We put people in prison because someone is making money off of it. Be it via the people who build the prisons, or those who run them (Private for-profit prisons!).
Remember, this is America... profit IS the bottom line. We lead the world economy for a reason.
I played with Lego a lot as a child... having had two older brothers who allowed me to inherit their vast collect (remember the old colored gears? The realy BIG red ones?)... as a kid nothing fascinated me more than them making a big 'gear machine' for me to play with.
I'm an adult now, and I still play with Lego. I went out and bought the MindStorm as soon as it came out. Most of my friend thought I was nuts to spend 100's on Legos... but they just didn't understand =).
Specifically, I love this guys description of how he did things... dealing with back-lash on worm gears, and the cure. The pictures are AMAZING!
My latest creation: a six legged walker... can clear about an inch with each step, fairly stable, too. But I am humbled by this creation.
I've been working on taking my Palm 500 with wireless add-on and using it as a link to stronger brain (i.e. computer)... I have 'add ons' to the tune of ultra sonice sensors that allow for sensing object in the four directions around the machine. I want it to be able to wander around and map a location... sending back info the main computer, which builds up a DB of surrondings.
First off, if this doesn't get moderated with at least 1 point to 2, I'll be fucking pissed. You see, I haven't quite yet reached karma of 25.
I have, however, MetaModerated, and right now I even have 4 golden mod points myself.
I am a slashdot user. Ya' know what? During the day I use Windows2000... and I've plenty of things to love and hate about it. There's some damn weird things about it, but for the most part, it gets things done... I fit in with my peers and everything...
I'm still against MS, in MANY ways. For example, we are in the process of deploying 900 hundred palms to first time freshmen. I work at USD and one of the software packages we are installing by default is "documents to go"... Word, Excel, and PowerPoint on a Palm!!! The insanity!!! I argued against this, but it made no difference.
People here post info on the web in.doc format... I've personally tracked these people down and told them that they are WRONG!!! PDF, at the least, and please, and HTML, RTF, and.TXT version is in order, also.
And... I'm in the process of converting my departments DB apps into all online apps. Based on CF and Oracle, and I had to fight touth and nail to not have Microsoft in this loop.
While I use and support users on MS products on a daily basis, I WILL find alternatives where possible. I'm happy as hell to be creating something that people here will use for years, that is not based on a microsoft product.
Which brings me to something ON TOPIC. I feel, from my readings, that I am a fairly average/. user. Most people here use MS products in one form or another (and Karma to those who DON'T have to).
My point being, I am happy to have slashdot... it gives me perspective and views I GET NO WHERE ELSE. I keeps my perspective of MS and other cooperate new releases in check... I use MS products, but out of necessity. I want to hear from those who don't.
Slashdot is raw, rouge, and it isn't necessarily resposible journalism, but I won't come here if it was. I don't want canned AP wired shit, I want/.
This place is like IndyMedia or CommonDreams. It's not about balance, it's about desire, love, insatiy, bias, and late night drug induced programming sessions. It's something that IS different, from the style of moderation to the type of stories posted.
That is/., and I think that is a GOOD THING.
Thanks for listening.
I2 is great... biggest problem is the chicken/egg thing: we need bandwith to do stuff (major use so far, for us (college in midwest)(teleconferences & tele-classess) but the state doesn't want to give us funding for bandwith because we don't use what we have.
Politicians don't understand that it isn't a matter of how much bandwith you use, it's how much you need to have avaiable to do certain things.
Typical quote: "Just look you guessed only used 5% of your bandwith last month." Yeah, but when we use it, we use it ALL!
Sigh. Anyway, I2 is great. People are just really getting turned on to the possibilities. Me, being on the technical side of things, where I use to make a phone call and talk to other universities about major technical problems/issues, now we get together and have teleconferences.
I also work at an educational institution owned by a state... and I agree, there are a substantial amount of mediocre people here.
But there is an upside: for those of us who do give a shit, it makes it real easy to get noticed. Granted, it has generated a fair amount of animosity, and it doesn't equate to big bucks, but it does allow me to do all sorts of cool projects. Universities have a lot of resources, and I really enjoy having access to those resources.
Yes, you can still use Lisp in AutoCAD. Although, as of version "2000", it now has MS VBA built in too... take that for what it's worth.
To the most excellent people in this thread...
on
New Human Ancestor?
·
· Score: 1
I just want to say a few things to the people who participated to the thread belonging to this parent.
Bravo. I have not seen such a level headed set of responses to a parent post in a long time. The parent post both states their disbelief in carbon dating and evolution, and several slashdotters calmly, sanely, and nicely replied with a couple of excellent fact-filled informative posts.
I'm the computer-guy for admissions office at college in the midwest... so far, admissions for the fall are 90% female... every one is going ape-shit over this.
All variables defined in a global module. With horrible names. Unused and out dated variables not deleted.
That had serial communications.
With 3 pieces of equipment.
Not event driven (to wait for 3 seconds for a device to respond, do a loop while watching the timer... watch that CPU usage monitor peg out!!! Yeah... watch windows slow to a crawl...)
I scrapped it all. I was laughed at becuase the previous 4 programmer, non of which had lasted more than 6 months after dealin with this code, had managed to fix or redo this code.
I redid it all. It worked, was event driven, was COM object oriented (as much as possible with COM). Then the project got cancel, and the orginal program stayed at the current release (which had pissed off more customers than I care to remember talking to on the phone).
Moral of the story: obscure code works for it's purpose... no one can fix bad stuff.
Moral two: there is nothing more dangerous than a desperate moron and visual basic combined.
Many a techno-social books and articles I've read have made the point that the most interesting interactions takes place at the edges of groups formed through new media interaction.
These most often aren't formal groups, but ad-hoc groups that form when people can interact with other people simultaneously experiencing a media.
For example, there is the clash of the pro-Microsoft and anti-Microsoft groups on Slashdot, or the interaction of different religions on other web sites, or even call-in chat lines. Even Time magazine now allows people to post comments at the bottom of their online articles.
P2P takes this even a step further by decentralizing this process and creating direct lines between people, sometimes even completely eliminating the middleman.
So we have three ingredients: People, information, and interaction between them. As the Internet grows, the number of people is increasing, and the cost of interaction and distribution continues to decline.
Where do you think this is leading us? I see several scenarios:
The end of any form of reliable information from any media, and break down of accountability.
Either a completely lock down or complete loss of control of information and IP (is there a happy medium)?
Or something else completely unpredictable...
Thanks.
Won't the hydrogen go liquid at a high enough pressure? Then you won't have to bleed it back off, you'd just have a container full of compressed liquid hydrogen.
Won't the dripping liquid hydrogen just damn-near instantly boil off?
Haven't had this class for a while, just not quite sure.
Do you know about microsoft's practice of paying employees with stock and then taking a tax break on it? Do you know how dangerous this is, esp. considering the number of retirement plans that relie up Microsoft stock?
It's irresponsible, and it's fucking US two ways... by microsoft not fair share of taxes, and by cause a potential instability in an already fragile tech market.
I wonder how much energy a solar cell would have to produce to over come the energy/pollution ratio of other types of energy production?
Oil you use, and then it's gone. It should have a fairly fixed energy/pollution ratio, but with solar cells, the longer you use them, the ratio gets better -n- better.
Liquifying and storing hydrogen is a bitch. It's so small it tends to escape most types of containment. It does take quite a bit of enegy to compress to a liquid, too.
From my understanding, incomplete burning can also cause nitrogen rich types of gas that deplete the ozone.
My point was that, in a perfect sense, oxygen can be produced and used in a pollution free manner. I know it's not effectient, but possible.
Damned practicallity, anyway!
I'm interested, what's the manner you speak of? Using a turbined power compressor???
2. What else would make them bail? Is it linux related? It's hard to tell... I think this is a jump of gun, in that the event has happen, but no party has given a good reason. I know why I sell stock, but I'm sure those same influences don't apply to microsoft, considering the amount of moneys they have.
I'm just really curious to wait and see what Microsoft has to say, if anything, about this sell.
What about solar panels? You can run a current through water, from solar panels, and get H and 0. This is a pollution free, allbeit ineffecient, method of getting hydrogen.
I know, it's not practical, but I'm playing devil's advocate and saying that, "Hey, there is a method getting hydrogen that doesn't pollute."
Hmm... so agents in 2-d were able to communicate to locate another 'prey' agent.
Could this be applied to something like gnutella, where agents live on the n-dimesional grid of the gnutella world, with each server having hosting a 'message board' where agents that know about one another communicate? The prey would be a specific search, be it keyword or filename.
Since these agents were supposedly able to create a language that used words with contextual meanings, would that allow for search in-context?
Ok, perhaps a bit of a stretch, but it does make sense that searches of distrubeted networks are going to have to use some sort of searching agent.
Ants use something like this. When many ants are being succesful at a certain task, more ants do that task... i.e. if food is plentiful, ants coming back from foraging indicate to other atns that their search was succesful. After enough messages like this, an ant will shift gears.
Sure, it's not admissable in court, but that doesn't mean that they don't use it in one form or another.
Gotten pulled over lately? How many ways were you being recorded, without consent? Had this happen, got pulled over (for what, I do not know, it turned out to be an interesting interaction with the cops, but I digress). Anyway, got in the cop car, and talked/argued with the guy for about 10 minutes.
Then I realize he's been tape-recording the converstaion. I shut off the recorded (didn't ask him, just did it), and asked him if what he had just recorded could be used against me.
His explaination was that it couldn't be used in a court of law, but he could use it for personal reference and let the state's attorney listen to it when deciding whether they want to pursue a case.
So, it's not usable in court, but it can be used to get you to court.
Doesn't seem quite right, eh?
How about those packets? Well, what if the packets pointed to a known black-list site, and they could use that to decide to prosecute you, but they couldn't actually use the packets? Or could they use the packets to get a search warrent to then use the packets in the courts? Kind of a begging the question sort of justice.
Something I haven't seen mentioned yet is that Outlook itself is a hog on resources. Often times, when 'my users' are going be working on something significant or large, I recommend for them to shutdown Outlook.
It launches countless threads, uses a lot of memory (sorry, don't have a number, but it normally drops a standard machine down to 77% resources free), and, in my experience, doesn't help with the stability of windows in general.
It works for us, but... at a price.
Re:Correcting the failure of software copyright
on
Embracing Insanity
·
· Score: 1
I use Microsoft products. That having been said, don't flame bait me just yet, becuase it might just be on topic, in relation to the above post.
I program in Visual Basic, dropping into Visual C++ when needed. I work for a bio-med company, and then only reason I'm using these products is at the mandate of the company. I'd move, but I like it, it's cutting edge, and I am getting to work with some kick-ass tech.
That having been said, here's my beef. I'm a good programmer. I've designed our product from the ground, and everyone is impressed. This is not a pat-on-the-back for me, it's how I work.
My problem... and I just realized this today: I spend over half of my time over coming bugs and short comings in Microsofts products, esp. Visual Basic. Things that should be intuative, aren't. Things that should work, don't. I spend more time digging through MSDN than I do coding, just in an attempt to work around bugs.
If I had source code, would I have this problem? Instead of having to work around these 'issues', I could fix them, and then write code that works like it should!!!
It frustrates me to no end. Microsoft has some great 'ideas' even if they aren't original. If it worked like was suppose to, I could have a complete product by now... but as it is, I have heavy documentation on why I did something a certain way, becuase it's not the most obvious way, and I have to explain why...
This comes up other places too, and it's not just a Microsoft product issue... but I'd love to be able to fix the problem at the source, as opposed to a 'higher level. I'm big on OOP... I like to make killer stable functional objects, and then build up on top of them. With these 'issues' I run into, I have to compansate on a higher level for issues at a lower level, and that just irks me to no end.
Sigh.
One last note. We are moving towards using hand-helds to control our hardware products, and I'm pushing for Linux on the IPAQ, for two reasons: 1. I want to use it!!! 2. I want to be able to get the company to contribute resources to what I feel is an important project.
We'll see... even if the IPAQ loses out, we'll go with palm... at least I won't have to deal with WinCE.
That's my.02, don't blame me, I'm half drunk =)
Slashdot Mirror
There are a lot of people in Jail. Around 2 million Americans are currently in jail.
Reference Mother Jones. For a starting place, I recommend reading "How we got to 2 Million".
I'm not endorsing this. I hate it.
We put people in prison because someone is making money off of it. Be it via the people who build the prisons, or those who run them (Private for-profit prisons!).
Remember, this is America... profit IS the bottom line. We lead the world economy for a reason.
This is awesome!
I played with Lego a lot as a child... having had two older brothers who allowed me to inherit their vast collect (remember the old colored gears? The realy BIG red ones?)... as a kid nothing fascinated me more than them making a big 'gear machine' for me to play with.
I'm an adult now, and I still play with Lego. I went out and bought the MindStorm as soon as it came out. Most of my friend thought I was nuts to spend 100's on Legos... but they just didn't understand =).
Specifically, I love this guys description of how he did things... dealing with back-lash on worm gears, and the cure. The pictures are AMAZING!
My latest creation: a six legged walker... can clear about an inch with each step, fairly stable, too. But I am humbled by this creation.
I've been working on taking my Palm 500 with wireless add-on and using it as a link to stronger brain (i.e. computer)... I have 'add ons' to the tune of ultra sonice sensors that allow for sensing object in the four directions around the machine. I want it to be able to wander around and map a location... sending back info the main computer, which builds up a DB of surrondings.
It's an excellent geek project!
Hats off!
I have, however, MetaModerated, and right now I even have 4 golden mod points myself.
I am a slashdot user. Ya' know what? During the day I use Windows2000... and I've plenty of things to love and hate about it. There's some damn weird things about it, but for the most part, it gets things done... I fit in with my peers and everything...
I'm still against MS, in MANY ways. For example, we are in the process of deploying 900 hundred palms to first time freshmen. I work at USD and one of the software packages we are installing by default is "documents to go"... Word, Excel, and PowerPoint on a Palm!!! The insanity!!! I argued against this, but it made no difference.
People here post info on the web in .doc format... I've personally tracked these people down and told them that they are WRONG!!! PDF, at the least, and please, and HTML, RTF, and .TXT version is in order, also.
And... I'm in the process of converting my departments DB apps into all online apps. Based on CF and Oracle, and I had to fight touth and nail to not have Microsoft in this loop.
While I use and support users on MS products on a daily basis, I WILL find alternatives where possible. I'm happy as hell to be creating something that people here will use for years, that is not based on a microsoft product.
Which brings me to something ON TOPIC. I feel, from my readings, that I am a fairly average /. user. Most people here use MS products in one form or another (and Karma to those who DON'T have to).
My point being, I am happy to have slashdot... it gives me perspective and views I GET NO WHERE ELSE. I keeps my perspective of MS and other cooperate new releases in check... I use MS products, but out of necessity. I want to hear from those who don't.
Slashdot is raw, rouge, and it isn't necessarily resposible journalism, but I won't come here if it was. I don't want canned AP wired shit, I want /.
This place is like IndyMedia or CommonDreams. It's not about balance, it's about desire, love, insatiy, bias, and late night drug induced programming sessions. It's something that IS different, from the style of moderation to the type of stories posted.
That isI2 is great... biggest problem is the chicken/egg thing: we need bandwith to do stuff (major use so far, for us (college in midwest)(teleconferences & tele-classess) but the state doesn't want to give us funding for bandwith because we don't use what we have.
Politicians don't understand that it isn't a matter of how much bandwith you use, it's how much you need to have avaiable to do certain things.
Typical quote: "Just look you guessed only used 5% of your bandwith last month." Yeah, but when we use it, we use it ALL!
Sigh. Anyway, I2 is great. People are just really getting turned on to the possibilities. Me, being on the technical side of things, where I use to make a phone call and talk to other universities about major technical problems/issues, now we get together and have teleconferences.
I also work at an educational institution owned by a state... and I agree, there are a substantial amount of mediocre people here.
But there is an upside: for those of us who do give a shit, it makes it real easy to get noticed. Granted, it has generated a fair amount of animosity, and it doesn't equate to big bucks, but it does allow me to do all sorts of cool projects. Universities have a lot of resources, and I really enjoy having access to those resources.
Yes, you can still use Lisp in AutoCAD. Although, as of version "2000", it now has MS VBA built in too... take that for what it's worth.
I just want to say a few things to the people who participated to the thread belonging to this parent.
Bravo. I have not seen such a level headed set of responses to a parent post in a long time. The parent post both states their disbelief in carbon dating and evolution, and several slashdotters calmly, sanely, and nicely replied with a couple of excellent fact-filled informative posts.
Congradulations.
My hat goes out to you.
Damn, it go me DEAD ON too.
Of course, I'm coming from a huge section of IPs associated with a university, so I bet that makes it easier.
I'm the computer-guy for admissions office at college in the midwest... so far, admissions for the fall are 90% female... every one is going ape-shit over this.
I love it =)
I have had to fix a shitty VB program before.
All variables defined in a global module. With horrible names. Unused and out dated variables not deleted.
That had serial communications.
With 3 pieces of equipment.
Not event driven (to wait for 3 seconds for a device to respond, do a loop while watching the timer... watch that CPU usage monitor peg out!!! Yeah... watch windows slow to a crawl...)
I scrapped it all. I was laughed at becuase the previous 4 programmer, non of which had lasted more than 6 months after dealin with this code, had managed to fix or redo this code.
I redid it all. It worked, was event driven, was COM object oriented (as much as possible with COM). Then the project got cancel, and the orginal program stayed at the current release (which had pissed off more customers than I care to remember talking to on the phone).
Moral of the story: obscure code works for it's purpose... no one can fix bad stuff.
Moral two: there is nothing more dangerous than a desperate moron and visual basic combined.
Friends don't let friends use VB.
Many a techno-social books and articles I've read have made the point that the most interesting interactions takes place at the edges of groups formed through new media interaction.
These most often aren't formal groups, but ad-hoc groups that form when people can interact with other people simultaneously experiencing a media.
For example, there is the clash of the pro-Microsoft and anti-Microsoft groups on Slashdot, or the interaction of different religions on other web sites, or even call-in chat lines. Even Time magazine now allows people to post comments at the bottom of their online articles.
P2P takes this even a step further by decentralizing this process and creating direct lines between people, sometimes even completely eliminating the middleman.
So we have three ingredients: People, information, and interaction between them. As the Internet grows, the number of people is increasing, and the cost of interaction and distribution continues to decline.
Where do you think this is leading us? I see several scenarios:The end of any form of reliable information from any media, and break down of accountability.
Either a completely lock down or complete loss of control of information and IP (is there a happy medium)?
Or something else completely unpredictable... Thanks.
Won't the hydrogen go liquid at a high enough pressure? Then you won't have to bleed it back off, you'd just have a container full of compressed liquid hydrogen.
Won't the dripping liquid hydrogen just damn-near instantly boil off?
Haven't had this class for a while, just not quite sure.
Did you read the article I linked to?
Do you know about microsoft's practice of paying employees with stock and then taking a tax break on it? Do you know how dangerous this is, esp. considering the number of retirement plans that relie up Microsoft stock?
It's irresponsible, and it's fucking US two ways... by microsoft not fair share of taxes, and by cause a potential instability in an already fragile tech market.
Damn, hadn't thought of that.
I wonder how much energy a solar cell would have to produce to over come the energy/pollution ratio of other types of energy production?
Oil you use, and then it's gone. It should have a fairly fixed energy/pollution ratio, but with solar cells, the longer you use them, the ratio gets better -n- better.
Anyone have any idea about this?
You are correct.
Liquifying and storing hydrogen is a bitch. It's so small it tends to escape most types of containment. It does take quite a bit of enegy to compress to a liquid, too.
From my understanding, incomplete burning can also cause nitrogen rich types of gas that deplete the ozone.
My point was that, in a perfect sense, oxygen can be produced and used in a pollution free manner. I know it's not effectient, but possible.
Damned practicallity, anyway!
I'm interested, what's the manner you speak of? Using a turbined power compressor???
Ok, so we have Microsoft selling at a loss.
The 60 Mil or so they are losing is of no big deal.
They don't need it for taxes, they already have cooperate welfare:
Basically, Microsoft receives cash by issuing employee stock options, after which the company then receives billions of dollars in tax deductions from the IRS for doing so.
So the motivation is not profit or taxes...
I'm trying to work out a logical process here...
So what do we have left?
1. The anti-trust thing.
2. What else would make them bail? Is it linux related? It's hard to tell... I think this is a jump of gun, in that the event has happen, but no party has given a good reason. I know why I sell stock, but I'm sure those same influences don't apply to microsoft, considering the amount of moneys they have.
I'm just really curious to wait and see what Microsoft has to say, if anything, about this sell.
What about solar panels? You can run a current through water, from solar panels, and get H and 0. This is a pollution free, allbeit ineffecient, method of getting hydrogen.
I know, it's not practical, but I'm playing devil's advocate and saying that, "Hey, there is a method getting hydrogen that doesn't pollute."
Ok, define gravity:
simple terms: all matter attracts all other matter.
Ok, a test to proof this theory:
Stand up, jump, rise, fall, land, repeat as many times as necessary to get a good statistical base.
Ok, now my theory has some proof: find a way to disprove my theory or my proof.
(I know I'm butchering the scientific process here, but I'm in a hurry. You get the jest of things, anyway.)
In the spirit of the /. view of money and politicians, where did Tim O'Reilly get the money to be in bed with Senator (Orrin) Hatch (R-Utah)?
/., this isn't exactly his common view on things, is it?
There has to money involved, right?
And considering what I've read about Hatch via posters here on
Wasn't he a daddy to DMCA?
Exactly what the heck is going on here?
It was a worth while post anyway, 'cause you gave me a good early morning laugh...
Hmm... so agents in 2-d were able to communicate to locate another 'prey' agent.
Could this be applied to something like gnutella, where agents live on the n-dimesional grid of the gnutella world, with each server having hosting a 'message board' where agents that know about one another communicate? The prey would be a specific search, be it keyword or filename.
Since these agents were supposedly able to create a language that used words with contextual meanings, would that allow for search in-context?
Ok, perhaps a bit of a stretch, but it does make sense that searches of distrubeted networks are going to have to use some sort of searching agent.
Ants use something like this. When many ants are being succesful at a certain task, more ants do that task... i.e. if food is plentiful, ants coming back from foraging indicate to other atns that their search was succesful. After enough messages like this, an ant will shift gears.
All I have to say about
http://www.tiernanoutdoorproducts.com/
is this:
AHHHHHHH!!! BLINKING TEXT!!!!! BAIL, BAIL!!!
Sure, it's not admissable in court, but that doesn't mean that they don't use it in one form or another.
Gotten pulled over lately? How many ways were you being recorded, without consent? Had this happen, got pulled over (for what, I do not know, it turned out to be an interesting interaction with the cops, but I digress). Anyway, got in the cop car, and talked/argued with the guy for about 10 minutes.
Then I realize he's been tape-recording the converstaion. I shut off the recorded (didn't ask him, just did it), and asked him if what he had just recorded could be used against me.
His explaination was that it couldn't be used in a court of law, but he could use it for personal reference and let the state's attorney listen to it when deciding whether they want to pursue a case.
So, it's not usable in court, but it can be used to get you to court.
Doesn't seem quite right, eh?
How about those packets? Well, what if the packets pointed to a known black-list site, and they could use that to decide to prosecute you, but they couldn't actually use the packets? Or could they use the packets to get a search warrent to then use the packets in the courts? Kind of a begging the question sort of justice.
Sigh.
So much for civil rights.
Something I haven't seen mentioned yet is that Outlook itself is a hog on resources. Often times, when 'my users' are going be working on something significant or large, I recommend for them to shutdown Outlook.
It launches countless threads, uses a lot of memory (sorry, don't have a number, but it normally drops a standard machine down to 77% resources free), and, in my experience, doesn't help with the stability of windows in general.
It works for us, but... at a price.
I use Microsoft products. That having been said, don't flame bait me just yet, becuase it might just be on topic, in relation to the above post. I program in Visual Basic, dropping into Visual C++ when needed. I work for a bio-med company, and then only reason I'm using these products is at the mandate of the company. I'd move, but I like it, it's cutting edge, and I am getting to work with some kick-ass tech. That having been said, here's my beef. I'm a good programmer. I've designed our product from the ground, and everyone is impressed. This is not a pat-on-the-back for me, it's how I work. My problem... and I just realized this today: I spend over half of my time over coming bugs and short comings in Microsofts products, esp. Visual Basic. Things that should be intuative, aren't. Things that should work, don't. I spend more time digging through MSDN than I do coding, just in an attempt to work around bugs. If I had source code, would I have this problem? Instead of having to work around these 'issues', I could fix them, and then write code that works like it should!!! It frustrates me to no end. Microsoft has some great 'ideas' even if they aren't original. If it worked like was suppose to, I could have a complete product by now... but as it is, I have heavy documentation on why I did something a certain way, becuase it's not the most obvious way, and I have to explain why... This comes up other places too, and it's not just a Microsoft product issue... but I'd love to be able to fix the problem at the source, as opposed to a 'higher level. I'm big on OOP... I like to make killer stable functional objects, and then build up on top of them. With these 'issues' I run into, I have to compansate on a higher level for issues at a lower level, and that just irks me to no end. Sigh. One last note. We are moving towards using hand-helds to control our hardware products, and I'm pushing for Linux on the IPAQ, for two reasons: 1. I want to use it!!! 2. I want to be able to get the company to contribute resources to what I feel is an important project. We'll see... even if the IPAQ loses out, we'll go with palm... at least I won't have to deal with WinCE. That's my .02, don't blame me, I'm half drunk =)