Biography.

When he was young, his father died, and Erich was sent to the military school (Kadettenkorps) in Karlsruhe. He graduated in 1914 as a lieutenant in the German Army just as WWI started. He fought in the war with distinction, but then was seriously wounded in the fighting in Austrian Galicia in 1916. After the battle, Schmidt was found by the Russians on the battle field, and spent the next four years in a prisoner-of-war camp. In 1920, he found his way home to Germany. There he learned that his mother and three siblings died in the meantime. Then he attended Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität (now Humboldt University of Berlin).  In 1923 he moved to U.S., and studied anthropology at Columbia University, where he was a student of Franz Boas.  From December 1925 through January 1926, Schmidt conducted stratigraphic test excavations at Pueblo Grande and La Ciudad, two Hohokam sites that he later used for his dissertation. He was one of the pioneers of Hohokam studies.  In 1927, James Henry Breasted of the Oriental Institute invited Schmidt to join the Anatolia-Hittite Expedition as an assistant archaeologist.  He became co-director of the Oriental Institute Hittite Expedition, with H.H. Von der Osten, and later on dug in sites as Tepe Hissar near Damghan in searching for ancient city Hecatompylos, and Rey. His most celebrated survey took place in Persepolis (Iran), from 1934 up to 1939.  Erich Schmidt was pioneer in aerial photography of archaeological sites, especially in Iran. In 1935, Schmidt had to approach Reza Shah Pahlavi directly for permission to fly over the country. After he obtained it, he made many flights and did a lot of mapping.  He was married twice, in 1934, to Mary-Helen Warden (who later died), and in 1943, to Lura Florence Strawn, with whom they had two children, Richard Roderick (the noted award-winning filmmaker) and Erika Lura. He died in Santa Barbara, California, in 1964; unfortunately, he was not able to complete many of his plans, and thus much of his excavation work remained unpublished. Some of it was later re-investigated and published by other scholars.

Erich Friedrich Schmidt (September 13, 1897 – October 3, 1964) was a German and American-naturalized archaeologist, born in Baden-Baden. He specialized in Ancient Near East Archaeology, and became professor emeritus at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. He was also a pioneer in using aerial photography in archaeological research.

Erich Friedrich Schmidt, né le à Baden-Baden et mort le à Santa Barbara en Californie, est un archéologue allemand naturalisé américain. Il se spécialise en archéologie du Moyen-Orient et devient professeur émérite de l’Oriental Institute de l’université de Chicago.


History.

Gočár designed the house in mid-1911 at the age of 31 for the wholesale merchant František Josef Herbst. Herbst chose Gočár to build his department store in the Old Town along the old coronation route because of the architect’s earlier success with a similar shop in Jaroměř, built in 1909-1911. Because of its prominent location in the heart of the city, Gočár’s building was subject to strict harmonization rules requiring that the department store not conflict with its historical setting. The building thus uses the language of baroque architecture in a Cubist form, thus exemplifying the ‘contextualization’ of Cubist architecture.  Gočár’s first plans were not well received by the historical buildings authority in Bohemia. Subsequent designs incorporated more Cubist features into the building. The Prague City Council eventually approved the plans on August 4, 1911. Gočár’s early modernist orientation (as can be seen in the original plans for the building), gave way to new Cubist designs in the finished building. The angular bay windows, iconic capitals between windows, and cubist balcony railing took their place in the designs.  Like many of Gočár’s houses, the House of the Black Madonna was built with a reinforced-concrete skeleton inspired by the Chicago School (architecture). Cubist interiors have proven a challenge to architects. The use of a reinforced-concrete skeleton allowed for large interior spaces without ceiling support that were better suited to Cubist aesthetics. The Grand Café Orient, which encompassed the entire first floor without supporting pillars, was a revolutionary feat of engineering. In some literature, Gočáris described as ‘decorativist’ because he was primarily concerned with creating a Cubist façade instead of a Cubist building. It is thus ironic that his design for the Grand Café Orient is the only surviving Cubist interior in the world. As for the façade, multiple changes in design and the requirements of harmonization forced certain compromises in the Cubist elements. The façade breaks with Cubist and modern traditions on the third storey, and incorporates 'foreign' elements in order to reconcile the building with its surroundings. For example, the roof resembles baroque double roofs, and the third storey also features flat windows and pilasters with Classical fluting between them.  The House at the Black Madonna was originally designed to house a department store. Herbst’s store occupied the ground and second floor of the building. Grand Café Orient was established on the first floor. Above that were apartments. Minor changes were made to this arrangement in 1914. In the mid-1920s the café and store on the second floor were converted into bank offices. The department store was closed in 1922. Further alterations to the architectural integrity were made in 1941, when functionalist architect V. Kubik refashioned the wooden frames on the ground floor windows with steel. During the communist period, the building was subdivided internally into more office space and then designated the state exhibition agency. In 1994, the building was made a center for Czech art and culture. After heavy renovation works between 2002 and 2003, the building was made home to the Museum of Czech Cubism. The fourth and fifth floors are dedicated to a permanent exhibition of Cubist art curated by the Czech Museum of Fine Arts. The exhibition focuses on Czech artists in the period from 1911 to 1919, when Cubism was in its heyday in both the visual arts and in architecture. In March 2005, the Grand Café Orient was re-opened after extensive renovation works. Although only a few original plans had survived, black-and-white photographs documenting the café's interior décor and atmosphere from 1912 were used during renovation. Replicas of café furniture and brass chandeliers were constructed to revive the café and showcase the many forms of Cubism present in the Czech republic.

The House of the Black Madonna is a cubist building in the "Old Town" area of Prague, Czech Republic. It was designed by Josef Gočár. It is currently in use as the Czech Museum of Cubism and includes the Grand Café Orient restaurant on the first floor.

La Maison à la Vierge noire ("Dům U černé matky Boží") est un bâtiment cubiste dans la Vieille Ville de Prague en Tchéquie. Elle est l'œuvre de l'architecte Josef Gočár qui l'a construite entre 1911 et 1912 pour le marchand Frantisek Josef Herbst. Elle a été conçue pour accueillir son magasin au rez-de-chaussée et au deuxième étage tandis que le premier étage était occupé par le Grand Café Orient. La maison sert de nos jours d'annexe à la Galerie nationale à Prague pour ses expositions permanente et temporaires sur le cubisme après avoir été conçue comme grand magasin.


Geography.

The municipal unit Koroneia consists of the following communities: Agios Georgios (the seat of the former municipality), Agia Anna, Agia Triada, Alalkomenes and Koroneia. The community Koroneia consists of the villages Koroneia and Agia Paraskevi. The municipal unit has an area of 190.535 km, the community 32.178 km.  The village Koroneia is situated at the northern foot of the Helicon Mountains. It is 11 km southeast of Livadeia.

History.

Koroneia was named after the ancient town Coronea or Coroneia (). According to tradition, the ancient town was founded by Coronus, son of Thersander and brother of Haliartus. It was also said to have been founded by Boeotians from the town Arne in Thessaly.  In the Battle of Coronea (447 BC), Athenian forces under Tolmides were defeated by the Boeotians.  In the Battle of Coronea (394 BC) a force of Spartans and their allies under King Agesilaus II — Xenophon being with him — defeated a force of Thebans and Argives.  In the Third Sacred War (356 BC–346 BC) Coronea was twice taken by the Phocians under Onomarchus. Pausanias, who travelled through the area in the second century AD, found an altar of Hermes Epimelius and an altar to the winds in the market place of Coronea. A little lower down was a sanctuary of Hera.  The only historically identifiable bishops of Coronea are Agathocles, who took part in the Council of Ephesus in 431, and Aphobius, who was a signatory of the joint letter sent by the bishops of the Roman province to which Coronea belonged to Byzantine Emperor Leo I the Thracian in 458 concerning the killing of Proterius of Alexandra. No longer a residential bishopric, Coronea is today listed by the Catholic Church as a titular see.  The village Koutoumoulas was first mentioned in 1756. After the Greek War of Independence, the village was the seat of a short-lived (1835-1840) municipality Koroneia. Between 1840 and 1912 it was the seat of the municipality Petra. In 1912 Koutoumoulas became an independent community, which was renamed to Koroneia in 1915. This community became part of the larger municipality Koroneia in 1997, which became part of the municipality of Livadeia in 2010.

Koroneia (, before 1915: Κουτουμουλάς - "Koutoumoulas") is a village and a former municipality in Boeotia, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Livadeia, of which it is a municipal unit. The population of the municipal unit was 3,170 at the 2011 census.

Coronée ("Koroneia", en grec Κορώνεια) est une ancienne cité de Béotie, en Grèce, située au pied du mont Hélicon. Au, elle a donné son nom à un village moderne et à une municipalité disparue en 2010.


History.

MS-DOS was a renamed form of 86-DOS owned by Seattle Computer Products, written by Tim Paterson. Development of 86-DOS took only six weeks, as it was basically a clone of Digital Research's CP/M (for 8080/Z80 processors), ported to run on 8086 processors and with two notable differences compared to CP/M: an improved disk sector buffering logic, and the introduction of FAT12 instead of the CP/M filesystem. This first version was shipped in August 1980. Microsoft, which needed an operating system for the IBM Personal Computer, hired Tim Paterson in May 1981 and bought 86-DOS 1.10 for in July of the same year. Microsoft kept the version number, but renamed it MS-DOS. They also licensed MS-DOS 1.10/1.14 to IBM, which, in August 1981, offered it as PC DOS 1.0 as one of three operating systems for the IBM 5150, or the IBM PC.  Within a year, Microsoft licensed MS-DOS to over 70 other companies. It was designed to be an OS that could run on any 8086-family computer. Each computer would have its own distinct hardware and its own version of MS-DOS, similar to the situation that existed for CP/M, and with MS-DOS emulating the same solution as CP/M to adapt for different hardware platforms. To this end, MS-DOS was designed with a modular structure with internal device drivers (the DOS BIOS), minimally for primary disk drives and the console, integrated with the kernel and loaded by the boot loader, and installable device drivers for other devices loaded and integrated at boot time. The OEM would use a development kit provided by Microsoft to build a version of MS-DOS with their basic I/O drivers and a standard Microsoft kernel, which they would typically supply on disk to end users along with the hardware. Thus, there were many different versions of "MS-DOS" for different hardware, and there is a major distinction between an IBM-compatible (or ISA) machine and an MS-DOS [compatible] machine. Some machines, like the Tandy 2000, were MS-DOS compatible but not IBM-compatible, so they could run software written exclusively for MS-DOS without dependence on the peripheral hardware of the IBM PC architecture.  This design would have worked well for compatibility, if application programs had only used MS-DOS services to perform device I/O, and indeed the same design philosophy is embodied in Windows NT (see Hardware Abstraction Layer). However, in MS-DOS's early days, the greater speed attainable by programs through direct control of hardware was of particular importance, especially for games, which often pushed the limits of their contemporary hardware. Very soon an IBM-compatible architecture became the goal, and before long all 8086-family computers closely emulated IBM's hardware, and only a single version of MS-DOS for a fixed hardware platform was needed for the market. This version is the version of MS-DOS that is discussed here, as the dozens of other OEM versions of "MS-DOS" were only relevant to the systems they were designed for, and in any case were very similar in function and capability to some standard version for the IBM PC—often the same-numbered version, but not always, since some OEMs used their own proprietary version numbering schemes (e.g. labeling later releases of MS-DOS 1.x as 2.0 or vice versa)—with a few notable exceptions.  Microsoft omitted multi-user support from MS-DOS because Microsoft's Unix-based operating system, Xenix, was fully multi-user. The company planned, over time, to improve MS-DOS so it would be almost indistinguishable from single-user Xenix, or "XEDOS", which would also run on the Motorola 68000, Zilog Z8000, and the LSI-11; they would be upwardly compatible with Xenix, which "Byte" in 1983 described as "the multi-user MS-DOS of the future". Microsoft advertised MS-DOS and Xenix together, listing the shared features of its "single-user OS" and "the multi-user, multi-tasking, UNIX-derived operating system", and promising easy porting between them. After the breakup of the Bell System, however, AT&T Computer Systems started selling UNIX System V. Believing that it could not compete with AT&T in the Unix market, Microsoft abandoned Xenix, and in 1987 transferred ownership of Xenix to the Santa Cruz Operation (SCO).  On March 25, 2014, Microsoft made the code to SCP MS-DOS 1.25 and a mixture of Altos MS-DOS 2.11 and TeleVideo PC DOS 2.11 available to the public under the Microsoft Research License Agreement, which makes the code source-available, but not open source as defined by Open Source Initiative or Free Software Foundation standards. Microsoft would later re-license the code under the MIT License on September 28, 2018, making these versions free software.  As an April Fool's Day joke in 2015, Microsoft Mobile launched a Windows Phone application called "MS-DOS Mobile" which was presented as a new mobile operating system and worked similar to MS-DOS.

Versions.

Microsoft licensed or released versions of MS-DOS under different names like Lifeboat Associates "Software Bus 86" a.k.a. SB-DOS, COMPAQ-DOS, NCR-DOS or Z-DOS before it eventually enforced the MS-DOS name for all versions but the IBM one, which was originally called "IBM Personal Computer DOS", later shortened to IBM PC DOS. (Competitors released compatible DOS systems such as DR DOS and PTS-DOS that could also run DOS applications.)  In the former Eastern bloc, MS-DOS derivatives named DCP () 3.20 and 3.30 existed in the late 1980s. They were produced by the East German electronics manufacturer VEB Robotron.  The following versions of MS-DOS were released to the public:  Microsoft DOS was released through the OEM channel, until Digital Research released DR DOS 5.0 as a retail upgrade. With PC DOS 5.00.1, the IBM-Microsoft agreement started to end, and IBM entered the retail DOS market with IBM DOS 5.00.1, 5.02, 6.00 and PC DOS 6.1, 6.3, 7, 2000 and 7.1.  Localized versions of MS-DOS existed for different markets. While Western issues of MS-DOS evolved around the same set of tools and drivers just with localized message languages and differing sets of supported codepages and keyboard layouts, some language versions were considerably different from Western issues and were adapted to run on localized PC hardware with additional BIOS services not available in Western PCs, support multiple hardware codepages for displays and printers, support DBCS, alternative input methods and graphics output. Affected issues include Japanese (DOS/V), Korean, Arabic (ADOS 3.3/5.0), Hebrew (HDOS 3.3/5.0), Russian (RDOS 4.01/5.0) as well as some other Eastern European versions of DOS.

Competition.

On microcomputers based on the Intel 8086 and 8088 processors, including the IBM PC and clones, the initial competition to the PC DOS/MS-DOS line came from Digital Research, whose CP/M operating system had inspired MS-DOS. In fact, there remains controversy as to whether QDOS was more or less plagiarized from early versions of CP/M code. Digital Research released CP/M-86 a few months after MS-DOS, and it was offered as an alternative to MS-DOS and Microsoft's licensing requirements, but at a higher price. Executable programs for CP/M-86 and MS-DOS were not interchangeable with each other; many applications were sold in both MS-DOS and CP/M-86 versions until MS-DOS became preponderant (later Digital Research operating systems could run both MS-DOS and CP/M-86 software). MS-DOS originally supported the simple.COM, which was modeled after a similar but binary incompatible format known from CP/M-80. CP/M-86 instead supported a relocatable format using the file extension.CMD to avoid name conflicts with CP/M-80 and MS-DOS.COM files. MS-DOS version 1.0 added a more advanced relocatable.EXE executable file format.  Most of the machines in the early days of MS-DOS had differing system architectures and there was a certain degree of incompatibility, and subsequently vendor lock-in. Users who began using MS-DOS with their machines were compelled to continue using the version customized for their hardware, or face trying to get all of their proprietary hardware and software to work with the new system.  In the business world the 808x-based machines that MS-DOS was tied to faced competition from the Unix operating system which ran on many different hardware architectures. Microsoft itself sold a version of Unix for the PC called Xenix.  In the emerging world of home users, a variety of other computers based on various other processors were in serious competition with the IBM PC: the Apple II, early Apple Macintosh, the Commodore 64 and others did not use the 808x processor; many 808x machines of different architectures used custom versions of MS-DOS. At first all these machines were in competition. In time the IBM PC hardware configuration became dominant in the 808x market as software written to communicate directly with the PC hardware without using standard operating system calls ran much faster, but on true PC-compatibles only. Non-PC-compatible 808x machines were too small a market to have fast software written for them alone, and the market remained open only for IBM PCs and machines that closely imitated their architecture, all running either a single version of MS-DOS compatible only with PCs, or the equivalent IBM PC DOS. Most clones cost much less than IBM-branded machines of similar performance, and became widely used by home users, while IBM PCs had a large share of the business computer market.  Microsoft and IBM together began what was intended as the follow-on to MS-DOS/PC DOS, called OS/2. When OS/2 was released in 1987, Microsoft began an advertising campaign announcing that "DOS is Dead" and stating that version 4 was the last full release. OS/2 was designed for efficient multi-tasking (as was standard in operating systems since 1963) and offered a number of advanced features that had been designed together with similar look and feel; it was seen as the legitimate heir to the "kludgy" DOS platform.  MS-DOS had grown in spurts, with many significant features being taken or duplicated from Microsoft's other products and operating systems. MS-DOS also grew by incorporating, by direct licensing or feature duplicating, the functionality of tools and utilities developed by independent companies, such as Norton Utilities, PC Tools (Microsoft Anti-Virus), QEMM expanded memory manager, Stacker disk compression, and others.  During the period when Digital Research was competing in the operating system market some computers, like Amstrad PC1512, were sold with floppy disks for two operating systems (only one of which could be used at a time), MS-DOS and CP/M-86 or a derivative of it. Digital Research produced DOS Plus, which was compatible with MS-DOS 2.11, supported CP/M-86 programs, had additional features including multi-tasking, and could read and write disks in CP/M and MS-DOS format.  While OS/2 was under protracted development, Digital Research released the MS-DOS compatible DR DOS 5.0, which included features only available as third-party add-ons for MS-DOS. Unwilling to lose any portion of the market, Microsoft responded by announcing the "pending" release of MS-DOS 5.0 in May 1990. This effectively killed most DR DOS sales until the actual release of MS-DOS 5.0 in June 1991. Digital Research brought out DR DOS 6.0, which sold well until the "pre-announcement" of MS-DOS 6.0 again stifled the sales of DR DOS.  Microsoft had been accused of carefully orchestrating leaks about future versions of MS-DOS in an attempt to create what in the industry is called FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) regarding DR DOS. For example, in October 1990, shortly after the release of DR DOS 5.0, and long before the eventual June 1991 release of MS-DOS 5.0, stories on feature enhancements in MS-DOS started to appear in "InfoWorld" and "PC Week". Brad Silverberg, then Vice President of Systems Software at Microsoft and general manager of its Windows and MS-DOS Business Unit, wrote a forceful letter to "PC Week" (November 5, 1990), denying that Microsoft was engaged in FUD tactics ("to serve our customers better, we decided to be more forthcoming about version 5.0") and denying that Microsoft copied features from DR DOS:  "The feature enhancements of MS-DOS version 5.0 were decided and development was begun long before we heard about DR DOS 5.0. There will be some similar features. With 50 million MS-DOS users, it shouldn't be surprising that DRI has heard some of the same requests from customers that we have." – (Schulman et al. 1994).  The pact between Microsoft and IBM to promote OS/2 began to fall apart in 1990 when Windows 3.0 became a marketplace success. Much of Microsoft's further contributions to OS/2 also went into creating a third GUI replacement for DOS, Windows NT.  IBM, which had already been developing the next version of OS/2, carried on development of the platform without Microsoft and sold it as the alternative to DOS and Windows.

Legal issues.

As a response to Digital Research's DR DOS 6.0, which bundled SuperStor disk compression, Microsoft opened negotiations with Stac Electronics, vendor of the most popular DOS disk compression tool, Stacker. In the due diligence process, Stac engineers had shown Microsoft part of the Stacker source code. Stac was unwilling to meet Microsoft's terms for licensing Stacker and withdrew from the negotiations. Microsoft chose to license Vertisoft's DoubleDisk, using it as the core for its DoubleSpace disk compression.  MS-DOS 6.0 and 6.20 were released in 1993, both including the Microsoft DoubleSpace disk compression utility program. Stac successfully sued Microsoft for patent infringement regarding the compression algorithm used in DoubleSpace. This resulted in the 1994 release of MS-DOS 6.21, which had disk compression removed. Shortly afterwards came version 6.22, with a new version of the disk compression system, DriveSpace, which had a different compression algorithm to avoid the infringing code.  Prior to 1995, Microsoft licensed MS-DOS (and Windows) to computer manufacturers under three types of agreement: per-processor (a fee for each system the company sold), per-system (a fee for each system of a particular model), or per-copy (a fee for each copy of MS-DOS installed). The largest manufacturers used the per-processor arrangement, which had the lowest fee. This arrangement made it expensive for the large manufacturers to migrate to any other operating system, such as DR DOS. In 1991, the U.S. government Federal Trade Commission began investigating Microsoft's licensing procedures, resulting in a 1994 settlement agreement limiting Microsoft to per-copy licensing. Digital Research did not gain by this settlement, and years later its successor in interest, Caldera, sued Microsoft for damages in the "Caldera v. Microsoft" lawsuit. It was believed that the settlement ran in the order of $150 million, but was revealed in November 2009 with the release of the Settlement Agreement to be $280 million.

Use of undocumented APIs.

Microsoft also used a variety of tactics in MS-DOS and several of their applications and development tools that, while operating perfectly when running on genuine MS-DOS (and PC DOS), would break when run on another vendor's implementation of DOS. Notable examples of this practice included:

Demise.

The introduction of Windows 3.0 in 1990, with an easy-to-use graphical user interface, marked the beginning of the end for the command-line driven MS-DOS. With the release of Windows 95 (and continuing in the Windows 9x product line through to Windows Me), an integrated version of MS-DOS was used for bootstrapping, troubleshooting, and backwards-compatibility with old DOS software, particularly games, and no longer released as a standalone product. In Windows 95, the DOS, called MS-DOS 7, can be booted separately, without the Windows GUI; this capability was retained through Windows 98 Second Edition. Windows Me removed the capability to boot its underlying MS-DOS 8.0 alone from a hard disk, but retained the ability to make a DOS boot floppy disk (called an "Emergency Boot Disk") and can be hacked to restore full access to the underlying DOS.  In contrast to the Windows 9x series, the Windows NT-derived 32-bit operating systems developed alongside the 9x series (Windows NT, 2000, XP and newer) do not contain MS-DOS as part of the operating system, as NT is not built as a subsystem running on DOS but an entirely different independent operating system, but provide a subset of DOS emulation to run DOS applications and provide DOS-like command prompt windows. 64-bit versions of Windows NT line do not provide DOS emulation and cannot run DOS applications natively. Windows XP contains a copy of the Windows Me boot disk, stripped down to bootstrap only. This is accessible only by formatting a floppy as an "MS-DOS startup disk". Files like the driver for the CD-ROM support were deleted from the Windows Me bootdisk and the startup files (AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS) no longer had content. This modified disk was the base for creating the MS-DOS image for Windows XP. Some of the deleted files can be recovered with an undelete tool. When booting up an MS-DOS startup disk made with Windows XP's format tool, the version reports as "Windows Millennium," and not "MS-DOS 8.0" (which was used as the base for Windows Me but never released as a stand-alone product). With Windows Vista the files on the startup disk are dated April 18, 2005 but are otherwise unchanged, including the string "MS-DOS Version 8 Copyright 1981–1999 Microsoft Corp" inside codice_1. Starting with Windows 10, the ability to create a DOS startup disk has been removed and so either a virtual machine running MS-DOS or an older version (in a virtual machine or dual boot) must be used to format a floppy disk, or an image must be obtained from an external source. Other solutions include using DOS compatible alternatives, such as FreeDOS or even copying the required files and boot sector themselves.  MS-DOS 6.22 was the last standalone version produced by Microsoft for Intel 8088, Intel 8086, and Intel 80286 processors, which remain available for download via their MSDN, volume license, and OEM license partner websites, for customers with valid login credentials. MS-DOS is still used in embedded x86 systems due to its simple architecture and minimal memory and processor requirements, though some current products have switched to the still-maintained open-source alternative FreeDOS.  In 2018, Microsoft released the source code for MS-DOS 1.25 and 2.0 on GitHub. The purpose of this, according to Microsoft, is mainly for education and experimentation with historic operating systems and for new programmers to gain an understanding of how low-level software works, both historic and current.  Due to the historical nature of the software, Microsoft will not accept any pull requests to the code; only pull requests for modified and translated documentation will be accepted. Users, however, are allowed and fully encouraged to fork the repository containing the MS-DOS source code and make their own modifications, and do whatever they like with it.

Windows command-line interface.

All versions of Microsoft Windows have had an MS-DOS-like command-line interface (CLI) called Command Prompt. This could run many DOS and variously Win32, OS/2 1.x and POSIX command line utilities in the same command-line session, allowing piping between commands. The user interface, and the icon up to Windows 2000, followed the native MS-DOS interface.  The 16-bit versions of Windows (up to 3.11) ran as a Graphical User Interface (GUI) on top of MS-DOS. With Windows 95, 98, 98 SE and Me, the MS-DOS part was (superficially) integrated, treating the MS-DOS operating system and the Windows GUI as a complete package, though the DOS component could actually stand alone. The command line accessed the DOS command line (usually codice_1) through a Windows module (WINOLDAP.MOD).  A new line of Windows, (Windows NT), boot through a kernel whose sole purpose is to load Windows. One cannot run Win32 applications in the loader system in the manner that OS/2, UNIX or Consumer Windows can launch character-mode sessions.  The command session permits running of various supported command line utilities from Win32, MS-DOS, OS/2 1.x and POSIX. The emulators for MS-DOS, OS/2 and POSIX use the host's window in the same way that Win16 applications use the Win32 explorer. Using the host's window allows one to pipe output between emulations.  The MS-DOS emulation is done through the NTVDM (NT Virtual DOS Machine). This is a modified SoftPC (a former product similar to VirtualPC), running a modified MS-DOS 5 (NTIO.SYS and NTDOS.SYS). The output is handled by the console DLLs, so that the program at the prompt (codice_3, codice_4, codice_5), can see the output. 64-bit Windows does not have either the DOS emulation, or the DOS commands EDIT, DEBUG, EDLIN), that come with 32-bit Windows.  The DOS version returns 5.00 or 5.50, depending on which API function is used to determine it. Utilities from MS-DOS 5.00 run in this emulation without modification. The very early beta programs of NT show MS-DOS 30.00, but programs running in MS-DOS 30.00 would assume that OS/2 was in control.  The OS/2 emulation is handled through OS2SS.EXE and OS2.EXE, and DOSCALLS.DLL. OS2.EXE is a version of the OS/2 shell (CMD.EXE), which passes commands down to the OS2SS.EXE, and input-output to the Windows NT shell. Windows 2000 was the last version of NT to support OS/2. The emulation is OS/2 1.30.  POSIX is emulated through the POSIX shell, but no emulated shell; the commands are handled directly in CMD.EXE.  The Command Prompt is often called the MS-DOS prompt. In part, this was the official name for it in Windows 9x and early versions of Windows NT (NT 3.5 and earlier), and in part because the SoftPC emulation of DOS redirects output into it. Actually only codice_1 and other 16-bit commands run in an NTVDM with codice_7 and codice_8 initialisation determined by codice_9, optionally permitting the use of Win32 console applications and internal commands with an codice_10 directive.  Win32 console applications use codice_3 as their command prompt shell. This confusion does not exist under OS/2 because there are separate DOS and OS/2 prompts, and running a DOS program under OS/2 will launch a separate DOS window to run the application.  All versions of Windows for Itanium (no longer sold by Microsoft) and x86-64 architectures no longer include the NTVDM and can therefore no longer natively run DOS or 16-bit Windows applications. There are alternatives in the form of virtual machine emulators such as Microsoft's own Virtual PC, as well as VMware, DOSBox, and others.

Legacy compatibility.

From 1983 onwards, various companies worked on graphical user interfaces (GUIs) capable of running on PC hardware. However, this required duplicated effort and did not provide much consistency in interface design (even between products from the same company).  Later, in 1985, Microsoft Windows 1.0 was released as Microsoft's first attempt at providing a consistent user interface (for applications). The early versions of Windows ran on top of MS-DOS. At first Windows met with little success, but this was also true for most other companies' efforts as well, for example GEM. After version 3.0, Windows gained market acceptance.  Windows 9x used the DOS boot process to launch into protected mode. Basic features related to the file system, such as long file names, were only available to DOS when running as a subsystem of Windows. Windows NT runs independently of DOS but includes NTVDM, a component for simulating a DOS environment for legacy applications.

Related systems.

MS-DOS compatible systems include:  Microsoft manufactured IBM PC DOS for IBM. It and MS-DOS were identical products that eventually diverged starting with MS-DOS version 6.0. Digital Research did not follow Microsoft's version numbering scheme. For example, MS-DOS 4, released in July 1988, was followed by DR DOS 5.0 in May 1990. MS-DOS 5.0 came in April 1991, and DR DOS 6.0 was released the following June.  These products are collectively referred to as "DOS", even though "Disk Operating System" is a generic term used on other systems unrelated to the x86 and IBM PC. "MS-DOS" can also be a generic reference to DOS on IBM PC compatible computers.  Microsoft's control of the Windows platform, and their programming practices which intentionally made Windows appear as if it ran poorly on competing versions of DOS, crippled the ability of other DOS makers to continue to compete with MS-DOS. Digital Research had to release interim releases to circumvent Windows limitations inserted artificially, designed specifically to provide Microsoft with a competitive advantage.

MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and some operating systems attempting to be compatible with MS-DOS, are sometimes referred to as "DOS" (which is also the generic acronym for disk operating system). MS-DOS was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s, from which point it was gradually superseded by operating systems offering a graphical user interface (GUI), in various generations of the graphical Microsoft Windows operating system.

MS-DOS (abréviation de ") est le système d'exploitation de type DOS développé par Microsoft pour l'IBM PC d'abord, puis pour les compatibles PC. Il s'agit d'un système fonctionnant en mode réel, monotâche et mono-utilisateur, et équipé par défaut d'une interface en ligne de commande. Des années 1980 au début des années 1990, il a été le système le plus utilisé sur compatible PC, avant d'être progressivement remplacé par des systèmes d'exploitation plus évolués, notamment Windows. Son développement est maintenant arrêté.


Career.

1996–2001.

"We'll Build Them a Golden Bridge", Destroyer's 1996 debut, is made up of sixteen lo-fi home-recordings. One reviewer suggested that the album combines Bejar's "gift for melodies" with "a concerted effort to make the recording downright inconsumable; the guitars are always out of tune, and the vocals of Fisher-Price quality. 'Static means punk / tuning is junk,' Bejar moans on one track." "Ideas for Songs", released on cassette in 1997, features songs akin to those on his first album. The cassette stemmed from a request to contribute songs for a compilation album.  As Bejar gained popularity in Vancouver's music scene, he was joined by producer John Collins for 1998's "City of Daughters", which was recorded at a proper studio. Pitchfork noted that the songs still sounded "homespun", also noting "[t]he wordiness that would become something of a trademark is in full effect", but that "unlike much of what came later, not every line is worthy of examination."  "Thief" (2000) embodied "Bejar's first stab at matching his grandiose, idiosyncratic vision to a showier sound"; it was the first to feature a backing band on every track. The record's "anthemic yet understated" piano-driven ballads have characteristically enigmatic lyrics, though some reviewers interpreted them as critiques of the music industry.  "" (2001) realized the sonic refinement started with "City of Daughters". Bejar put it this way: "I don't think it gives credence to any kind of conceptualization of the records, but I hope that City of Daughters, Thief, and Streethawk will pop into some kind of a progression that ends with Streethawk." A critical success, the album retrospectively received a rating of 9.1/10 from Pitchfork.

2002–2007.

The 2002 rock album "This Night" was a dramatic change in style. The looser, less rehearsed style was criticized as "messy [and] haphazard without purpose", though other critics praised the "beautiful mess of sounds" as "challenging... [and] a powerful, cohesive whole." In a 2006 interview (after the release of "Your Blues" and "Destroyer's Rubies"), Bejar said the album "came together pretty quickly – we probably could have used more than four or five days to mix the whole thing, but that's all hindsight. It's still my favorite Destroyer record."  "Your Blues" (2004) saw Destroyer take another unexpected turn, using MIDI instrumentation for almost all the backing music. Bejar coined the term "European blues" to describe its unique, theatrical sound. One reviewer pointed out that "Bejar's unusual voice sounds more confident, and higher up" in the synth-rich arrangements. In another twist, the EP "Notorious Lightning & Other Works" reworked six tracks from the record with a live band, the very thing the LP had forsaken (the band was Frog Eyes, who toured with Destroyer in support of "Your Blues").  Bejar returned with a live band for 2006's "Destroyer's Rubies", delivering his most confident record up to that point. The backing band took new-found prominence and, according to Bejar, "[t]he production seems... warm and lush and pretty focused on just making the band sound good and having everything sit well together." "Now" magazine observed, "[w]hile the sheer density of Bejar's writing can be overwhelming, "Destroyer's Rubies" is, on a musical level, the most 'accessible' disc he's released."

2008–2013.

For "Trouble in Dreams" (2008), "there was a scary lack of ideas coming into the record", Bejar admitted. Destroyer's piano player Ted Bois took it upon himself, as an alternative to keyboard and piano accompaniment, to create all string and synth arrangements for the songs. At the time, Bejar said it was the "hardest record" to make.  After the 2009 EP "Bay of Pigs" came 2011's full-length album, "Kaputt" (featuring a slightly modified "Bay of Pigs" track). Bejar cited influences such as Miles Davis and Roxy Music for his new jazz-infused, lounge music-inspired, sophisti-pop direction. In multiple interviews, Bejar variously stressed that he "sang in a completely different manner, almost unconscious of even singing, more like speaking into a vacuum, and was really happy with the results." The record entailed a number of firsts for Destroyer: first national television performance (on "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon"); first official music video; first female backing vocals; and the first time Bejar performed without an instrument on tour – his concentration placed solely on his singing. "Kaputt" was short listed for the 2011 Polaris Music Prize and was Pitchfork's second best album of 2011.  Smaller in scale, Destroyer's fourth EP "Five Spanish Songs" is sung entirely in Spanish, Bejar covered songs by Sr. Chinarro (). Bejar's own tongue-in-cheek press release announcing the new songs began: "It was 2013. The English language seemed spent, despicable, not easily singable."

2014–present.

Bejar released "Poison Season" on August 28, 2015. Bejar notes that the album's sound grew from "just really getting into what we were sounding like playing live [following "Kaputt"]." Bejar added that he would not have been able to make such an ambitious album if "Kaputt" had not been successful. Recorded with a live band and a pronounced string section, the album's "grand cinematic set of songs" feature Bejar singing with a broader range than before: "This is the first record that I've ever done that comes close to my idea of myself as a singer", Bejar said.  In 2017, Bejar released "ken", an album produced by Destroyer drummer Joshua Wells of Black Mountain.  Destroyer's twelfth studio album, "Have We Met", was released on January 31, 2020.

Band name.

In 2002, Bejar said about the band name, "I kind of wanted to go for a rock 'n' roll name. In our own special way we're tearing shit apart, you just have to listen very carefully. Musically I knew it was never going to be a metal band, but I thought lyrically there were fangs to the music." Bejar added in 2008, "I was actually so out of it I didn't know that there was a Kiss record called Destroyer because I didn't know anything about Kiss. I still don't know anything about them. I just thought it was a cool rock-and-roll name, and I was kind of blown away that it hadn't been taken already. I was like, 'I have to use this because it's so weird that no one's used it before.'"

Collaborators.

The ever-evolving band lineup can give the impression that Destroyer is a solo project. However, Bejar has insisted "[t]he music is always collaborative and I think that gets lost in the weird cult of personality shit that seems to get whipped up around me." Although Bejar had claimed that the lineup from certain recording sessions would be permanent, later recording sessions and tours added and dropped musicians. Several band members have the commonality of being from the production team of JC/DC (John Collins and David Carswell).  Some songs recorded for "Your Blues" originated from Bejar's musical contribution to Sheila Heti's play "All Our Happy Days Are Stupid".  On the EP "Archer on the Beach" (2010), Bejar worked with ambient-music composer Tim Hecker for the title track. Bejar wrote in the press release: "The reason why this has to be seen as a collaboration, rather than strictly a Destroyer release, is that, for the first time, I'm not responsible for any of the music... aside from the vocals, the general chord progression." On the B-side, the spoken word song "Grief Point", Loscil provided the music. Loscil also composed an extra track, "Loscil's Rubies", on the vinyl version of "Destroyer's Rubies".  American visual artist Kara Walker contributed to the lyrics for "Kaputt"s "Suicide Demo (For Kara Walker)". Organized by Merge, Walker sent cue cards with bits of text to Bejar in 2009.  Vancouver artist and Hello, Blue Roses partner, Sydney Hermant has provided the cover art for multiple Destroyer albums, including "We'll Build Them a Golden Bridge", "This Night", "Your Blues" and "Trouble in Dreams".

Destroyer is a Canadian rock band from Vancouver, British Columbia fronted by singer-songwriter Dan Bejar and formed in 1995. Destroyer songs are characterized by abstract, poetic lyrics and idiosyncratic vocals. The band's discography draws on a variety of musical influences, resulting in albums that can sound markedly distinct from one another; in Bejar's words, "That's kind of my goal: to start from scratch every time."

Destroyer est un groupe de rock indépendant canadien dont fait partie Daniel Bejar (né en 1972), chanteur compositeur originaire de Vancouver au Canada, connu pour les paroles souvent déroutantes et sibyllines de ses chansons. Bejar a connu un succès grandissant par le biais de ses collaborations musicales avec le groupe The New Pornographers, originaire de Vancouver, mais s'est montré plus prolifique avec son autre groupe, Destroyer. Récemment, il a rejoint des membres de Frog Eyes et de Wolf Parade pour créer un autre supergroupe sous le nom Swan Lake.


History.

D. A. Embury stated in the "Fine Art of Mixing Drinks": "Of all the recipes published for [this drink] I have never seen any two that were alike." "The Times" described the "original recipe" as mixing two measures of gin with one of cherry brandy and one each of orange, pineapple, and lime juice An alternative "original recipe" used gin, Cherry Heering, Bénédictine, and fresh pineapple juice, primarily from Sarawak (or "smooth cayenne") pineapples, which enhances the flavor and creates a foamy top. The hotel's recipe was recreated based on the memories of former bartenders and written notes that they discovered regarding the original recipe.

Present style.

By the 1980s, in some countries like the United States of America, the Singapore Sling was often little more than gin, bottled sweet and sour, and grenadine but showing very little relationship to the recipe used elsewhere under the same name. By that time both in Raffles Hotel, Hong Kong and generally in the UK the recipe had remained standardised as gin and cherry brandy (in various ratios between 2:1 and 1:2). By 2000 one started to see the introduction of benedictine and the wider use of pineapple juice. In New Orleans, sometimes Hurricane mix was used instead of pineapple.  Nowadays and internationally, unless you specify the era of the drink or your personal recipe, you have not much chance of getting anything you might recognise.

Gin slings.

The gin sling, attested from 1790, described a North American drink of gin which was flavoured, sweetened and served cold. The "Singapore sling" has been documented as early as 1930 as a recipe in the "Savoy Cocktail Book"; Ingredients 1⁄4 lemon juice, 1⁄4 Dry Gin, 1⁄2 Cherry Brandy: "Shake well and strain into medium size glass, and fill with soda water. Add 1 lump of ice".  This recipe persisted for decades and is recalled in 1982 in The Sainsbury Book of Cocktails & Party Drinks where it is also called the Singapore Sling and was the classic recipe of the time. There is a minor difference in that the measure of spirits were twice the quantity compared with the lemon and soda of the 1930 quotation and garnished with slice of lemon and a glacé cherry. There can be no doubt that these two very similar forms represent the true version of the Singapore Sling.  Also documented in The Sainsbury Book of Cocktails & Party Drinks is the Straits Sling which was even stronger but also added Benedictine, Angostura Bitters, and Orange Bitters, but its garnish was both lemon and orange slices and it did not have the glacé cherry.  What is sometimes served now is a transformation of the Straits Sling with orange and lemon replaced by pineapple juice as content and garnish. While some may call this a Singapore Sling, it most definitely is not so and those that serve this as a Singapore Sling risk having it rejected.  Brewer's refers to the gin-sling as "a drink mainly composed of gin and lemon" and states that it has been attributed to bartender John Collins of London, "but it dates from before his time and was found in the U.S.A. by 1800" which is similar to the John Collins, another drink of gin and lemon.

Variations.

The Chinatown Sling contains gin, triple sec, Bénédictine, Angostura bitters, Cherry Heering, pineapple juice, pineapple spears, and maraschino cherries.

The Singapore Sling is a gin-based sling cocktail from Singapore. This long drink was developed sometime before 1915 by Ngiam Tong Boon (), a Hainanese bartender working at the Long Bar in Raffles Hotel, Singapore. It was initially called the gin sling – a "sling" was originally a North American drink composed of spirit and water, sweetened and flavored.

La Guerre des Simpson ("The War of the Simpsons") est le de la saison 2 de la série télévisée d'animation "Les Simpson".


Life.

Hans Mayer was born in an upper-class Jewish family. He was influenced in his youth by the writings of Georg Lukács and Karl Marx. He was a socialist.  He studied jurisprudence, political science, history and philosophy in Cologne, Bonn and Berlin and received his doctorate in 1930 with a thesis titled ""Die Krise der deutschen Staatslehre"" (The Crisis of German Political Science). At the same time, he joined the SPD and worked on the magazine "Der Rote Kämpfer" (The Red Fighter). In 1931, he moved to the SAPD, which expelled him again one year later because of his sympathy for the KPD-O. Since he was a Jew and a Marxist and therefore banned from his profession in July 1933, he fled in August 1933 to France, where he worked for a short time as the chief editor of the "Die Neue Welt" ('The New World'), which was the daily newspaper of the Alsatian KPO. In 1934, Hans Mayer had to flee to Geneva. Here, he received jobs from Hans Kelsen and Max Horkheimer as a social researcher. He left the KPD-O in 1935. Carl Jacob Burckhardt influenced his literary orientation during this time.  From 1937 to 1939, Mayer was a member of the Collège de Sociologie, founded by Georges Bataille, Michel Leiris and Roger Caillois in 1937. There he held a lecture about the secret political societies in German Romanticism and demonstrated how these secret societies already anticipated Nazi symbolism. Other exiles at the Collège were Walter Benjamin and Paul L. Landsberg.  After the end of the war, he returned to Germany in 1945. The Americans made him the cultural editor of the German news agency, DENA, the predecessor of the DPA, and later the chief political editor of Radio Frankfurt.  In 1948, he and his friend Stephan Hermlin, went to the Soviet occupation zone. In Leipzig he accepted a professorship for literary studies and became an influential critic of the new German literature. It was possible for him to cross between the East German and the West German world. In the East, he worked through his lectures and discussion circles, and in West Germany he was a welcome guest at meetings of Group 47. He was also in contact with Bertolt Brecht during this time.  His relationship with those in power in the GDR was characterized by more friction as of 1956. He resigned in 1963 and did not return to the GDR after a visit to a publisher in Tübingen. In 1965, he was appointed to a newly created chair for German literature at the University of Hannover. He held this chair until his retirement in 1973. After that, he lived in Tübingen as an honorary professor. As he grew older, he lost his eyesight, but he was still able to dictate his texts. For that reason, his publications extend well into his old age.

Work.

The work of Hans Mayer includes more than forty volumes. He studied Büchner, Thomas Mann, Montaigne, Robert Musil, James Joyce, Uwe Johnson, Günter Grass, Hans Henny Jahnn and others in his investigations on the history of literature.  While he was in exile in 1936, he began the advance work for his great work about Georg Büchner. This work about Büchner was later recognized by the University of Leipzig as his postdoctoral thesis which was required to qualify as a professor.  He released the collection of essays, "Zur deutschen Literatur der Zeit", in 1962. In 1986, he followed this volume with the book, "Das unglückliche Bewusstsein - Zur deutschen Literaturgeschichte von Lessing bis Heine". "Ein Deutscher auf Widerruf" is the title of his three-volume memoires of 1982.  The investigation, "Außenseiter", which appeared in 1975, was considered by many to be his main work. In this volume, he deals with the literary portrayal of three groups, which have commonly been discriminated against in history: women, male homosexuals and Jews. He had his own experiences with belonging to two of these groups - as a Jew and as a homosexual.  "Der Turm von Babel" of 1991 is an obituary on the GDR. Its key sentence is frequently seen to be: ""Das schlechte Ende widerlegt nicht einen möglicherweise guten Anfang"" - "The bad end doesn't disprove a possibly good beginning." The GDR was the better of the two German states to him for a long time.  The last book published by Mayer is "Erinnerungen an Willy Brandt" from 2001.

Tributes and criticism.

When it comes to acknowledging the work on Hans Mayer, these points are especially emphasized:  Hans Mayer was an honorary citizen of the city of Leipzig, had honorary doctorates from universities in Brussels, Wisconsin and Leipzig, was an honorary professor in Peking, was winner of the National Prize of East Germany, as well as the "Bundesverdienstkreuz" (Federal Cross of Merit) of the class ""Großes Verdienstkreuz mit Stern und Schulterband"" (Great Cross of Merit with Star and shoulder ribbon). He was honored with the Ernst-Bloch Prize in 1988. He was a member of the "Akademie der Künste" (Academy of the Arts) in Berlin and an honorary member of the "Sächsische Akademie der Künste" (Saxon Academy of the Arts).  Hans Mayer, along with Walter Benjamin, who was also with him at the Collège de Sociologie, and some others, belongs to the most important literary critics of the 20th century. Perhaps there is some correlation to a former competitive situation, which Marcel Reich-Ranicki wrote about in an obituary, which shows Mayer's life in an unflattering light. Reich-Ranicki describes the story of Hans Mayer's life as a tragic story, as the story of a person who did not find a home anywhere.

References.

"All references are in German"

Hans Mayer (19 March 1907 in Cologne – 19 May 2001 in Tübingen) was a German literary scholar. Mayer was also a jurist and social researcher and was internationally recognized as a critic, author and musicologist.

Hans Mayer, né le à Cologne et mort le à Tübingen, est un chercheur en littérature allemande. Mayer a aussi été juriste et chercheur en sciences sociales. Il a également fait l'objet d'une reconnaissance internationale en tant que critique, écrivain et musicologue.


Description.

A CDS is linked to a "reference entity" or "reference obligor", usually a corporation or government. The reference entity is not a party to the contract. The buyer makes regular premium payments to the seller, the premium amounts constituting the "spread" charged by the seller to insure against a credit event. If the reference entity defaults, the protection seller pays the buyer the par value of the bond in exchange for physical delivery of the bond, although settlement may also be by cash or auction.  A default is often referred to as a "credit event" and includes such events as failure to pay, restructuring and bankruptcy, or even a drop in the borrower's credit rating. CDS contracts on sovereign obligations also usually include as credit events repudiation, moratorium and acceleration. Most CDSs are in the $10–$20 million range with maturities between one and 10 years. Five years is the most typical maturity.  An investor or speculator may "buy protection" to hedge the risk of default on a bond or other debt instrument, regardless of whether such investor or speculator holds an interest in or bears any risk of loss relating to such bond or debt instrument. In this way, a CDS is similar to credit insurance, although CDS are not subject to regulations governing traditional insurance. Also, investors can buy and sell protection without owning debt of the reference entity. These "naked credit default swaps" allow traders to speculate on the creditworthiness of reference entities. CDSs can be used to create synthetic long and short positions in the reference entity. Naked CDS constitute most of the market in CDS. In addition, CDSs can also be used in capital structure arbitrage.  A "credit default swap" (CDS) is a credit derivative contract between two counterparties. The buyer makes periodic payments to the seller, and in return receives a payoff if an underlying financial instrument defaults or experiences a similar credit event. The CDS may refer to a specified loan or bond obligation of a "reference entity", usually a corporation or government.  As an example, imagine that an investor buys a CDS from AAA-Bank, where the reference entity is Risky Corp. The investor—the buyer of protection—will make regular payments to AAA-Bank—the seller of protection. "If" Risky Corp defaults on its debt, the investor receives a one-time payment from AAA-Bank, and the CDS contract is terminated.  If the investor actually owns Risky Corp's debt (i.e., is owed money by Risky Corp), a CDS can act as a hedge. But investors can also buy CDS contracts referencing Risky Corp debt without actually owning any Risky Corp debt. This may be done for speculative purposes, to bet against the solvency of Risky Corp in a gamble to make money, or to hedge investments in other companies whose fortunes are expected to be similar to those of Risky Corp (see Uses).  If the reference entity (i.e., Risky Corp) defaults, one of two kinds of settlement can occur:  The "spread" of a CDS is the annual amount the protection buyer must pay the protection seller over the length of the contract, expressed as a percentage of the notional amount. For example, if the CDS spread of Risky Corp is 50 basis points, or 0.5% (1 basis point = 0.01%), then an investor buying $10 million worth of protection from AAA-Bank must pay the bank $50,000. Payments are usually made on a quarterly basis, in arrears. These payments continue until either the CDS contract expires or Risky Corp defaults.  All things being equal, at any given time, if the maturity of two credit default swaps is the same, then the CDS associated with a company with a "higher" CDS spread is considered "more likely" to default by the market, since a higher fee is being charged to protect against this happening. However, factors such as liquidity and estimated loss given default can affect the comparison. Credit spread rates and credit ratings of the underlying or reference obligations are considered among money managers to be the best indicators of the likelihood of sellers of CDSs having to perform under these contracts.

Uses.

Credit default swaps can be used by investors for speculation, hedging and arbitrage.

Speculation.

Credit default swaps allow investors to speculate on changes in CDS spreads of single names or of market indices such as the North American CDX index or the European iTraxx index. An investor might believe that an entity's CDS spreads are too high or too low, relative to the entity's bond yields, and attempt to profit from that view by entering into a trade, known as a basis trade, that combines a CDS with a cash bond and an interest rate swap.  Finally, an investor might speculate on an entity's credit quality, since generally CDS spreads increase as credit-worthiness declines, and decline as credit-worthiness increases. The investor might therefore buy CDS protection on a company to speculate that it is about to default. Alternatively, the investor might sell protection if it thinks that the company's creditworthiness might improve. The investor selling the CDS is viewed as being "long" on the CDS and the credit, as if the investor owned the bond. In contrast, the investor who bought protection is "short" on the CDS and the underlying credit.  Credit default swaps opened up important new avenues to speculators. Investors could go long on a bond without any upfront cost of

Hedging.

Credit default swaps are often used to manage the risk of default that arises from holding debt. A bank, for example, may hedge its risk that a borrower may default on a loan by entering into a CDS contract as the buyer of protection. If the loan goes into default, the proceeds from the CDS contract cancel out the losses on the underlying debt.  There are other ways to eliminate or reduce the risk of default. The bank could sell (that is, assign) the loan outright or bring in other banks as participants. However,

Arbitrage.

"Capital Structure Arbitrage" is an example of an arbitrage strategy that uses CDS transactions. This technique relies on the fact that a company's stock price and its CDS spread should exhibit negative correlation; i.e., if the outlook for a company improves then its share price should go up and its CDS spread should tighten, since it is less likely to default on its debt. However, if its outlook worsens then its CDS spread should widen and its stock price should fall.  Techniques reliant on this are known as capital structure arbitrage because they exploit market inefficiencies between different parts of the same company's capital structure; i.e., mis-pricings between a company's debt and equity. An arbitrageur attempts to exploit the "spread" between a company's CDS and its equity in certain situations.  For example, if a company has announced some bad news and its share price has dropped by 25%, but its CDS spread has remained

History.

Conception.

Forms of credit default swaps had been in existence from at least the early 1990s, with early trades carried out by Bankers Trust in 1991. J.P. Morgan & Co. is widely credited with creating the modern credit default swap in 1994. In that instance, J.P. Morgan had extended a $4.8 billion credit line to Exxon, which faced the threat of $5 billion in punitive damages for the Exxon Valdez oil spill. A team of J.P. Morgan bankers led by Blythe Masters then sold the credit risk from the credit line to the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development in order to cut the reserves that J.P. Morgan was required to hold against Exxon's default, thus improving its own balance sheet.

Market growth.

At first, banks were the dominant players in the market, as CDS were primarily used to hedge risk in connection with its lending activities. Banks also saw an opportunity to free up regulatory capital. By March 1998, the global market for CDS was estimated at about $300 billion, with JP Morgan alone accounting for about $50 billion of this.  The high market share enjoyed by the banks was soon eroded as more and more asset managers and hedge funds saw trading opportunities in credit default swaps. By 2002, investors as speculators, rather than banks as hedgers, dominated the market. National banks in the USA used credit default swaps as early as 1996. In that year, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency measured the size of the market as tens of billions of

Market as of 2008.

Since default is a relatively rare occurrence (historically around 0.2% of investment grade companies default in any one year), in most CDS contracts the only payments are the premium payments from buyer to seller. Thus, although the above figures for outstanding notionals are very large, in the absence of default the net cash flows are only a small fraction of this total: for a 100 bp = 1% spread, the annual cash flows are only 1% of the notional amount.

Regulatory concerns over CDS.

The market for Credit Default Swaps attracted considerable concern from regulators after a number of large scale incidents in 2008, starting with the collapse of Bear Stearns.  In the days and weeks leading up to Bear's collapse, the bank's CDS spread widened dramatically, indicating a surge of buyers taking out protection on the bank. It has been suggested that this widening was responsible for the perception that Bear Stearns was vulnerable, and therefore restricted its access to wholesale capital, which eventually led to its forced sale to JP Morgan in March. An alternative view is that this surge in CDS protection buyers was a "symptom" rather than a "cause" of Bear's collapse; i.e., investors saw that Bear was in trouble, and sought to hedge any naked exposure to the bank, or speculate on its collapse.  In September, the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers caused a total close to $400 billion to become payable to the buyers of CDS protection referenced against the insolvent bank. However the net amount that changed hands was around $7.2 billion. This difference is due to the process of 'netting'. Market participants co-operated so that CDS sellers were allowed to deduct from their payouts the inbound funds due to them from their hedging positions. Dealers generally attempt to remain risk-neutral, so that their losses and gains after big events offset each other.  Also in September American International Group (AIG) required an $85 billion federal loan because it had been excessively selling CDS protection without hedging against the possibility that the reference entities might decline in value, which exposed the insurance giant to potential losses over $100 billion. The CDS on Lehman were settled smoothly, as was largely the case for the other 11 credit events occurring in 2008 that triggered payouts. And while it is arguable that other incidents would have been as bad or worse if less efficient instruments than

Market as of 2009.

The early months of 2009 saw several fundamental changes to the way CDSs operate, resulting from concerns over the instruments' safety after the events of the previous year. According to Deutsche Bank managing director Athanassios Diplas "the industry pushed through 10 years worth of changes in just a few months". By late 2008 processes had been introduced allowing CDSs that offset each other to be cancelled. Along with termination of contracts that have recently paid out such as those based on Lehmans, this had by March reduced the face value of the market down to an estimated $30 trillion.  The Bank for International Settlements estimates that outstanding derivatives total $708 trillion. U.S. and European regulators are developing separate plans to stabilize the derivatives market. Additionally there are some globally agreed standards falling into place in March 2009, administered by International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA). Two of the key changes are:

Government approvals relating to ICE and its competitor CME.

The SEC's approval for ICE Futures' request to be exempted from rules that would prevent it clearing CDSs was the third government action granted to Intercontinental in one week. On March 3, its proposed acquisition of Clearing Corp., a Chicago clearinghouse owned by eight of the largest dealers in the credit-default swap market, was approved by the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department. On March 5, 2009, the Federal Reserve Board, which oversees the clearinghouse, granted a

Clearing house member requirements.

Members of the Intercontinental clearinghouse ICE Trust (now ICE Clear Credit) in March 2009 would have to have a net worth of at least $5 billion and a credit rating of A or better to clear their credit-default swap trades. Intercontinental said in the statement today that all market participants such as hedge funds, banks or other institutions are open to become members of the clearinghouse as long as they meet these requirements.  A clearinghouse acts as the buyer to every seller and seller to every buyer, reducing the risk of counterparty defaulting on a transaction. In the over-the-counter market, where credit- default swaps are currently traded, participants are exposed to each other in case of a default. A clearinghouse also provides one location for regulators to view traders’ positions and prices.

J.P. Morgan losses.

In April 2012, hedge fund insiders became aware that the market in credit default swaps was possibly being affected by the activities of Bruno Iksil, a trader for J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., referred to as "the London whale" in reference to the huge positions he was taking. Heavy opposing bets to his positions are known to have been made

Terms of a typical CDS contract.

A CDS contract is typically documented under a "confirmation" referencing the credit derivatives definitions as published by the International Swaps and Derivatives Association. The confirmation typically specifies a "reference entity", a corporation or sovereign that generally, although not always, has debt outstanding, and a "reference obligation", usually an unsubordinated corporate bond or government bond. The period over which default protection extends is defined by the contract "effective date" and "scheduled termination date".  The confirmation also specifies a "calculation agent" who is responsible for making determinations as to "successors" and "substitute reference obligations" (for example necessary if the original reference obligation was a loan that is repaid before the expiry of the contract), and for performing various calculation and administrative functions in connection with the transaction. By market convention, in contracts between CDS dealers and end-users, the dealer is generally the calculation agent, and in contracts between CDS dealers, the protection seller is generally the calculation agent.  It is not the responsibility of the calculation agent to determine whether or not a credit event has occurred but rather a matter of fact that, pursuant to the terms of typical contracts, must be

Credit default swap and sovereign debt crisis.

The European sovereign debt crisis resulted from a combination of complex factors, including the globalisation of finance; easy credit conditions during the 2002–2008 period that encouraged high-risk lending and borrowing practices; the 2007–2012 global financial crisis; international trade imbalances; real-estate bubbles that have since burst; the 2008–2012 global recession; fiscal policy choices related to government revenues and expenses; and approaches used by nations to bail out troubled banking industries and private bondholders, assuming private debt burdens or socialising losses. The Credit default swap market also reveals the beginning of the sovereign crisis.  Since December 1, 2011 the European Parliament has banned naked Credit default swap (CDS) on the debt for sovereign nations.  The definition of restructuring is quite

Settlement.

Physical or cash.

As described in an earlier section, if a credit event occurs then CDS contracts can either be "physically settled" or "cash settled".  The development and growth of the CDS market has meant that on many companies there is now a much larger outstanding notional of CDS contracts than the outstanding notional value of its debt obligations. (This is because many parties made CDS contracts for speculative purposes,

Auctions.

When a credit event occurs on a major company on which a lot of CDS contracts are written, an auction (also known as a "credit-fixing event") may be held to facilitate settlement of a large number of contracts at once, at a fixed cash settlement price. During the auction process participating dealers (e.g., the big investment banks) submit prices at which they would buy and sell the reference entity's debt obligations, as well as net requests for physical settlement against par. A second stage Dutch auction is held following the publication of the initial midpoint of the dealer markets and what is the net open interest

Pricing and valuation.

There are two competing theories usually advanced for the pricing of credit default swaps. The first, referred to herein as the 'probability model', takes the present value of a series of cashflows weighted by their probability of non-default. This method suggests that credit default swaps should trade at a considerably lower spread than corporate bonds.  The second model, proposed by Darrell Duffie, but also by John Hull and Alan White, uses a no-arbitrage approach.

Probability model.

Under the probability model, a credit default swap is priced using a model that takes four inputs; this is similar to the rNPV (risk-adjusted NPV) model used in drug development: If default events never occurred the price of a CDS would simply be the sum of the discounted premium payments. So CDS pricing models have to take into account the possibility of a default occurring some time between the effective date and maturity date of the CDS contract. For the purpose of explanation we can imagine the case of a one-year CDS with effective date formula_1 with four quarterly premium payments occurring at times formula_2, formula_3, formula_4, and formula_5. If the nominal for the CDS is formula_6 and the issue premium is formula_7 then the size of the quarterly premium payments is formula_8. If we assume for simplicity that defaults can only occur on one of the payment dates then there are five ways the contract could end:  To price the CDS we now need to assign probabilities to the five possible outcomes, then calculate the present value of the

No-arbitrage model.

In the "no-arbitrage" model proposed by both Duffie, and Hull-White, it is assumed that there is no risk free arbitrage. Duffie uses the LIBOR as the risk free rate, whereas Hull and White use US Treasuries as the risk free rate. Both analyses make simplifying assumptions (such as the assumption that there is zero cost of unwinding the fixed leg of the swap on default), which may invalidate the no-arbitrage assumption. However

Criticisms.

Critics of the huge credit default swap market have claimed that it has been allowed to become too large without proper regulation and that, because all contracts are privately negotiated, the market has no transparency. Furthermore, there have been claims that CDSs exacerbated the 2008 global financial crisis by hastening the demise of companies such as Lehman Brothers and AIG.  In the case of Lehman Brothers, it is claimed that the widening of the bank's CDS spread reduced confidence in the bank and ultimately gave it further problems that it was not able to overcome. However, proponents of the CDS market argue that this confuses cause and effect; CDS spreads simply reflected the reality that the company was in serious trouble. Furthermore, they claim that the CDS market allowed investors who had counterparty risk with Lehman Brothers to reduce their exposure in the case of their default.  Credit default swaps have also faced criticism that they contributed to a breakdown in negotiations during the 2009 General Motors Chapter 11 reorganization, because certain bondholders might benefit from the credit event of a GM bankruptcy due to their holding of CDSs. Critics speculate that these creditors had an incentive to push for the company to enter bankruptcy protection. Due to a lack of transparency, there was no way to identify the protection buyers and protection writers.  It was also feared at the time of Lehman's bankruptcy that the $400 billion notional of CDS protection which had been written on the bank could lead to a net payout of $366 billion from protection sellers to buyers (given the cash-settlement auction settled at a final price of 8.625%) and that these large payouts could lead to further bankruptcies of firms without enough cash to settle their contracts. However, industry estimates after the auction suggest that net cashflows were only in the region of $7 billion. because many parties held offsetting positions. Furthermore, CDS deals are marked-to-market frequently. This would have led to margin calls from buyers to sellers as Lehman's CDS spread widened, reducing the net cashflows on the days after the auction.  Senior bankers have argued that not only has the CDS market functioned remarkably well during the financial crisis; that CDS contracts have been acting to distribute risk just as was intended; and that it is not CDSs themselves that need further regulation but the parties who trade them.  Some general criticism of financial derivatives is also relevant to credit derivatives. Warren Buffett famously described derivatives bought speculatively as "financial weapons of mass destruction." In Berkshire Hathaway's annual report to shareholders in 2002, he said, "Unless derivatives contracts are collateralized or guaranteed, their ultimate value also depends on the creditworthiness of the counterparties to them. In the meantime, though, before a contract is settled, the counterparties record profits and losses—often huge in amount—in their current earnings statements without so much as a penny changing hands. The range of derivatives contracts is limited only by the imagination of man (or sometimes, so it seems, madmen)."  To hedge the counterparty risk of entering a CDS transaction, one practice is to buy CDS protection on one's counterparty. The positions are marked-to-market daily and collateral pass from buyer to seller or vice versa to protect both parties against counterparty default, but money does not always change hands due to the offset of gains and losses by those who had both bought and sold protection. Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, the clearinghouse for the majority of trades in the US over-the-counter market, stated in October 2008 that once offsetting trades were considered, only an estimated $6 billion would change hands on October 21, during the settlement of the CDS contracts issued on Lehman Brothers' debt, which amounted to somewhere between $150 to $360 billion.  Despite Buffett's criticism on derivatives, in October 2008 Berkshire Hathaway revealed to regulators that it has entered into at least $4.85 billion in derivative transactions. Buffett stated in his 2008 letter to shareholders that Berkshire Hathaway has no counterparty risk in its derivative dealings because Berkshire require counterparties to make payments when contracts are initiated, so that Berkshire always holds the money. Berkshire Hathaway was a large owner of Moody's stock during the period that it was one of two primary rating agencies for subprime CDOs, a form of mortgage security derivative dependent on the use of credit default swaps.  The monoline insurance companies got involved with writing credit default swaps on mortgage-backed CDOs. Some media reports have claimed this was a contributing factor to the downfall of some of the monolines. In 2009 one of the monolines, MBIA, sued Merrill Lynch, claiming that Merrill had misrepresented some of its CDOs to MBIA in order to persuade MBIA to write CDS protection for those CDOs.

Tax and accounting issues.

The U.S federal income tax treatment of CDS is uncertain (Nirenberg and Kopp 1997:1, Peaslee & Nirenberg 2008-07-21:129 and Brandes 2008). Commentators have suggested that, depending on how they are drafted, they are either notional principal contracts or options for tax purposes,(Peaslee & Nirenberg 2008-07-21:129). but this is not certain. There is a risk of having CDS recharacterized as different types of financial instruments because they resemble put options and credit guarantees. In particular, the degree of risk depends on the type of settlement (physical/cash and binary/FMV) and trigger (default only/any credit event) (Nirenberg & Kopp 1997:8). And, as noted below, the appropriate treatment for Naked CDS may be entirely different.  If a CDS is a notional principal contract, pre-default periodic and nonperiodic payments on the swap are deductible and included in ordinary income. If a payment is a termination payment, or a payment received on a sale of the swap to a third party, however, its tax treatment is an open question. In 2004, the Internal Revenue Service announced that it was studying the characterization of CDS in response to taxpayer confusion. As the outcome of its study, the IRS issued proposed regulations in 2011 specifically classifying CDS as notional principal contracts, and thereby qualifying such termination

LCDS.

A new type of default swap is the "loan only" credit default swap (LCDS). This is conceptually very similar to a standard CDS, but unlike "vanilla" CDS, the underlying protection is sold on syndicated secured loans of the Reference Entity rather than the broader category of "Bond or Loan". Also, as of May 22, 2007, for the most widely traded LCDS form, which governs North American single name and index trades, the default settlement method for LCDS shifted to auction settlement rather than physical settlement. The auction method is essentially the same that has been used in the various ISDA cash settlement auction protocols, but does not require parties to take any additional steps following a credit event (i.e., adherence to a protocol) to elect cash settlement. On October 23, 2007, the first ever LCDS auction was held for Movie Gallery.  Because LCDS trades are linked to secured obligations with much higher recovery values than the unsecured bond obligations that are typically assumed the cheapest to deliver in respect of vanilla CDS, LCDS spreads are generally much tighter than CDS trades on the same name.

A credit default swap (CDS) is a financial swap agreement that the seller of the CDS will compensate the buyer in the event of a debt default (by the debtor) or other credit event. That is, the seller of the CDS insures the buyer against some reference asset defaulting. The buyer of the CDS makes a series of payments (the CDS "fee" or "spread") to the seller and, in exchange, may expect to receive a payoff if the asset defaults.

Les couvertures de défaillance ou dérivés sur événement de crédit ou permutations de l'impayé, plus connus sous leur nom et abréviation anglais "credit default swaps" (CDS), sont des contrats de protection financière entre acheteurs et vendeurs, qui furent développés à partir de 1994 au sein de la banque JP Morgan. L'acheteur de protection verse une prime "ex ante" annuelle calculée sur le montant notionnel de l'actif à couvrir souvent dit "de référence" ou "sous-jacent" (ce montant étant également appelé encours notionnel du CDS), au vendeur de protection qui promet de compenser "ex post" les pertes de l'actif de référence en cas d"'événement" de crédit précisé dans le contrat. Il s'agit donc, sur le plan des flux financiers, de l'équivalent d'un contrat d'assurance.


Presentation.

Chorea is characterized by brief, semi-directed, irregular movements that are not repetitive or rhythmic, but appear to flow from one muscle to the next. These 'dance-like' movements of chorea often occur with athetosis, which adds twisting and writhing movements. Walking may become difficult, and include odd postures and leg movements.  Unlike ataxia, which affects the quality of voluntary movements, or Parkinsonism, which is a hindrance of voluntary movements, the movements of chorea and ballism occur on their own, without conscious effort. Thus, chorea is said to be a hyperkinetic movement disorder.  When chorea is serious, slight movements will become thrashing motions; this form of severe chorea is referred to as ballism, or ballismus.

Causes.

Huntington’s disease.

Huntington's disease is a neurodegenerative disease and most common inherited cause of chorea. The condition was formerly called Huntington's chorea but was renamed because of the important non-choreic features including cognitive decline and behavioural change.

Other genetic causes.

Other genetic causes of chorea are rare. They include the classical Huntington's disease'mimic' or phenocopy syndromes, called Huntington's disease-like syndrome types 1, 2 and 3; inherited prion disease, the spinocerebellar ataxias type 1, 3 and 17, neuroacanthocytosis, dentatorubral-pallidoluysian atrophy (DRPLA), brain iron accumulation disorders, Wilson's disease, benign hereditary chorea, Friedreich's ataxia, mitochondrial disease and Rett syndrome.

Acquired causes.

The most common acquired causes of chorea are cerebrovascular disease and, in the developing world, HIV infection—usually through its association with cryptococcal disease.  Sydenham's chorea occurs as a complication of streptococcal infection. Twenty percent (20%) of children and adolescents with rheumatic fever develop Sydenham's chorea as a complication. It is increasingly rare, which may be partially due to penicillin, improved social conditions, and/or a natural reduction in the bacteria ( Streptococcus ) it has stemmed from. Psychological symptoms may precede or accompany this acquired chorea and may be relapsing and remitting. The broader spectrum of paediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders associated with streptococcal infection can cause chorea and are collectively referred to as PANDAS.  Chorea gravidarum refers to choreic symptoms that occur during pregnancy. If left untreated, the disease resolves in 30% of patients before delivery but, in the other 70%, it persists. The symptoms then progressively disappear in the next few days following the delivery.  Chorea may also be caused by drugs (commonly levodopa, anti-convulsants and anti-psychotics).  Other acquired causes include CSF leak, systemic lupus erythematosus, antiphospholipid syndrome, thyrotoxicosis, polycythaemia rubra vera, transmissible spongiform encephalopathies and coeliac disease.

Treatment.

There is no standard course of treatment for chorea. Treatment depends on the type of chorea and the associated disease. Although there are many drugs that can control it, no cure has yet been identified.

History.

Historically, choreas like Huntington disease and Sydenham's chorea were called Saint Vitus' dance, related to a series of social phenomena of the same name.

Chorea (or choreia, occasionally) is an abnormal involuntary movement disorder, one of a group of neurological disorders called dyskinesias. The term "chorea" is derived from the ("dance"; see choreia), as the quick movements of the feet or hands are comparable to dancing.

La chorée est une manifestation neurologique faisant partie des mouvements involontaires, anormaux et incontrôlables, pouvant notamment être source d'abasie. Elle est définie par la survenue de mouvements incontrôlables non stéréotypés, anarchiques, aléatoires, brusques et irréguliers, de courte durée, de tout ou partie du corps et présents au repos et à l'action. Ces mouvements anormaux surviennent sur un fond d'hypotonie.