On Sat, 7 Feb 1998, Michael Sokolov wrote:

>    Oscar Oberg <Oscar.Oberg@abc.se> wrote:
> > Yeah, and all russians speak bad english, all americans are fat, and all
> > swedes want to kill themselves. This is called prejudice and is
> > generally considered a bad thing. In schools in diabolic countries like
> > the U.S. they teach you why. Maybe you should attend one.
>    
>    Actually I have been for a year and a half in an American high school
> and I'm currently attending an American university. As for Russians
> speaking bad English, let me point out that once in high school I have done
> best in the whole class on an English grammar test, impressing the teacher
> so much that she was bragging for a whole year about a Russian student of
> hers who knows English grammar better than her native speakers. At that
> time I had been in the USA only for 4 months. In general, all Russians who
> work or study in America learn English perfectly in a very short time. As
> for Americans being fat, it is a fact that most of them are. I can't
> comment on Swedes, though.

I'm not surprised to see that you missunderstood me completely. All of my
statements above are examples of prejudice. Saying that a group of people
_all_ share a common characteristic (good or bad), which you can't
possibly have any idea if they all have is, in my opinion, narrowminded
and stupid. I don't know if anyone else here agrees with this, but it's
what I was taught.

As for the detailed arguments, you (although you have many bad qualities)
apparantly speak (or at least write) very good english, it'd be rediculous
to think that all americans were fat (The example was chosen because I often
hear this misconception. I don't consider it a negative trait.), I
certainly don't feel suicidal, and Dave McGuire runs NetBSD/vax 
commercially. This demonstrates an important argument against prejudice:
when you're being prejudicial, you're often wrong at the same time.

> > 1) You've never used a one
>    
>    True, but they can't be THAT bad. KA42-Bs are even better.

You're not gonna be competing with Pentiums speed-wise on a KA410.

> > 3) You're drunk (or worse)
>    
>    Actually I have never drunk a gram of alcohol in my life.

No comment.

> > By the opressive government or your un-opressive revolutionaries?
>    
>    I guess by the latter, since artificial feature blocking is one of many
> evils of the so-called "market economy" which this oppresive government
> imposes.

Execution is not oppressive?

> > Or you could boot from diskdrive, MFM disk, or network, which would be
> > much simpler.
>    
>    If you were to read the lines immediately above the ones you are
> quoting, you would understand that if the TMSCP over SCSI approach is
> indeed used the inability to boot from SCSI disks is far from the most
> serious problem with KA410's system ROM.

What is the most serious problem? What effect does it have on booting
from diskdrive, MFM disk, or network?

Oscar