>the universe simply undergoes a continuous set of state changes Well then that's TIME! Your argument merely re-defines time. You've simply said that time doesn't exist in the units of measure we use today (i.e. no seconds, days, years etc); you're simply saying it's a measure of the changes in state that particles undergo. Which is spot on, because changes in state are a process - time is therefore a measure of those processes! Therefore time exists - you just don't wanna call it time. Elementary my dear Marc :-)

Alright already! Enough flame-throwing. My bad. Let's all hold hands and sing Koombaya instead :-D

You've made very little attempt to understand LINQ. However, the great thing about it is you never have to use it. You can happily continue in your blissful ignorance. The more enlightened among us will eagerly start leveraging the power and flexibility of being able to query RDMS, file and memory object data sources simultaneously, all with the effeciency of IDE and compiler support. We will shave off the many man-hours lost in 'debugging' in shoddy database management and scripting tools as we cruise along on a great layer of abstraction, increasing our productivity and competitive edge by several orders of magnitude. Resistance to change is common to the human condition, but I hope that you will overcome your unwillingness to learn a little extra syntax. Frankly, I'm convinced that LINQ is the natural evolution from the the mediocre-success attempts at object databases and object persistence frameworks that we've seen from various companies (e.g CodeGear ECO & DevExpress PO - both of which I have the utmost respect for). If you really wanna grasp this LINQ stuff, I suggest you watch the video of Charlie Calvert and Anders Hejlsberg explaining and discussing it in some depth. You can Google it. I hope it'll bring a little clarity and insight. You've gotta understand that SQL only does half the job. Generally, a developer does this: 1. Create a database in the RDMS 2. Write SQL queries, test them against the RDMS and store them somewhere (code, SP etc) 3. In the application write code to connect to RDMS and pass the raw SQL 4. Receive the raw data results from the RDBMS 5. Convert the results to code objects for manipulation in the application 6. Implement controls & code for the user to work with the data LINQ halves the steps and reduces the process to: 1. Create a database in the RDMS 2. Write LINQ queries within IDE 3. Implement controls & code for the user to work with the data What a pleasure! Less cumbresome donkeywork and the same results and performance. Brilliant! Plus I get to query a whole bunch of other stuff (even combine the queries) and not have to worry about loading, drivers, query translation. Man, I think I'm getting a woodie... Note that you use wizards in the IDE to establish a framework for your LINQ queries (it connects to the RDMS and automatically generates code objects that the LINQ queries will work with).