Control.com - Nerds in Control

Control.com™ is a global community of people working in the control field. This is a place to discuss your interests, find solutions, keep up to date, and help others facing problems similar to ones you've already solved. Control.com works because you contribute to it -- in the form of ideas, opinions and experiences.

Enjoy! -- Ken Crater

Control.com is a project of Nerds in Control, LLC, and can be reached as follows:

Nerds in Control, LLC
116 Brigham Hill Rd.
North Grafton, MA 01536
USA

For website comments, questions (questions ABOUT the site, not questions FOR the site) and problems, or for information about advertising on Control.com, please use our Contact Us page.

Control.com grows out of the Automation List®, started by Ken Crater in 1994 with a small group of people who wanted to talk about automation control. The idea of the A-List® was to have a neutral ground, dominated by working engineers rather than suppliers, where candid observations could be exchanged in a commercial-free environment. It was set up as a moderated list, not to control the flow of ideas, but rather to make the list more useful by eliminating sales pitches and off-topic posts. Over the course of many years, the list grew as Ken gave numerous Internet for Engineers tutorials at conferences and trade shows, introducing this then-new communications mechanism to our profession and industry.

What evolved from this early start is a true community, a place where peer discussions revolve around common (and uncommon) problems, where people help each other, where the important issues facing automation engineers can be discussed and debated. Friendships have also developed on the list, as frequent contributors get to know one another and subsequently meet at trade shows and other industry venues. This peer contact, so difficult to obtain in an era of understaffing and tight budgets, is now more important than ever in a rapidly changing industry.

Today, the Automation List has grown to hundreds of subscribers from scores of countries worldwide. The average workday sees over 30 messages contributed to the list, with a high degree of interaction taking place on many threads. Control.com and the Automation List offer many possibilities for interaction, learning, and professional advancement.

The immense success of this forum is indicative of the need for peer interaction in the automation engineering community today. It is equally clear, however, that as Control.com continues to grow in popularity, more flexibility will be needed in managing the growing number of messages. In addition to hosting a variety of peer forums, we intend to provide additional services and opportunities for interchange among the controls community. Control.com will continue to develop and support a true sense of community among automation engineers throughout the world.

Control.com is owned by Nerds in Control, LLC (NiCLLC). The goods and services offered on this site are provided to you subject to the following notices, terms, and conditions and your right to use the services is expressly conditioned upon your agreement to these terms and conditions. In addition, when you use any NiCLLC service or purchase anything through this site, you also will be subject to the additional rules, guidelines, policies, terms and conditions applicable to that service or purchase.

COMMENTS, QUESTIONS, AND CONTENT
Control.com enables visitors to its site to post or transmit comments, questions and other content on the site and provides a forum for the discussion of automation topics. NiCLLC moderates the comments and other content that are posted or facilitated by the site solely to ensure that the site is not used for commercial exploitation. NiCLLC undertakes no responsibility to otherwise screen the comments and other content and does not endorse the comments and other content in any way. If you rely upon any advice provided by persons participating in the discussion groups or posting information on this site, you do so at your own risk.

If you post or transmit comments, questions or other content on the site or if you participate in discussion groups on the site, you grant NiCLLC and its affiliates a non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable right to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, and display such comments, questions and other content throughout the world in any media. You also grant NiCLLC and its affiliates and sublicensees the right to use the name that you submit with any comment, question or other content, if any, in connection with such comment, question or other content.

THIRD-PARTY LINKS
Control.com may contain links to other web sites operated by third parties. Despite the presence of a link or any reference to Control.com on a linked site, NiCLLC does not endorse, is not affiliated with and is not responsible for any content that appears on the linked site and the owner of the linked site neither endorses nor is affiliated with NiCLLC or Control.com.

COPYRIGHT
All content included on this site, such as text, graphics, logos, button icons, images, audio clips, and software, is the property of NiCLLC or its content suppliers and is protected by U.S. and international copyright laws. The compilation (meaning the collection, arrangement, and assembly) of all content on this site is the exclusive property of NiCLLC and is protected by U.S. and international copyright laws. All software used on this site is the property of NiCLLC or its software suppliers and is protected by U.S. and international copyright laws.

TRADEMARKS
The graphics, logos, service names and trademarks used on the site (the "Trademarks") are the property of NiCLLC, its content suppliers and the suppliers of third party goods and services offered on the site. The Trademarks may not be used in connection with any product or service that is not the Trademark owner's, in any manner that is likely to cause confusion among customers, or in any manner that disparages or discredits the trademark owner.

USE OF SITE This site, its content or any portion of this site or its content may not be reproduced, retransmitted, duplicated, copied, distributed, disseminated, sold, resold, or otherwise exploited for any commercial purpose that is not expressly permitted by NiCLLC. NiCLLC and its affiliates and suppliers reserve the right to refuse service, and/or cancel orders in their discretion, including, without limitation, if NiCLLC believes that a user's conduct violates applicable law or is harmful to the interests of NiCLLC, its affiliates, suppliers or users.

No person may post on, transmit through or otherwise make available on Control.com (i) any material that violates or infringes the rights of others, that is unlawful, defamatory, obscene, abusive, profane, vulgar, sexually explicit, racist, threatening, hateful or otherwise objectionable or that encourages conduct that would constitute a criminal offense, give rise to civil liability or otherwise violate any law, (ii) any copyrighted material, without the express written consent of the owner thereof, (iii) any advertising or other solicitation with respect to products or services without the express prior written consent of NiCLLC, or (iv) any information or software that contains a virus, worm, or other harmful or disruptive component. NiCLLC is under no obligation to permit any material that you post or transmit to remain on the site, and NiCLLC, in its sole discretion, may refuse to display or may remove any material posted on or transmitted to or through Control.com.

COPYRIGHT COMPLAINTS
NiCLLC and its affiliates respect the intellectual property rights of others. If you believe that your work has been copied by Control.com or is posted on Control.com in a way that constitutes copyright infringement, please contact us at the address below, or use our Contact Us page.

DISCLAIMER
THIS SITE IS PROVIDED BY NiCLLC ON AN "AS IS" BASIS. NiCLLC MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, AS TO THE OPERATION OF THE SITE OR THE INFORMATION, CONTENT, MATERIALS, OR PRODUCTS INCLUDED ON THIS SITE, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION, AS TO THE ACCURACY OR COMPLETENESS OF INFORMATION ON THE SITE. TO THE FULL EXTENT PERMISSIBLE BY APPLICABLE LAW, NiCLLC DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. NiCLLC WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES OF ANY KIND ARISING FROM THE USE OF THIS SITE, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, PUNITIVE, AND CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES.

APPLICABLE LAW
This site is created and controlled by NiCLLC in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, USA. As such, the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts will govern these disclaimers, terms, and conditions, without giving effect to any principles of conflicts of laws. We reserve the right to make changes to our site and these disclaimers, terms, and conditions at any time.

OUR ADDRESS
Control.com
Nerds in Control, LLC
116 Brigham Hill Rd.
North Grafton, MA 01536
USA

NiCLLC owns and operates a number of websites designed for industrial and automation control professionals. These include:

Control.com (http://control.com), an online community for automation and control engineers featuring active discussion forums, industry-related links and information resources.

This statement describes NiCLLC's privacy practices with respect to those websites and covers the following topics:

• What information is collected or available through the Control.com site(s);
• How NiCLLC uses non-public information;
• With whom non-public information will be shared;
• Options regarding limiting use of non-public information; and
• Security measures.

NiCLLC's websites contain links to other websites. Some are owned and managed by NiCLLC; others are owned and managed by unrelated third parties. NiCLLC is not responsible for the privacy policies and practices of any website owned and managed by an unrelated third party. As a result, NiCLLC urges users to read the privacy policy on any site to which the user links.

Questions or comments about NiCLLC's Privacy Policy or experiences with NiCLLC's websites should be directed to:

Control.com
Nerds in Control, LLC
116 Brigham Hill Rd.
North Grafton, MA 01536

COOKIES
Control.com employs "cookies" to provide visitors and members with tailored information. A "cookie" is a message given to a web browser by a web server. It is stored on the user's computer in a text file. Each time that browser requests a page from that server the message is sent back from the browser to the server. Control.com uses cookies to identify users and prepare customized content for users. Users may block or delete Control.com cookies from their hard drives at their option and sole expense. Disabling Control.com cookies, however, may cause certain site features and functionality to no longer work properly or at all. To read more about how browsers use cookies, visit the websites of three commonly used browsers:

Netscape: http://browser.netscape.com/ns8/security/basics_cookies.jsp
MS Internet Explorer: http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/sec_cook.mspx?mfr=true
Mozilla: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/pki/psm/help_20/using_priv_help.html

POSTINGS
Users of NiCLLC's websites can post messages or reply to messages posted on Control.com discussion forums. Although NiCLLC does not collect personal information from such postings, a cookie is sent to the user's browser so that, upon returning to the site, if the user desires to post a message, the user's name and e-mail address will be automatically completed in the posting form. Further, the text of messages posted by users on the Control.com websites may be viewed by other visitors to the Control.com websites and certain linked sites. Any personal information disclosed in such postings or attachments, therefore, will be available to the public.

MEMBERSHIP ON CONTROL.COM
In order to become a member of certain Control.com websites, the user must supply certain data upon registration: for example, the user's name and a valid e-mail address. At the time of registration, however, the user also may submit an optional "public e-mail address" which is not required to be valid, for example "dan-donteventhink@of-spamming-me.control.com". In addition, NiCLLC may request additional information from members for special purposes, for example to fulfill a user's request for mailed materials.

Members also may be given the ability to personalize their experience of Control.com websites by, for example, requesting that content be filtered based on the member's personal interests and preferences.

Members may be given the option to display certain information publicly. Such display is at the member's discretion and may be changed from time to time by the member.

In some cases, members may have the opportunity to use a NiCLLC service to send electronic mail to another user or e-mail list. In such cases, a member's valid e-mail address and real name will be included with such messages. In order to prevent abuse, users may not opt-out of such a display, but may choose to refrain from using Control.com to transmit the e-mail message.

SURVEYS AND RESULTING DATA
NiCLLC may from time to time conduct surveys or other site usage studies for marketing and business planning purposes. Participation in such surveys is at the user's option and is never mandatory.

NiCLLC will disclose only aggregate information obtained through surveys and studies and not personal information identifying any specific individual. Notwithstanding the foregoing, in cases where surveys or studies allow users to submit written comments and where NiCLLC advises users of the possibility of such disclosure at the time they take the survey or participate in the study or obtains permission later, NiCLLC reserves the right to disclose text information provided by any user, provided that identifying information regarding that user is not disclosed.

In addition, upon registration for Control.com membership, users are asked whether they are interested in participating in vendor surveys. If a member indicates an interest in participating in such surveys, his or her contact information is added to a secure database and stored for future use in connection with such surveys. Members can accept or decline survey participation at any time by changing this item on their Member Preferences page or by declining to participate in any given survey.

USE AND DISCLOSURE OF PERSONAL INFORMATION
NiCLLC uses personal information as a basis for notifications to users regarding site-sponsored events, such as panel discussions, and for internal and vendor surveys and usage studies and to respond to user requests and inquiries. NiCLLC only makes member names and e-mail addresses publicly available if the member elects to have them published in the member directory. NiCLLC will not disclose a user's non-public personal information to a third party unless (i) such disclosure is required by law, (ii) a user specifically authorizes such disclosure or (iii) in special cases where NiCLLC has reason to believe that such disclosure is necessary to identify, contact or bring legal action against someone who may be violating the Terms of Service or causing injury to, or interference with, (intentionally or unintentionally) NiCLLC, Control.com and/or its visitors, users and suppliers.

USE OF DATA
Members have the option to choose whether or not to receive site notifications, newsletters or other information via e-mail and whether or not to participate in surveys. Members may remove themselves from such e-mail lists at their discretion by changing their Member Preference page.

SECURITY
To secure site integrity, prevent unauthorized access, maintain data accuracy, and ensure the appropriate use of information, NiCLLC has put in place appropriate physical, electronic and managerial procedures reasonably designed to safeguard and secure the non-public information that NiCLLC collects online. Internal access to users' non-public personal information is restricted to site administrators and to other NiCLLC staff on a need-to-know basis.

In the event that NiCLLC becomes aware that site security has been compromised or that user's non-public information has been disclosed to unrelated third parties as a result of external activity, including, but not limited to, external security attacks, NiCLLC shall take such reasonable measures as it deems appropriate, which may include internal investigation and reporting and notification to and cooperation with law enforcement authorities.

If NiCLLC becomes aware that personal information provided to NiCLLC by a user has been disclosed in a manner not permitted by this Privacy Policy, NiCLLC shall make reasonable efforts to notify the affected user as soon as reasonably possible and as permitted by law, of what information has been disclosed, to the extent that NiCLLC knows this information.