People who think that corporations control politicians because of the direction the money flows must also think that cows control farmers because of the direction the milk flows.

David:

Ever work on a dairy farm?

David - ironically as OJ notes your example reenforces OJ's argument.

Gotta wonder how Dem Senators from CA (Boxer, Feinstein) and Cantwell from WA (who made her fortune - before losing it - in high tech) can defend going against high tech.

AWW;

They will just say "Republicans bad. Make much evil. Bush drink blood of homeless babies" and the tech industry will forgive them. I work in the industry and I've had this discussion.

look at the reaming billg received at the hands of the clinton justice department (he actually broke down in tears at one point) and he is still a democratic supporter.

Most engineers (mechanical, electrical, chemical, power, mining, nuclear, aerospace, and so on) are Republican, either by habit or by passion.

Many computer folks seem a bit more agnostic (esoteric?) and probably quite a lot of them don't vote. The famous ones (the rich ones) are probably almost exclusively Democrats, because they have been wined and dined and sought after by the (social) alphas who rejected them back in high school, but now envy them. And people like Warren Buffet fit that category as well.

maybe the difference is that most engineers work in the world of the 'concrete' while s/w is a purely abstract realm. also, s/w isn't really mature enough to qualify as true engineering yet.

cjm;

The abstractness is part of it, but not the whole thing. IMHO it comes down to the fact that most programmers are "magic" programmers who have in fact little understanding of the concepts and technologies with which they work. As I've noted before, I am respected and despised for being the go-to, solution generating guy when 90% of time my solutions are just re-hashes of previous work. So working in the field conditions practioners to believe they can make designs work even if they have no idea what they're doing, kind of like social scientists but (unfortunately) ones with analogous experience. As OJ documents frequently for the social scientists, they think they're discovering new and fascinating things when they're really just re-discovering variants of long known principles.

The other thing is that in software, you can always throw in another kludge to deal with the problem of the day. For more physical engineering, there are much more stringent limits on things. For example, if you're building a bridge you can't just always slap on another brace or suspension cable. Imagine what bridges would look like if you could. That's the state of most software. When it gets bad enough we call it "bit rot". At that point, the standard solution is to throw it away and start over. So the natural response of most programmers when faced with system failure isn't to step back and consider basic principles (e.g., conservatism) but to slap yet more software on it or dump the whole thing and start over (modern liberalism).

Bottom line, Boxer, Feinstein and Cantwell can just issue a "patch" and everything will be fine.

OJ: No, but I am a carnivore.

In any event, it has now been scientifically proven that my high genetic intelligence is due to the fact that neither I nor any of my ancestors has ever farmed.

Yes, had you ever worked a farm you'd know the cows run it.