Remove PIC

[Andrew Whitworth]

the PIC system is deprecated and could have been removed any time
after 1.1. However, the remove_pic branch hasn't been merged yet and I
don't know what the status of it is. Some questions:

1) What is the status of the remove_pic branch?

2) Would it be beneficial to scrap that branch and create a new more
current branch for the purpose?

3) Is there any hope that we could get this system ripped out by 1.5?

4) Is there anything somebody like me could do to push this project along?

Thanks,

--Andrew Whitworth