[Mike Betts]

Originally Posted by Gary Dillard

..If FIRST is making decisions based on rumors (especially obvious tomfoolery) or uninformed speculation and unsubstantiated claims they should be hanging their head in shame, not me...

Gary,

It is not the perceptions of the tech savvy CDers and not the perceptions of FIRST but the perceptions of the public which matters.

This is why some people, like myself, get upset when people make jokes or innuendo about cheating, hacking, et cetera.

There are scores of spiders crawling over this site almost all the time and many end up viewing these fori via Google searches, et cetera.

Bottom line: Thousands of interested people view these fori during the season including parents, grandparents, school administrators, corporate executives, et cetera.

How many corporate sponsors have backed out of supporting a team because his or her secretary reported on one of these remarks during an investigation on the integrity of the FIRST competition? How many parents have prevented their children from participating? We may never know...

Don't throw stones unless you are sure your windows are unbreakable... I am quite positive that ours are fragile indeed!