really not a warning, but perhaps an addition to the lore around SS(tm).

I was taking a coffee break today and had the good fortune to be sitting at
the table next to a couple of disk drive engineers.  they were talking
about how they could not get "good substrate" for their next generation of
disks.

bottom line: these guys say float-glass is "wavy as hell."  along one axis,
it's very flat.  along the perpendicular axis, "big" ripples.  'course
they're talking angstroms.  tens of angstrons actually.  (this was
enlightening because I thought disk substrate was aluminum, and because I
thought float-glass was flat.)  they went on to explain there are many
grades of machined flat glass, including "superpolished" which is flat to 4
angrstroms.

personally I've been using glass from a high-end Xerox machine platten.
they tell me this is float in cheap machines, ground optically flat in the
more expensive ones.

just thought you should know ;-)

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