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I do believe that some days the Marketing Forces Of America decide to target me personally, as they did about three months ago when I first saw the Cubelets video online. Cubelets are like the physical manifestation of Actors: cubes that each do their own action and pass messages between each other using dataflow buffers to create robots! So, I quickly ordered a set, because that's what you do when personally targeted by MFOA -- you don't want to make them angry. They arrived today. And, oh yes, they're neat. I had a couple false starts, but quickly built up the basic "come to my hand" robot. Shortly thereafter I had a robot running around, capable of turning to dodge my hands and flashing light patterns. But I quickly ran into the LEGO problem. You know the problem: You *never* have enough LEGOs. In this case, within a half hour of playing, I found myself wanting two inverter blocks, and I was "hacking" using a flashlight block as a data blocker block. And fifteen minutes after that, I had exhausted the permutations available with my limited set. Why must the coolest toys be so expensive?! Check out the price list! http://www.modroboti...vidual-cubelets And then, I realized the answer to that question: it's hardware. Physical matter costs. And I looked at my cubelets, and I looked across at my laptop, which had on screen the cube control of one of my actor classes. Looking from one cube to the other, I realized just how lucky I am that nature made me a software engineer instead of a mechanical engineer. And then, my next thought... "Hm... perhaps we should start charging $25 per cube? If people are willing to pay so much for hardware cubes... and, hey, the software cubes are *reprogrammable*!" But then my cat started chasing my cubelet robot, and I realized this is the one area that the software just cannot compete, and I guess that justifies the hardware price: no software actor is going to have my cat pouncing quite so adorably. So I guess it's better to keep the software cubes priced like an all-you-can-eat buffet: buy LabVIEW and get all the cubes you want. And I'll just dream about the day when we *finally* get reprogrammable matter. And then we'll see software *can* keep cats on their toes! (Side note: When one of the hardware cubes receives two messages simultaneously, it averages the messages. I wonder if there's any way a feature like that would be useful in a software actor framework? Add it to the brainstorm list...)

ShaunR and I agree on very few things, but when we do, it is adamant agreement. Whatever your data communications problem you're having, if XML is your solution, you actually have two problems.

Not a fan. Just a really easy way to link labview to browsers. I think another thread would be very short i.e. Prefer anything over xml .

That sounds familiar. Found on the Internet...

Why not do it the straight forward way, with a HTTP Get. HTTP_Get.vi //Mike

Oh man, my creative juices are spent after writing (and memorizing) those limericks last year. Please...don't make me do it again! (insert preemptive TWSS here)