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That was addressed in an AC post:
http://www.todaysengineer.org/...

Check out http://www.todaysengineer.org/...

This article is one of the few that I've found that contains statistics about retention in various tech fields of both men and women. The differences in retention rates do vary but not by as much as is commonly portrayed in the media. In fact, based on what I'd previously read, they are surprisingly similar. Men and women may have somewhat different reasons for leaving the field, but that doesn't change the fact that roughly 40% of both sexes ultimately leave engineering.

Well, well. here we have a post that addresses the original article in a relevant way with data.
How did that slip through?

The BSSE is what you want. There are 22 schools in the USA that offer the degree at this time.

Are they certified? Last I checked most CS majors and other code monkeys don't take the PE exam.

This again? The guy driving the train I take to work -- he's an engineer, and he hasn't taken the P.E. exam either. The guys in the Army who build bridges or blow them up? They're engineers, with no P.E. exam. Stuck-up PEs may have managed to monopolize the word "engineer" in Canada (except the guy driving the train or running a boiler is still an engineer, much to the PEs dismay), but despite the Wikipedia article, the same is not true in the US.

The weasel-wording of "many states" requiring a license for a "software engineer" is sort of interesting. As far as I can tell, the only state issuing a software engineering license is Texas. One state does not "many" make. The source appears to be one of those Professional Engineers so offended by the "software engineer" title. The paper is sort of interesting; it admits that much of the software engineering I have done (embedded programming, programming for medical devices) is in fact engineering, but asserts that it was illegal for me to do it.

The requirements listed for becoming a software engineer in Texas are ridiculously difficult
1: Accepted degree (which does include a CS degree)
2: 16 years of "creditable experience" performing engineering work (12 years if you hold an engineering degree, which does not include a CS degree). Note that "creditable experience" usually means you need another engineer to vouch that you did it under their supervision.
3: References from 9 people including 5 engineers.
4: Other stuff not specified.

Note that due to the "industrial exemption" you deride, this doesn't affect employees at all. What it does do, if strictly enforced, is put most independent software consultants out of business.

The PEs and IEEE seem to think they can get software engineering licensure passed everywhere; I hope the IEEE doesn't mind losing most of its software engineer members. The ACM, to its credit, opposes it.

IEEE article
Texas article

A significant portion of the space concentration aerospace engineers that I graduated with from Cal Poly specifically avoided the defense megacorps when hunting for jobs (Lockheed, Boeing, Northrup) precisely because they did not want to work for an organization that had that kind of access into their personal lives.

It's kind of a bummer, but engineers (speaking broadly, including e.g. C.S. but especially aerospace) can't do much R&D without making that particular deal with the devil. The vast majority of research funding is related to either medicine or defense, and medicine doesn't have a great need for research-level engineers. That leaves defense. Obviously I'm speaking in generalities, but I'll stand by them. Sure, you can go out and start a business in whatever domain you like, but if people don't spend money there, it will be short-lived.

Now you know. And the Art of which you speak isn't about looking pretty, it's about being able to see the cleverly simple way to cleanly solve the problem at hand. It's an Art which isn't restricted to software, and it's most certainly not solved by architects. I'd equate the building architect to part of the requirements gathering process...then it's up to the civil engineer to find a way to meet the requirements (i.e., construct the damn thing such that it won't fall down).

Apple's R&D expenditures are low compared to other high tech companies, both in absolute and relative terms (e.g., 3.7% of sales for Apple, vs 14.9% for Microsoft):

http://www.todaysengineer.org/2007/Jun/rand.asp

Apple essentially doesn't do any research at all. Much of their software is based on open source projects, and they rarely come up with their own technologies. Instead, they do some good engineering putting together other people's technologies. For example, almost all the iPhone and Leopard technologies were developed elsewhere (e.g., multitouch, spaces, quick look, time machine, animated interfaces, iChat background replacement, Finder sidebars, Cover Flow were all developed elsewhere).

During the past several years, applicants have been denied security clearances for a number of reasons, including:

        * Excessive debts without the ability to pay them off
        * Criminal conduct
        * Current use of illegal drugs
        * Past drug offenses without rehabilitation
        * Falsifying application (e.g., omitting arrest history)
        * Alcohol dependency and/or offenses such as DUI
        * Aberrant sexual behavior or infidelity that could be used for blackmail
        * Foreign influence, such as family members in a hostile country
        * Maintaining dual citizenship or a foreign passport.

http://www.todaysengineer.org/2004/May/clearance.a sp

"2004 saw 220,000 fewer employed U.S. electrical engineers than in 2000, despite falling unemployment, according to BLS data." http://www.todaysengineer.org/2005/Sep/pulse.asp

Notible things are that the US Department of Labor statistics which are stating that there are more engineering jobs are really not tracking that. They are tracking that a person who has an engineering degree and worked as such until he/she was laid-off simply has a "job" (any job, flipping burgers, parking cars, clearing tables, etc.), so the data there can only simply state that these engineers have found a way to gain some form of income, nothing other then that.

The only area where I can say that a US engineering job is secure is in the defense sector where the engineers are required to be a US citizen to obtain a security clearance. If you are working anywhere else, well, you are replacible by a H1B or off-shoring of the department.

Now speaking about the department of labor:

"Employment of materials engineers is expected to grow more slowly than the average for all occupations through 2012." http://stats.bls.gov/oco/ocos034.htm

"Employment of aerospace engineers is expected to decline over the projection period." http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos028.htm

"Employment of civil engineers is expected to increase more slowly than the average for all occupations through 2012." http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos030.htm

"Employment of electrical and electronics engineers is expected to grow more slowly than the average for all occupations through 2012." http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos031.htm

" As with other information technology jobs, employment growth of computer software engineers may be tempered somewhat by an increase in contracting out of software development abroad." http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos267.htm

"Computer hardware engineers may face competition for jobs because the number of degrees granted in this field has increased rapidly and because employment is expected grow more slowly than average." http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos266.htm

"Overall engineering employment is expected to grow more slowly than the average for all occupations over the 2002-12 period. Engineers tend to be concentrated in slow-growing manufacturing industries, a factor which tends to hold down their employment growth. Also, many employers are increasing their use of engineering services performed in other countries." http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos027.htm

Now, why don't we start this conversation again. The jobs for US engineers are simply not there. The companies that can off-shore, have been doing so, claiming that there are not enough US engineers. The IEEE charts show that there are about 120,000 EE's over the last 4 years out there who are not employed as EE's anymore. Yes, a portion of that may have died, gone to management, etc., but I would suggest that there is probably 50% of that number who would still work as an EE if the job opertunity was there... This is the reason why their salaries have not increased as "demand" increases, because the demand is false.

Here's a brief definition of trademark:

A trademark is anything that identifies the source (origin) of a product or service or that signifies sponsorship or approval of the goods. Trademarks include names, words, logos and product packaging, as well as distinctive non-functional visual aspects of the software, such as icons or user interface designs.

Do you still argue that no trademark is being infringed here?

Scientists use this manner because of the following well known philosophical problem: [...] When you say you are proving a physical theory you are like person B. The untested domain is too large to assert that you have ever proven anything. This is the sad fact of physical science.

Bayesian reasoning deals with this problem. Pick up any textbook on modern Bayesian statistics and Bayesian reasoning.

Einsten's GR is the most elegant theory in physics. You don't seem to be able to distinguish between math and physics.

Actually, that's what I would claim is your problem: you think the differential geometry formulas are the physical theory. They aren't. GR is a huge (implicit) set of postulates about the structure of space, postulates that closely mirror the axiomatic systems underlying differential geometry (not by accident, one might add). All the mathematical machinery of differential geometry, which then makes up GR, is just mathematics, with no physical content.

Yes, GR is hard to do, but that is because differential geomoetry is hard.

I don't find differential geometry hard; sorry if you do.

If you want to argue about how complicated GR is then you are making an argument against mathematics (I am a mathematician btw). And if you want to say that math is hard, then I will only respond with a hell-fucking yes math is hard.

I'm not arguing about it being "complicated" in the "hard to understand sense"; it's not hard to understand at all, at least if you have the mathematical foundations. I'm simply stating that it involves a huge mathematical edifice; if you model space using the methods of differential geometry, you are making a huge set of assumptions about space. The fact that you can summarize that as "one equation" tells you nothing about elegance or simplicity of the theory.

By analogy, GR is only simple in the way a car is simple for its drive; from the driver's point of view, you just sit in it and turn the ignition. Never mind the $20k worth of hardware that is needed to make the magic happen. You seem to forget about what's happening under the covers (which also makes me suspect that you are not actually a mathematician).

Semiconductor material for the operation of the transistor was predicted by a very bright theoretical physicist. He had a top notch group assigned to him at Bell Labs and it took them years to get an operational transistor. It years for a 2-Nobel winning physicist to discover.

The bipolar transistor was an accidental discovery by Shockley's group trying to implement field effect transistors, and the field effect transistor was patented in 1925, long before Shockley or Bell Labs even got into the game. Furthermore, it was advances in material sciences that made the implementation of the modern FET possible. In the end, Shockley's group accidentally stumbled over the bipolar transistor and they failed developing the FET based on their theoretical work. Of course, that isn't to say that those guys weren't very smart and highly successful, but your history of the transistor as a straight path from theory to implementation is a myth. You can read some of the history here.

You have clearly demonstrated that you have no working knowledge of GR.

Another conclusion to which you jumped.

I remember Hugo, grew up reading his pulp magazines. Here's an article about him. One of my favorite magazines was Hugo's magazine Radio Electronics. Not only was Hugo a brilliant science fiction promoter, but he was also a brilliant electrical engineer involved in the development of many of the gizmos which we now take for granted.