Negative values in v$ views

When I select from the v$ views sometines I get negative values back.

Does this mean that the values are stored as signed values in the views and the value is now too large to be represented as a positive number?

Is selecting from the views using abs(col) going to give meaningful results?

Thanks.

-- 
 _--_|\  John Verhoeven           Unix / Database Administrator Westrail
/      \              johnv_at_DIALix.oz.au / jverhoeven_at_westrail.wa.gov.au
*_.--._/
      v   "Smile! things could be worse... So I did... and they were..."