show stopper in LW 9 ?

[Cageman]

show stopper in LW 9 ?

hey guys ,
i am writing a review of lightwave 9 ,

and at this stage , i am not aware of any bug or limitation that would qualify as a show stopper .
did i miss something ?
dont get me wrong , not looking for a flame wars ,
actually i think that this release is the best one since lw6 ,
newtek did a great jobs ,

i need to be fair, weighting the good and the bad ,
at this stage i have a lot of good and very little of bad ( great job newtek ! )
just want to make sure that i did not miss anything for my review

any thought ?

Hmm...there are things that doesn't work right now.

One of the biggest issues that alot of LightWave-users have complained about is the lack of Nodal-support in FPrime. But, as you may know, both Worley and NT are working on that.

Alot of the third party stuff doesn't work with the Advanced Camera. This is probably something the third party have to adress within their plugin, rather than being on NT:s side.

The hub seems to be very unstable on alot of systems, while others doesn't have any problems at all. Stability-issues regarding Modeler have been reported, but again, not everyone are affected.

Dynamics calculations on AMD-32 bit systems are much slower than on similar Intel-based systems. Probably an SSE2-thing.

Not all modelingtools work with CC-subd.

OGL Speed in Layout is improved alot, however, as soon as you deform anything (animation) the speed is back to LW8.x. NT have not yet adressed the way deformations are calculated.

[richcz3]

I believe he's asking about show stoppers inside Lightwave 9. FPrime is not Newteks property. I own FPrime as well an Im bummed out about but I know this is not something that will be sorted anytime soon. With that, I am sure there are numerous 3rd party plugins that are broken now.

As for what's in LW9 that isn't working as it should is modeling tools on CCNurbs and some CC nurbs dont render as you might expect. Best to use sparingly.

From a workflow perspective Modeler needs a serious consolidation of its tool set. There are plenty of examples of tools and their workflow in other modelers. NT would do good to tap into those methods.

Although its not a show stopper per se, it would be OPenGL in Modeler needs to be addressed. And it will be in upcoming updates.

[Niklas Collin]

Edge weighting is totally broken, this is The no 1 thing for me to nag about in LW9. If you add any geometry to the area where there has been set edge weights, it'll break (bevel, smooth shift, knife etc...). Really shame, since edge weights could have saved a lot of time from me if they had just worked correctly...

[T4D]

havn't hit any WOW moment yet,
but they has been alot of work done on the render,
Newtek does deserve bonus Points for that area Best Spend time there.

[Cageman]

havn't hit any WOW moment yet,
but they has been alot of work done on the render,
Newtek does deserve bonus Points for that area Best Spend time there.

Agreed...I rendered a shadowpass in LW9 in 14 seconds (classic camera), when LW8.3 took 2m 40s to render the exact same frame. That was a WOW moment for me. Other than that, I feel alot like "Been there done that in other app, good to see it in LW at last"- moments.

[colkai]

From a workflow perspective Modeler needs a serious consolidation of its tool set. There are plenty of examples of tools and their workflow in other modelers. NT would do good to tap into those methods.
Amen to that.

However, more related to what is needed rather than current show-stoppers.
One thing that yanks my chain, whilst no technically a show-stopper, (providing you DON'T do it in the middle of a 4 hour editing session), is the fact that, by and large, editing the plugin list / menu structure can pretty much cause Modeller to crash when you then come out of that and try to use any tool.

It isn't consistent, sometimes I get no crash, but it is regular enough to pi** me off, the only 'up' side being, it at least saves your config changes before it dumps on you.

It's put me in a mode where I now either go in to edit menus, or work, but never both.

Apart from that, for me, it's more to do with what I feel still hs to be addressed, rather than crashes / bugs slowing my work progress.

[DMack]

For me, there is a bit of a show stopper - decent network rendering. I use Tequila Scream with LW8.5 and it works really well, however it doesn't support LW9. You can use screamernet under LW9 but it is hopelessly inefficient and outdated and certainly not good enough for my requirements. So, until Mule 2 comes out (or, if Chepe changes his mind) I am still using LW8.5 for production. I've got LW9 but it isn't being used for that reason alone.

So, in my real life experience, LW9 does have a showstopper for me.

I am utterly amazed that Newtek haven't addressed this as a matter of urgency! A bzillion free render nodes (let's face it, that is a MAJOR selling point) and the world's worst network controller to use them with - unbelievable! So what do you have to do? Go and buy an application that charges per render node! Unbelievable!

[T4D]

No, No, Come on there at Miles of threads related to LW's,.. hmm... "issues"
post the negative in thoses Threads, Man I'm in nearly everyone !! LOL :D

But I want to hear of the show stopper too.
( I just don't get much time to render )
and rendering IS LW 9's major area of improvment.

[tais]

i'm agree with Dmack. return to ScreamerNet is a show stopper. Got 3 Lw9 licenses but my pipeline still in version 8.3.

Nodal need more improvement in the workflow (replace nodes, group them, easy zooming with mouse, etc...) to be seriously use in production. I lost to much time in connect/reconnect... So i don't use Nodal and continue layers system most of time...

Edge is not implemented well like Niklas said.

Nt continue to add non interactive tool in Lightwave. We still need a huge workflow improvement and tool reorganisation. Still too much floating windows in lightwave. In fact they add new ones...


they are a lot of good parts too. (render speed, no more optimisation process, etc..) there are plenty of third party developing now (Syflex, Dynamite, Lwcad2, VueStream, etc...) so maybe the sdk become to be opened a bit but Developpers are waiting Nt to expand the code and lscript functions more and more (the old issue too). Too much scripts are not born because the lightwave function is not accessable, or the status can be read...

Ah!, Mark Granger do a good job on the way lightwave 9.x will deal with MotionBlur and AA.

[Cageman]

I'm a bit surprised about the ScreamerNET thing... it is easy to set up... actually, I got ScreamerNET working within 5 minutes on my main machine (not using any third party tools). Adding more nodes is a simple copy and paste of the node on my main machine and then just edit the job and ack number with notepad and place that as a shortcut on whatever machine I would like to include in the farm.

Yes, it is a step backwards compared to real networkrender management software, but until these applications works with LW9.0, what to do? With the renderenhancements of LW9, ScreamerNET is well worth the hassle, at least until the tools you are using now also supports LW9.0.

Here (http://www.newtek.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=24065) you can find both a PDF and videotutorial on how to setup ScreamerNET.

If you really can't spend ANY time on this, Muster (http://www.vvertex.com/) is a network rendermanager that works with LW9.0 (at least the things I tried).

[ColinCohen]

For me, there is a bit of a show stopper - decent network rendering. I use Tequila Scream with LW8.5 and it works really well, however it doesn't support LW9.

Is Tequila actually broken with v9, or is it that they don't officially support v9?

[evileye]

For me, there is a bit of a show stopper - decent network rendering. I use Tequila Scream with LW8.5 and it works really well, however it doesn't support LW9. You can use screamernet under LW9 but it is hopelessly inefficient and outdated and certainly not good enough for my requirements. So, until Mule 2 comes out (or, if Chepe changes his mind) I am still using LW8.5 for production. I've got LW9 but it isn't being used for that reason alone.

So, in my real life experience, LW9 does have a showstopper for me.

I am utterly amazed that Newtek haven't addressed this as a matter of urgency! A bzillion free render nodes (let's face it, that is a MAJOR selling point) and the world's worst network controller to use them with - unbelievable! So what do you have to do? Go and buy an application that charges per render node! Unbelievable!

I have to go with dmack on this one. Newtek really needs to fix all the little things making network rendering a hassle. I havent tested it in lw9 but recently on a big production we had a lot of problems with scenes containing curve conform and the HUD slider plugin. On the other hand it was a sheer machiavelian pleasure seeing other Mental ray renders on the farm waiting for available nodes.

[Niklas Collin]

FYI, Butterfly works just fine with LW9 even if it doesn't officially support it yet...

[DMack]

Hi Cageman,

I've used screamernet in the past, in fact I was hesitant to move away from it initially BUT having done so, I just can't go back. In the years that I've had TS, I've taken on bigger and bigger jobs, render farm has expanded and timeframes reduced! I simply can't have a network controller that doesn't let me adjust scene priority on the fly, drop nodes, re-start nodes, automatically change content directories etc. My business just won't work efficiently without a decent controller. To me, that is more important than the new items in LW9.

Colin - Unfortunately Chepe has stopped development on TS. I emailed him a while back and that was his response. I'm kind of hoping that if enough people make it clear they are willing to PAY for an update (it's been a long whilse since he charged!), then he might just be tempted enough to make it LW9 compatible. Even better, if he could sell his code to Newtek to give thema head start so they can include a proper controller in 9.1 - that would be even better.

[xtrm3d]

thx for the lot of reply , and for keeping this thread civil :-)

i dont think that i would be too arsh on the nodal/fprime issue , base on the fact that frpime is a third party plug in , and that you still can render without fprime
basicaly , with 3dmax or maya , you know from the begining and accept that most of your plug in would not be suported in the next release
the problem with the network renderer setup seem to be a big one :-(
and a lot of valide concern have been raised , i would then mention these at teh end of my review

but in overall , it's a positif review :-)

[Zarathustra]

I'm surprised NT hasn't shot you the Ithaca build. I mean, you're a talented artist who has shown exceptional LW work and are not one of the people on the naughty list when they have BBQs at Chuck's house and play pin the tail on the donkey so I'd think they'd get that in your hands and try and get your review to be postponed or in some way highlight what's coming next month.

[xtrm3d]

hi zara , thanks a lot for the flower about the talent and stuff



after spending 2 year modelling in modo and xsi at work , i have now to model in maya

an on the other hand , i would prefer to hear from people like you , who are using 9 in real world production with day to day chalenge and no TD at hand to find a work around

[Cageman]

For me, there is a bit of a show stopper - decent network rendering. I use Tequila Scream with LW8.5 and it works really well, however it doesn't support LW9.

I think it does support LW9.0...

Check this (http://www.digitaltoons.tv/shop/) out!

"TequilaScream version 1.1.9.0
LW 7, 8 & 9 Compatible"

[DMack]

Cageman,

You have just made me a VERY HAPPY MAN! Oh, actually I suppose I should also thank Chepe!!!

WOW! I never thought I'd see the day! He said he's stopped development! WOW! Cool!

Only $50? If he was even thinking about dropping it, he should charge more!

YAHOO! YAHOO! YAHOO! YAHOO! YAHOO!


Edit: Ordered!

[colkai]

Is it me, or do you think DMack maybe a little happy? :p ;)

[Cageman]

Hey DMack... are you happy now? :)

[PixelInfected]

i use lw from lw3.5 amiga, i know in deep lw, and i was on open beta of lw9.
lw9 rocks!

1) most of bad working and problem of hub are problem of user, not of hub, most of them install firewall, and they don't know what a firewall, that stop not only hub but many other software.


2) actually many users have old install of lw, but never right configured, be cause not address config file, often open lw8 and 9 but not disable hub, that mean lw8 load 9 plugs or reverse, and that cause instability

3) how many user have registered ram? this is a very important point about stability of software like lw, mental ray and renderman that use large parte of memory for render.

4) if you tell like a show stopper that thirdy part are not alignet to new lw features you are mad. if you think that ... what kind of show stopper is every max version where you must buy new version of plugins, be cause old version never work (if you use max you know that), or maya that most of plugs not work, rig that are broken in new version of packages and more (i use lw, maya and more, and i use many friends that use in production cinema4d, max and xsi, i know what i tell).
thirdy part are not responsability of newtek, if they not follow the rules of developing, they adjust after few times thier plugins.

5) screamernet work fine, and if you want, lighnet work fine with lw 9, we use it in one renderfarm, and butterfly on other renderfarm, and all work fine from first public beta.

6) deformation speed is increased. i did rig that go at 4 fr/s on 8.5 and 16 fr/s on 9 on a bad notebook with intel chipset, and on nvidia i have same speed up.

7) nodal system is not perfect but is first incarnation, if you test first nodal system of maya you tell is crazy, but i start to use nodal and after a bit of time to study how it work i work fine and fast, and not only, actually i'm going to build a new preset collection with node, that allow you to do thing that you never do with layer sistem, but like everything need a bit a study.

8) no software is perfect, but newtek did a good work on this release, they can do better, but is the starting point, how many of you use xsi 1? impossible to use, softimage sell it with old softimage 3.9, until 2 is not usable in production...

please use many other software and see how our grass in not less green than other (italian words, that mean, often we see bad things of our garden, and other gardens seems better, but when you see better, all gardens have same green...)

[DMack]

Hey DMack... are you happy now? :)

:thumbsup: :) :scream: :bounce: :applause: :D

[xtrm3d]

@ PixelInfected

well i am not really sure that your are pointing to me or not ,
i would just act like you did write it to :-)

1) most of bad working and problem of hub are problem of user, not of hub, most of them install firewall, and they don't know what a firewall, that stop not only hub but many other software.
true , althoug the hub , really slow down thing sometime



2) actually many users have old install of lw, but never right configured, be cause not address config file, often open lw8 and 9 but not disable hub, that mean lw8 load 9 plugs or reverse, and that cause instability

right

3) how many user have registered ram? this is a very important point about stability of software like lw, mental ray and renderman that use large parte of memory for render.

dont want to sound dumb .. but what is registered ram ?

4) if you tell like a show stopper that thirdy part are not alignet to new lw features you are mad. if you think that ... what kind of show stopper is every max version where you must buy new version of plugins, be cause old version never work (if you use max you know that), or maya that most of plugs not work, rig that are broken in new version of packages and more (i use lw, maya and more, and i use many friends that use in production cinema4d, max and xsi, i know what i tell).
thirdy part are not responsability of newtek, if they not follow the rules of developing, they adjust after few times thier plugins.

tottaly agree with you , max and maya user , accept it without complain .. and that not really the fault of newtek , if third party are not up to date with theyr plug in

the only problem is that a lot of people rely on theses tools ,
anyway .. it would not be a part of my review


) deformation speed is increased. i did rig that go at 4 fr/s on 8.5 and 16 fr/s on 9 on a bad notebook with intel chipset, and on nvidia i have same speed up.

true , true and even more true ..
that belong to the lot of positif aspect of my review


nodal system is not perfect but is first incarnation, if you test first nodal system of maya you tell is crazy, but i start to use nodal and after a bit of time to study how it work i work fine and fast, and not only, actually i'm going to build a new preset collection with node, that allow you to do thing that you never do with layer sistem, but like everything need a bit a study.

for a first incarnation , nodal , is really good , and powerfull , looking forward tp where they would take it
nodal really give lightwave a true modern and powerfull way of surfacing

please use many other software and see how our grass in not less green than other (italian words, that mean, often we see bad things of our garden, and other gardens seems better, but when you see better, all gardens have same green...)
well , what should i say ..
use lightwave since 99 , modo, xsi, maya and zbrush ..
and when i say use , i mean use, not just play around .. but model rigg and render in them ..

as a matter of fact i am now a maya modeller at work :rolleyes:

[PixelInfected]

Hi xtrm3d,
my answer wasn't an attack or a start of flame, is a simple demistification of a chorus that you can read in many forums, where people that play with lw9 (often warez version or some old beta), and don't work with it, shame on its goodness.

if my words seems and attack, excuse me, is not my intention to do that. i'm italian, and sometimes in english i'm too emotional ;-)

1) i often work without hub, be cause i think is not a perfect way to exchange data between two application, i prefer a memory stack.

3) ram registered is a quality ram that have a special check function on chip of ram, that verify the data during read and write function, that avoid many problems, that kind of ram cost a bit more, but avoid a lots of problems.

[Cageman]

Hi xtrm3d,
my answer wasn't an attack or a start of flame, is a simple demistification of a chorus that you can read in many forums, where people that play with lw9 (often warez version or some old beta), and don't work with it, shame on its goodness.

Hmm...Users in the Open Beta program over at NT-forums can't be members if they have a cracked version, so you can rule that one out pretty fast. I agree that old betas can be the culprit, however, there seems to be a wealth of Open beta people who experience problems with the release-version of LW9.0. Your suggestion about registered RAM is a valid one, as well as people don't configure their LW-versions to look at specific places for the configfiles. Starting different versions of LW at the same time without disabling the hub can cause trouble as well.

[PixelInfected]

i told it be cause under emule there are many beta cracked, and lw9 final cracked, i told to chuck, but they cannot act against them, and many people talk with a right dongle put on their computer...

[funkyfoe]

what I miss the most is improvements to IK setup :sad: looks excactly the same
as it`s allways been, totally over complicated! you gotta be a rocket scientist
just to make a leg bend! What`s the big hassle with automating it so that we can
have the same simple two click IK setup as in Maya etc???

[Cageman]

what I miss the most is improvements to IK setup :sad: looks excactly the same
as it`s allways been, totally over complicated! you gotta be a rocket scientist
just to make a leg bend! What`s the big hassle with automating it so that we can
have the same simple two click IK setup as in Maya etc???

Hmm... setting up an IK-chain in LW isn't that hard as you make it sound like. As with all IK-chains, bending the bones in the preferd direction is something you should do, always. Maya is simple, yes, but LW lacks some other fundamental functions that should be prioritized alot more than this, imho.

[funkyfoe]

cageman: then we agree to disagree :) here`s my experience with IK setup:

bones has to be drawn a specific way in modeler (otherwise rotation axis will be
messed up), then u have to make a whole bunch of nulls, make the nulls targets
for specific bones (also there has to be some additional bones whose only function is
to keep other bones in the right direction), then u go into the whole motion options
for each bone deal wich (i think) is pretty complex :)

ok....It might be just me, but what can i say....i like it REALLY simple :)

like radiosity in lightwave.....radiosity, ON.... done! YAY

[DMack]

Seriously - take a look at the way Messiah:Animate does rigging and character animation and you'll never even think about doing it in LW again! It is a seriously good plugin for Lightwave. I do all my CA work in it now and render it all in LW. It's pretty inexpensive for what you get aswell.

[vonbon]

I’ve “played” with Maya and I’ll have to agree that the character setup process is quite nice. I think NT was going in that direction with skelegons, they just need to take it further. I see now why some say they should combine modeler and layout. I also feel the same about having to place nulls for IK stuff, although I’m still learning. Is there a plugin to convert points to nulls? I have access to Messiah but I don’t mess with it, I think it’s the interface, but I might if it works like Mayas. For the most part I don’t find it that bad to do in LW but it could be better. I would like to have faster bone deformations, that seems to get slow in any program. I don’t mind the setup I just want to be able to animate without the lag.

[Sbowling]

Hmm... setting up an IK-chain in LW isn't that hard as you make it sound like. As with all IK-chains, bending the bones in the preferd direction is something you should do, always. Maya is simple, yes, but LW lacks some other fundamental functions that should be prioritized alot more than this, imho.

LW Character animation tools are a show stopper. And, yes, setting up ik in lightwave is an overcomplicated royal pain in the ass. The entire lightwave CA system needs to be thrown out and rewritten from the ground up. In programs like XSI you drab your bone chain and you IK are automatically set up. It's that easy and it should be that easy in every program.

Another show stopper would be tool fragmentation as others have mentioned. There ware way too many tools that are almost the same, but not quite the same, so that you end up wasting time trying to find the tool that actually has the feature you want to use.

The current interface is also what I would consider a show stopper. Can 9 even view more than one camera at a time in layout yet?

Tools that don't work correctly (as others have mentioned) are also something I would consider a show stopper.

[Pancho]

The interface so far is one of the best I've seen. No shitty icons like in C4D. Just the new render global window is a bit wired. Should have been kept seperate, Radiosity with the light panel and so on. But probably I just need to get used to it a bit more.

Cheers
Pancho

[bobakabob]

The new Production Menu configuration could be highlighted in the review. It's speeded up workflow and made Lightwave's interface much more logical and intuitive.

[ThE_JacO]

1) i often work without hub, be cause i think is not a perfect way to exchange data between two application, i prefer a memory stack.
could you explain this further?
what you typed makes an amount of sense that lives between very little and neverneverland.
what do you mean you prefer a "memory stack"? sounds like the fancy new word of the week, but you should bear in mind stack and stash, FIFO LIFO etc. are very definite and precise things, so you might want to inject some sense into that random statement by explaining what you actually mean and not abusing technical language that's obviously a slippery slope.

3) ram registered is a quality ram that have a special check function on chip of ram, that verify the data during read and write function, that avoid many problems, that kind of ram cost a bit more, but avoid a lots of problems.

As usual you're stating as production proven facts things you have a very remote grasp of Macchio :)

what you're talking about is ECC ram, error checking and control, which is ram that (actually sacrificing some speed by introducing considerable latency) will perform an integrity check on data, and compare addressing tables, before pulling or pushing.

registered ram is a different thing, that often goes in pairs with ECC but doesn't necessarily need to, and isn't necessarily always gonna make things more stable.
Registered RAM modules have an additional interception buffer on control lines, a clock sync chip, and perform control on addressing lines.

when you have too many signals going through the bus the memory can go into what's called fanning out/fanout, which is basically spreading power to push signal too thin.
the more modules you have on board, and the smaller the delta between their minimal push voltage and the actual voltage, and the more the signals get polluted, and signal routing to cells becomes unreliable.
registered ram adds a buffering procedure that is basically meant to catch these dispersed signals before the quality deteriorates, and then reroutes them back as if boosted.

Without such buffering, on a very ample fanout, the signals reaching the cells tend to fall below the recognition threshold, and you start getting scrambled memory addressing and phenomena that range from an app crashing to a flat out BSOD.

that's why many mobos are fine with normal ram up to two modules, but REQUIRE registered ram to use 4 or more, because without such interception buffers they would become unstable.
You might find out infact that A LOT of people use registered ram already without even knowing it.

why do you think overvolting ram keeps it more stable? (classic overcompensation operation done in overclocking) because it boosts the signal and contributes to reducing theshold breaking fanning on the lines.

so, if joeblow has a single 2GB module rammed into his mobo (assuming the bus is ok operating without interleaving pages), registered will do absolutely bugger all to improve the situation, while if you have 4 cheap 256MB modules over four slots, you are more likely to have problems.

registring operations normally happen in situations were the addressing load is bottlenecking things enough to allow leeway for the operations without losing performance, so it's hardly ever gonna affect data transfer performance. ECC processes however, which is what you are referring to going by your sketchy explanation, introduce further latency every N cycles, holding signal and degrading performance to the point that most ECC modules HAVE TO be also registered to be able to push all the way to the cells without dropping signal.

as for how necessary it is...
sorry, nowadays not many workstations use ECC ram anymore, although servers and long lived systems, or large controller boards, still do.
It shouldn't be a requirement to run anything in year 2006, and infact I seriously doubt you'd see your LW stability improved that much by switching to ECC.

The difference really is between cheap ram and good ram, and how good the mobo and the PSU running it are.
The whole point becomes moot though when you use this argument to shift guilt for something on users. If somebody finds App X, Y and Z stable, and only app W unstable, it's very, VERY unlikely that it's a problem with ram.
Stop freaken blaming consumers, wake up and smell the coffee (and read up a bit more about the subjects you post about with such confidence)/

As for MRay and PRMan needing it... **** me drunk if I know where you pulled that out from.

as to your other points...
it's a LW thread in a LW forum, so I don't see the need to bring in the Nth tedious discussion about maya, xsi, how they are and how they were.
My only point is that you obviously don't know that much about those either, as you clearly knew bugger all about the subject of stabilizing signals between chipset/bus/memory, so please spare us the comparative shoulderpatting comments and stick to talking about LW :)

[PixelInfected]

when i talk about memory stack i talk about a memory area where two software can exchange data without needings of additional software like hub, actually layout and modeler are two separate application, that call hub to exchange data, use tcpip protocol, and move data from modeler to layout and back.
i think is better to use a different method like to use some pointer ( i talk like dev languages) to an area of memory where modeler write data, and layout can read it.
Hub could be a nice idea if you want to exchange data with other application, but actually i remember only a plugin for aura, mirage that help you to exchange data with modeler, and no more.
bad thing is that hub is seen like a bad thing from all firewall and many other software, hub try to update info from and between modeler / layout also when you not need, and sometimes in the bad direction.

i have both icon, with and without hub, when i need i use hub version of lw, when i not need or i work with complex scenes, i not use hub.

from actual voice of newtek, lw is going to be a single or double application system, be cause they told that in future we can do all in layout, or use both application.
i would like to have a single ambient where i can switch from modeling to animation, without start two (three application).

anyway i use lw from 3.5 on amiga, and i know enought workaround to do all that i need to do, also about situation where an integrate ambient simplify the work.

[Triple G]

could you explain this further?
what you typed makes an amount of sense that lives between very little and neverneverland.
what do you mean you prefer a "memory stack"? sounds like the fancy new word of the week, but you should bear in mind stack and stash, FIFO LIFO etc. are very definite and precise things, so you might want to inject some sense into that random statement by explaining what you actually mean and not abusing technical language that's obviously a slippery slope...

Wow man...I don't know if you intended this or not, but that whole post came across as being VERY condescending. You have some good points and obviously know what you're talking about, but I think you could certainly stand to be a little less venomous about it. :hmm:

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