RussellMc wrote: >> I am becoming more convinced that having good PIC and EE >> is mutually exclusive with the existance of OT. > > Can you provide any supporting logic to this claim? Of course it's impossible to replay the last dozen years and see what would have happened without OT. We'll never know. This is just speculation, or call it a theory if you like. Unfortunately it is not a easily testable theory, but I don't know how to fix that. I think a fact we can all agree on is that the volume of discussions about PIC issues and the electronics connected to them has seriously declined ove= r the last dozen years or so. That is also about how long OT has been in existance. This decline was slight in the first few years, but has been significant since then. One could therefore argue that it started a few years after OT. It's hard to pin down. There are various possible causes of the decline. Three important contributors that I can think of have been the rise of the Microchip forums= , overmanagement of the list by James, and OT. I think another cause is that the PIClist is relatively unknown to PIC users. In the early days it was all there was, so everyone eventually heard about it and probably joined, a= t least to check it out. Now with the Microchip forums, new people see that and have no reason to think to look for anything else. So the normal turnover of people entering and exiting the field caused those exiting to leave the PIClist but fewer of the new entrants to join it. The Microchip forums on the whole also do a decent job, and you occasionaly can communicate directly with Microchip people that either don't come here or don't admit they are from Microchip when they do. That's not to say the Microchip forums don't have problems. The biggest on= e is the moron factor. The sense of being in a elite group has long since vanished. Of course you still have to know what you're doing, probably eve= n more so than ever as the field expands, but the mystique is gone and ever more morons think it's their birthright to design microcontroller systems and everyone else's obligation to help them and fault when they don't get it. These people of course all decend on the Microchip forums, burying rea= l signals in chorusus of "huh?", "how do you spell PIC?", "but it's due tomorrow", and "I don't have time to read the manual". What the PIClist can provide is a higher level of discussion brought about by good technical vigilance and better moron repellant. Unfortunately getting the word out among the non-morons, let along getting them to come here, is difficult. So where does that leave OT? I think it is a immediate turn off to new people, should they somehow stumble accross this list. There are occasionally some interesting discussions on OT, but you don't appreciate that until you've been here a while. At first it just looks like a pile of drivel, which of course it largely is. Think what it looks like to you if you were a new subscriber. You are looking for something with better signa= l to noise than the Microchip forums and some real learned discussions about PICs and their surrounding circuitry. Instead, the first thing you see are people talking about drugs, oil heat, and "Winblows". And don't think OT doesn't detract from real discussions. I know I've spen= t time occasionally writing a long response to some OT post, and then felt I had no time left when a real question came along. Sometimes I may write a cursory answer, sometimes just skip it altogether. How many people can honestly say this hasn't happened to them too? I think this happens more than most people realize. For example, I saw this post I'm replying to a few hours ago, and left it there to reply to later when I could spend a few more minutes on it. In th= e mean time I saw a legitimate post about air pressure sensors. One of my current projects is a closed loop pressure controller that includes a analo= g air pressure sensor. The customer designed that piece so I'd have to do a little digging to find what they are using. If there had been nothing else on the list competing for my time I probably would have done that. But, I knew writing this response would take a little time so I hit delete on the air pressure question. Oh well. These kind of little things add up to real damage, but are impossible to measure because there is no way to know what could have been. Much of it may not be concious, or people may not want to admit what they are aware of= .. Yes I know people can shut off OT, but that argument ignores human nature. Because it is there and occasionally there are some good discussions on it, human nature will cause many people to enable OT because they don't want to miss out, and then be annoyed at the drivel anyway. Perhaps this wouldn't be so bad if if only drivel were allowed on OT. Unfortunately all too ofte= n someone gets lazy and misposts something to OT. Don't underestimate the damage this causes. That's probably just as bad in the long run as dumping drivel on PIC, EE, or TECH. I have pointed this out before but it has been largely ignored. Bob fiercely defends EE and PIC, but the equally damaging good stuff on OT gets ignored. For example, Justin asked about how hydro turbines are controlled in OT whe= n it clearly should have been TECH. You could sortof even make a case for it being EE, but I wouldn't blame Bob for objecting to that. It's not really electrical engineering but the related field of electric power engineering. It's close enough to embedded control systems people would have a legitimat= e interest in here that putting it in OT is damaging, but where were the objections? The instant hot water thread was also technical, at least for = a while. It's a bit more gray, but I think should have started out in TECH. The drug stuff was defintely off topic, and the list would have been no worse off (better I think actually) without it. It was a reasonably asked and legitimate question, just not for here. Surely there are appropriate places to talk about that stuff. Now I have to get out of here, whatever remaining posts have come in are likely to get deleted very quickly now, whether legitimate on topic or not. ******************************************************************** Embed Inc, Littleton Massachusetts, http://www.embedinc.com/products (978) 742-9014. Gold level PIC consultants since 2000. --=20 http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .