaily.com (it's since been disbanded due to my graduation). It started as a sort of underground news source, mainly focusing on Student Government and later on expanded to all sorts of student opinion and online discussion at Tufts University.

I was personally threatened with lawsuits from students twice, and was personally visited by the Secret Service once (someone threatened Al Gore's life). The school was very unhappy about the whole concept of open student opinion and once or twice made veiled criticisms. The school's Daily paper made some low level threats at a lawsuit as well.

Basically, what I'm saying is that it's a very treacherous ground you tread upon when you start giving people in real world community the ability to attack each other anonymously in an online community. I eventually set up a list of posting guidelines which is very loosely enforced... my rule eventually became, if the person is not a public figure, don't talk about them. If they are a public figure, you can talk about whatever you like, just don't threaten or impersonate them. (I always felt dirty the few times that I removed posts, but I just didn't want to deal with the hassle of a lawsuit that I assumed I would lose).

I'm not really sure why I chimed in, but I wanted to support anyone else who's tried to run this sort of site. You get a lot of flak and you spend a lot of time to make something that people enjoy using, and then you get beaten upon, criticized and eventually shut down, all because people fail to get along. It's really a shame. My site grew to about 1000 hits a day before I removed it from the public discourse, I know what it's like.

I however, early on made the decision to get my site OFF the University's equipment and onto my own server offsite. This way the school had no grounds for officially shutting down the site, or making off with the server. They had no control over a site operating off school grounds, Acceptable Use Policy or no.

So I guess that's my ultimate suggestion, if you're going to do something like this

• A: Be prepared for a lot of crap and a lot of threats.
• B: Get yourself off servers or services that aren't being paid for directly by you, otherwise you'll never have the control or authority that you need.

Good luck in the future to anyone who tries this... I personally found it very rewarding, but it took a lot of suffering.

--

I think leaving a DB wide open on the internet is akin to putting some very personal information in the garbage can outside your house, rather than in a locked safe as you meant.

Here are the laws of Texas, Massachusetts, and California for starters.
--

The food you eat will affect just like it affects everyone outside your spere of reality. Look at http://navigator.tufts.edu/ for a plethora of links. Or just switch to V8 not cola, light beer not beer, and a gym membership not premium cable.

Think of it this way: in Latin a regula is a "ruler" or, abstractly, a "rule." The adjective regularis means "pertaining to rules" or "having rules" (maybe "rule-based"). A liber regularis is not a "regular book" but a "rule book", so you could think of regular expressions (expressiones regulares) as "rule-expressions," "expressions of rules" (i.e. the rules for what is considered a match)

Think of it this way: in Latin a regula is a "ruler" or, abstractly, a "rule." The adjective regularis means "pertaining to rules" or "having rules" (maybe "rule-based"). A liber regularis is not a "regular book" but a "rule book", so you could think of regular expressions (expressiones regulares) as "rule-expressions," "expressions of rules" (i.e. the rules for what is considered a match)

What I find particularly elegant about the work is how well informed it is by classical models. It's not just that it's 5-7-5 "verses", but that the whole thing is built around the Greek epic poem model. It's written to evoke Homer and Hesiod, complete with initial invocation of a muse and subsequent references to that muse. It includes traditional asides, stops frequently to praise its heroes, and closes with a prayer (of sorts).
It's also similar in more than just form. Works like Hesiod's Theogony are not just spoken poetic entertainment: they delineate the world view of their culture. In the same way, the DeCSS epic instructs the "listener" in the world view and cultural values of those opposing DeCSS.

It's a lovely thing to wake up to this morning.

crap. messed up the link... try this

for more information on of the nutritionists involved with the human genome project, check out a profile of Jose Ordovas

He had an interesting way of running the class known as the "weedout" class for comp sci at Tufts, as well as some of the other less theoretical higher level classes. There were 4 or 5 big programming per semester. He'd pass out the assignment. 9/10 of the class would blow it off because it wasn't due for another few weeks but 2 or 3 of the hardcore students would tear right into it. Those students got personal attention, and really ended up collaborating with him to find good solutions... the problems were setup so usually he didn't have preconceived notions of what the best solution was going to look like. He would then disseminate the techniques discovered with those students to the rest of the class... nothing was more irritating than some punk getting equal results to you starting two days before the assignment was due, just by implementing the technique you invented, so the elites had to press on to even better independent tweaks and methods.

You can see his old-school homepage here

--

You can find it here as well (not sure if this is the most recent version though):

http://www.eecs.tufts.edu/peep/download.html

Well, seeing that the site is slashdotted, you can find it here for now:

http://www.eecs.tufts.edu/peep/download.html

PERFORMERS, PRODUCERS OF PHONOGRAMS

AND BROADCASTING ORGANISATIONS (1961)

Article 5

1. Each Contracting State shall grant national treatment to producers of phonograms if any of the following conditions is met:

(a) the producer of phonogram is a national of another Contracting State (criterion of nationality);

...

The hell it wasn't. It produces a bunch of enzymes, including alcohol dehydrogenase, which are specific to the function of handling alcohol. Since the digestive system produces alcohol in the normal course of business (some of our symbiotic bugs like to make ethanol), and there's some methanol in various foods including grape juice, you simply cannot make that claim. Western culture has made alcohol into a social substance, and we've co-evolved with it for hundreds of generations. The long and short of it is, we are adapted to alcohol.

I stand corrected. I did not know that.

But the liver certainly is not equipped to handle the huge quantities of alcohol that some people throw at it (frat boys come to mind).
--

Funny you should mention "hacking Chaucer" and the Wife of Bath's tale.

At a symposium on "The Transformation of the Book" (which directly pertains to this conversation) at MIT, a Chaucer scholar presented the work of his group. There are some ~50 (IIRC) extant source manuscripts containing the Wife of Bath's Prologue, and these blokes put together a massively hypertextual comparative edition (on CD).

This was immediately followed by a presentation on the Perseus project in classical literature at Tufts. It was at well over a million (hand coded!) links at the time of the presentation.

The point of this is three-fold:

1. The boundary of book and program can blur pretty dramatically. When a "book" is a site or a CD, then the laws which pertain to programs may be well applied.
2. The idea that a book is, as you say, "an artistic expression, not a tool", is clearly incorrect in these quite legitimate cases, and in the case (textbooks) presented in the cited paper. No one was suggesting open sourcing novels, they were talking about reference and teaching works.
3. The second of the two cases above seems to me to clearly be open source: you can (if you have great bandwidth and are really, really patient) download the thing for yourself and edit it to your heart's content. If you want to submit a "patch" (i.e. a bit of relevant ancient greek trivia), they'd probably be delighted to receive it and would incorporate it into their main edition.

The problem I see here is that most of AIM's Linux clones are both open sourced and of at least questionable legality.

What?!?!?! All the Linux AIM clients I know of use TOC, which was designed by AOL specifically to allow third-party clients.

Does anyone still remember the time when "virus" (or "virii or whatever) meant....

OK, pet peeve of mine. The correct plural form of "virus" is either "viruses" or "vira," NOT "virii."

Latin words ending in -us will frequently, though not always, form a plural by replacing the -us with -i, so I can understand why people might think the plural is "viri." The form "virii" has no basis in any sort of Latin; the corresponding singular would be "virius."

However, the Lewis & Short Latin Dictionary online at the Perseus Project, as well as my hardbound dictionary at home, indicates that this word is a little irregular:

vîrus, i, n. [Sanscr. visham; Gr. ios, poison], a slimy liquid, slime.

We now return you to your regularly-scheduled Slashdot discussions....

The exciting thing will come when/if Perseus becomes the locus for classical scholarship, publishing preprints (a la LANL) or e-journals with hyperlinks to source texts.

OTOH, there is a dark side to mindless promoting of e-texts to the exclusion of books:

• Until resolutions improve considerably, reading an electronic book is a poor substitute for the "real thing."
• Even if resolutions approach or surpass ink, not all books will be digitized. Much of our cultural heritage will be accessible only in paper form in institutions such as the library of congress
• Paper is a much better archive form than any electronic storage medium now existing (bit rot, changing media, etc.)

Omniweb is the web browser you want! 4.0b2 was just released, and fixes a lot of problems with 4.0b1. It's Objective-C/Cocoa, not Carbon, so takes advantage of some of the really cool features like Services. http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omniweb/

Omniweb's damned fast even on my 233MHz Powerbook G3, and by far the prettiest damned browser anywhere :)

If you want a screenshot of it running on my machine (the screenshots on OmniGroup's site are pre-Aqua) check out http://www.tufts.edu/~ndanie01/images/Desktop.tiff .

legimus on Perseus

legamus on Perseus

You are thinking of the wrong lego... but I'll stop now, really.

legimus on Perseus

legamus on Perseus

You are thinking of the wrong lego... but I'll stop now, really.

Meanwhile, on a far more important note, I spent several minutes trying to figure out your Latin .sig line. Google brought me to the Aeneid in Latin (no translation), but - get this - it also brought me to several Slashdot articles you've written. (Same with Yahoo and Find.com.) In the end, the best I could come up with was from the Perseus Project, a line about how Dido never dreamed that love like that she shared with Aeneas could ever die. Is that about right?

A.K.

A concrete example of what I'm talking about is trying to display classical Greek fonts. There do indeed exist Adobe-encoded classical Greek fonts and I can install them, use them, good example being Ismnin.pfa. I can go to edit->pref->fonts and select the installed font which I've preview with xfontsel. Now, I go to a nice online database of classical greek texts with morphological analyses and links, the Perseus Project and look at some work by Aeschinus . They have the option of displaying actual, greek text using the Ismini font if one uses the "Change Greek display" button at the top of the page and select the Ismini font. Does it work on Linux? No.

It works on Macintosh damn well though.

These worthy people (it's a great project) point out that they can't support everything, and indeed they do support several different Netscape versions on WinXX and Mac and several different IE versions.

They claim in their Font Help section that there are fundamental problems with Netscape displaying different fonts.

Anyone have any take on this? At the very least it would discourage anyone trying to use current tools used in Classics from using Linux and Netscape. A damn shame.

What the hell does 'asquerous' mean?

read: select "select individual packages" and specify services to start on boot.

How is BSD "trimmer?"

As for selecting individual packages, that depends upon which O/S you've got, and how much patience. Many Linuces come pre-installed with far more than you could imagine wanting. It's huge and disorganized. I'm talking about the hardware that ships with some Linux O/S already on it, like VA. But if you pop in a RedHat or SuSE installation CD, you'll have the same issues. Whether you pick `workstation' or `server' (silly nomenclatures) from RedHat, you'll get unending dreck and dross to fill your filesystem and befuddle your users.

Now, take an OpenBSD installation CD. Now do the same thing: a complete installation. When you're done, look around. Compare how much got installed from a standard Redhat installation. Do an ls /bin /usr/bin /sbin /usr/sbin on both systems and look at the difference.

Here, I'll do it for you:

bsd$ for d in /bin /usr/bin /sbin /usr/sbin; do
> echo -n "$d "
> ls $d | wc -l
> done
/bin 40
/usr/bin 363
/sbin 80
/usr/sbin 171

linux$ for d in /bin /usr/bin /sbin /usr/sbin; do
> echo -n "$d "
> ls $d | wc -l
> done
/bin 94
/usr/bin 1425
/sbin 127
/usr/sbin 182

bsd$ ls -R /etc | wc -l
174

linux$ ls -R /etc | wc -l
1263

Finding your way around a Redhat /etc directory is an exercise in an unholy labyrinth designed by Borges and implemented by Escher. Go not down that inexorable path to administrative madness.

linux$ touch "/etc/Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate!"

What the hell does 'asquerous' mean?

read: select "select individual packages" and specify services to start on boot.

How is BSD "trimmer?"

As for selecting individual packages, that depends upon which O/S you've got, and how much patience. Many Linuces come pre-installed with far more than you could imagine wanting. It's huge and disorganized. I'm talking about the hardware that ships with some Linux O/S already on it, like VA. But if you pop in a RedHat or SuSE installation CD, you'll have the same issues. Whether you pick `workstation' or `server' (silly nomenclatures) from RedHat, you'll get unending dreck and dross to fill your filesystem and befuddle your users.

Now, take an OpenBSD installation CD. Now do the same thing: a complete installation. When you're done, look around. Compare how much got installed from a standard Redhat installation. Do an ls /bin /usr/bin /sbin /usr/sbin on both systems and look at the difference.

Here, I'll do it for you:

bsd$ for d in /bin /usr/bin /sbin /usr/sbin; do
> echo -n "$d "
> ls $d | wc -l
> done
/bin 40
/usr/bin 363
/sbin 80
/usr/sbin 171

linux$ for d in /bin /usr/bin /sbin /usr/sbin; do
> echo -n "$d "
> ls $d | wc -l
> done
/bin 94
/usr/bin 1425
/sbin 127
/usr/sbin 182

bsd$ ls -R /etc | wc -l
174

linux$ ls -R /etc | wc -l
1263

Finding your way around a Redhat /etc directory is an exercise in an unholy labyrinth designed by Borges and implemented by Escher. Go not down that inexorable path to administrative madness.

linux$ touch "/etc/Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate!"

"Forii" is like "virii".

several millenii == several thousand assholes

The only way you could get a -ii plural in Latin is if there were a -ius singular. For example, from radius you get radii and from genius, genii. The more common situation, that of second declension masculines, is just -us going to -i, as in abacus becoming abaci, or focus becoming foci. (We shan't get into corpus becoming corpora.)

Note also that Latin had more than one meaning for anus. One takes the meaning you're assuming here, and is a second declension masculine. However, another, which had a different meaning, was 4th not 2nd declension, so formed its plural the way status and apparatus did -- by converting the vowel in the -us from a short to a long u, which changed pronunciation but not spelling.

Happy antemillennium. :-)

several millenii == several thousand assholes

The only way you could get a -ii plural in Latin is if there were a -ius singular. For example, from radius you get radii and from genius, genii. The more common situation, that of second declension masculines, is just -us going to -i, as in abacus becoming abaci, or focus becoming foci. (We shan't get into corpus becoming corpora.)

Note also that Latin had more than one meaning for anus. One takes the meaning you're assuming here, and is a second declension masculine. However, another, which had a different meaning, was 4th not 2nd declension, so formed its plural the way status and apparatus did -- by converting the vowel in the -us from a short to a long u, which changed pronunciation but not spelling.

Happy antemillennium. :-)

Just a note: Roger Penrose is a very highly respected mathematician, but many feel that he should stick to maths and not do the philosophy thing. The core argument of ENM is generally felt to be at best incomplete, if not simply wrong. Some critics would describe it more harshly.

An interesting and respectful review can be found here.

Virus, well, wasn't.

Some sources report it as being an irregular 2nd declension neuter, like pelagus and vulgus. Other sources report that it was a 4th declension neuter, like status, impetus, or hiatus. None report that it declined as though it were a 2nd declension masculine, like dominus and abacus.

Check out the rest of the story. It contains links to the wonderful Perseus Project, which is devoted to on-line access to the Classics, including word searches and definitions. I think you'll like it. Here's my favorite entry point to them.

Every time I read the malformation *virii, my brain pronounces it as it does viri, which in English sounds pretty much just like "weary", which also describes my sentiment. :-)

Virus, well, wasn't.

Some sources report it as being an irregular 2nd declension neuter, like pelagus and vulgus. Other sources report that it was a 4th declension neuter, like status, impetus, or hiatus. None report that it declined as though it were a 2nd declension masculine, like dominus and abacus.

Check out the rest of the story. It contains links to the wonderful Perseus Project, which is devoted to on-line access to the Classics, including word searches and definitions. I think you'll like it. Here's my favorite entry point to them.

Every time I read the malformation *virii, my brain pronounces it as it does viri, which in English sounds pretty much just like "weary", which also describes my sentiment. :-)

I looked through the vira entries that your cite referenced as well, but of those that one could pull up via a link, none actually used that form. I don't have the non-linked source at hand. How do you explain Ammian?

I'm still looking for more sources, and will happily update my document if and when new research turns up, as it did recently.

And I'll still use viruses when writing English. :-)

"Rules of Engagement" are as old as conflict itself, and as silly as it might sound, they're better than nothing at all.

In regards to this particular gem, i'm not entirely sure how this is a "new" revelation - impersonating enemy leaders has always been "illegal", in any form - whether it be cardboard cutouts or professional actors.
Digital imaging is just another form of said impersonation. Why, exactly, did we need a study to show this to be true? Ah, the tax money hard at work.


This is a little off topic, but there's always room for informational links on the Laws of War, so i say :).

What are the rules of Engagement? - about.com

Y! - The Rules of War

Rules of Warfare - Arms Control

The Geneva Convention(s) - Modern "Laws of War".


.------------ - - -
| big bad mr. frosty
`------------ - - -