* Christoph Simon (please get a proper sig delimiter)
| The german expression has a somewhat special history. Some centuries | ago, a person could be declared to be "vogelfrei", as free as a bird, | but in a not so romantic sense, as he would find himself disprovided | of any kind of legal protection. If anybody wanted to harm or even | kill him, he wouldn't be persecuted for that. Like the english expression outlaw and the Norwegian expression fredløs (literally: restless/peaceless)? >From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]: Outlaw \Out"law`\ (?), n. [AS. &?;tlaga, &?;tlah. See Out, and Law.] A person excluded from the benefit of the law, or deprived of its protection. --Blackstone. -- Tollef Fog Heen Unix _IS_ user friendly... It's just selective about who its friends are.