I've been buliding my own computers for years. I use http://www.mwave.com. You can build your own custom machine with the components of your choice, and they will build it for you. I never had a problem with them, but obviously YHMV. Alternatively, you can buy the parts and build it by yourself. There are various hardware review sites to help with the choices (http://www.tomshardware.com, http://www.anandtech.com, http://www.extremetech.com, etc.) Gil "...Everybody has opinions: I have them, you have them. And we are all told from the moment we open our eyes, that everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. Well, that's horsepuckey, of course. We are not entitled to our opinions; we are entitled to our _informed_ opinions. Without research, without background, without understanding, it's nothing. It's just bibble-babble...." --- Harlan Ellison

The fastest method of figuring whether 3 points are on a common line is: (X3-X1)*(Y2-Y1)==(X2-X1)*(Y3-Y1) ? line : !line This works even if the line is vertical. If you want to find distances you need to calculate more, as was explained in previous answers... "...Everybody has opinions: I have them, you have them. And we are all told from the moment we open our eyes, that everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. Well, that's horsepuckey, of course. We are not entitled to our opinions; we are entitled to our _informed_ opinions. Without research, without background, without understanding, it's nothing. It's just bibble-babble...." --- Harlan Ellison

I remember some years back, watching a Monday night football game at three rivers stadium. John Madden then proceeds to explain, using the aerial view from the blimp, how the stadium is at the confluence of 3 rivers. He did that by drawing arrows showing the flow of water. The problem was that the arrows where all pointing to the points in which 2 of the rivers join to make the 3rd. Notes for non-locals: (1) Three Rivers Stadium used to be in Pittsburgh. The three rivers in question are the Allegheny and Monongahela that join to create the Ohio river. The stadium is now gone. (2) John Madden is a famous (American) footlball announcer on Monday Night Football. "...Everybody has opinions: I have them, you have them. And we are all told from the moment we open our eyes, that everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. Well, that's horsepuckey, of course. We are not entitled to our opinions; we are entitled to our _informed_ opinions. Without research, without background, without understanding, it's nothing. It's just bibble-babble...." --- Harlan Ellison

Hmmm. Sure they do... HP Color Laser Jet Printers. Albeit, I'll concede that they may not be miniaturized "...Everybody has opinions: I have them, you have them. And we are all told from the moment we open our eyes, that everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. Well, that's horsepuckey, of course. We are not entitled to our opinions; we are entitled to our _informed_ opinions. Without research, without background, without understanding, it's nothing. It's just bibble-babble...." --- Harlan Ellison

Indeed! (Seriously, though, I think he is not using that computer to actually control the flight. That is done by some altimeter boards mounted in a different place.) Gil

It is indeed great fun! My kid loves it (and I get a recovery team :cool: ) As for the parachute problem, you can try a longer rubber band, or attach a piece of string to the existing rubber band. (Or, you can try kevlar string http://www.apogeerockets.com/construction_supplies.asp ;). ) Gil

http://www.geocities.com/rdh82000/L3/Flightcomputer.htm Anyone into model rocketry, btw? Gil

Apart from the fact the the 'kilogram' is a mass unit and not weight. A mass of one 'killogram' will weigh about 9.8 Newtons on earth (depending on where you are...) and about 1.63 Newtons on the moon. Gil, who knows too much physics for his own good.

Check this out. I always knew the French had them. Gil

Short answer: no. Longer answer: There are two different quantities with the name speed-of-light. The first is a universal constant, c, and is defined to be: 299,792,458 meters/sec (see here). The second quantity is the speed of actual light (that is, photons). Light travels in different speeds in different media (e.g., slower inside water or glass). The constant c happens to be the speed of light in vacuum. Time, on the other hand, is a basic variable. One may think of time as one of the 4 coordinates of space-time (special and genral relativity). It is indeed confusing that one of the coordinates of space time has different units (seconds) from the other three (meters). (To confuse the issue even more, physicists sometimes work in a coordinate system in which the time unit is meters. In that system the constant c is equal to 1.) Did this confuse you even more ;) ? Gil -- Caveat: This is a classical physics description, as opposed to quantum mechanical one. Currently there is no satisfatory theory of quantum gravity.

I especially like the last paragraph: ... "Think of this as a partnership," Gates said. "Like the ones and zeroes of the binary code itself, we must all work together to make the promise of the computer revolution a reality. As the world's richest, most powerful software company, Microsoft is number one. And you, the millions of consumers who use our products, are the zeroes." Gil

It is funny, but let's acknowledge the origin: http://www.theonion.com/onion3311/microsoftpatents.html Gil

Don't be alarmed so quickly. I've found that circulating stories such as this are usually hoaxes. Check out TruthOrFiction.com. Gil 68.4% of all stats are made on the spot.

And here are the laywers excuses (and maybe a slightly more accurate description of the Stella Case). Gil "I'm-not-a-lawer-and-I-don't-like-them" Rivlis

How about GSL, the Gnu Scientific Library. There's even a win binary here. Gil

I'm also using VIA chipset motherboard, the MSI 694D Pro-AR. It has an additional ide controller on board, a Promise ATA-100 with RAID. It's running a dual 1GHz PIII works well with Windows 2000. I do have some stability problems that seem to be associated with the on-board sound card. However, I'm mostly programming instrumentation control systems and programming hardware is always slightly unstable. Good Luck, Gil