Revert "all the changes since April"

This reverts commit ab026a75b63f8afa7d38254c9bf3a9f87f8782d0.
Revert "all the changes since April"

This reverts commit fe2cdb1d8e0d98c37ab5d1108587e636759781b9.
Revert "Curious to see what the changes here were ..."

This reverts commit 62075ce5f590befc1fb75ae116971ebe1e882628.
Revert "added compatibility options (for Reader) for options removed in MethodBoost - this time, hopefully it is correct :)"

This reverts commit 060d4c53663f8b4e917f4185a771bc1671b83f15.
Revert "added compatibilty options for Reader in MethodBoost"

This reverts commit c52c94ad4b997e3adbaa2a0e178b6fb6fb94c37b.
PROOF: check for unparsed AliEn dataset names

Unparsed portions in data specification trigger an error. Also, some
generic functions have been declared static.