On 9/14/06, James Newton, Host wrote: > Considering that the PICList is a (benevolent?) dictatorship (actually > several admins with equal powers) living on borrowed/donated real-estate, > with no treasury or taxes, and no punishment other than temporary > banishment, I don't think engineers are stellar candidates for government. And yet many people choose to hang out here, so they must like the particular mix of governance on this list. Just like normal projects with no external influence, engineers would produce a government that only an engineer could love in the best case, and one that only the designer would love in the worst case. (Well, I have seen some designers create something they hate, that they have to use, that they have the power and resources to change, and they choose not to change it. But IMHO they are hardly engineers... :-) Still, the nice thing about being an engineer is that most discussions are based on facts that can be verified by experimentation. Many governance issues cannot be so easily tested, and engineers would have just as bad a time at it as regular politicians. But a good PID algorithm here and there would certainly be an improvement in some areas of government control... -Adam -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist