I'm not sure quite what you mean. There is no requirement of working in the field of your original study. You can be an electrical grad and be working in a mechanical position, and it will still counts towards your PEO mentorship requirement, so long as you're working with a P.Eng, who is keeping a journal for you.
There is also no time limitation on P.Eng, you can go 10 years doing nothing, then suddenly realize you want to pursue it, and get it.
If you don't mind me asking, which university do you go to? At UW we start our co-op experience early, and a lot of us were optimistic about our P.Eng's until we had about 2-3 jobs, then we realized that working with P.Eng's in a software environment is nigh impossible.
AFAIK the PEO does not accept any substitutes towards the mentorship requirement. I'm not sure who's promising what and if they're qualified to promise it - but having worked a few software jobs now... Maybe if you were working strictly in embedded software, but anything remotely high level is probably out.
There's the lay definition of a professional, and then there's the legal definition of it. The lay definition simply describes someone who's good at what they do, whereas the legal definition is far more rigorous.
It's a bit like my computer illiterate friends describing "memory" to each other (being interchangeable with "hard drive"). They understand each other quite well, but as a computer literate guy I'm completely stumped. Mixing lay definition with legal definition is a great way to cause confusion.
I'm glad you have so much optimism. I'm studying Mechatronics Engineering at a Canadian university, though I'm working mostly software jobs. As a CE and SE you will both have a tough time getting your P.Eng license. The software industry has almost NO P.Eng's, being dominated by CS grads, and it's likely you'll be perpetually unable to meet the mentorship requirement.
Or at the very least you will find yourself passing on perfectly good job offers just to stay in an environment *with* P.Eng's... The price you pay for the certification may be high.
Until some real bad judgment sees you putting a small plastic part into the door handle, making it potentially hazardous for children - we've seen it before and we'll see it again. Or maybe during all the cost cutting the company opts for shoddy plastic that deforms and gives off toxic substances in a particularly hot summer. Or maybe the plastic becomes brittle over time, allowing it to snap off and form sharp edges.
I was personally involved with plastic component design with car radiators - the number of issues you can have with them are immense, the same goes for almost every other branch of engineering. Something that on the surface seems simple and completely removed from life and death situations... are actually not. All of the examples I've brought up are perfectly plausible, and in fact I'd wager some of them have already happened.
And that is also why you should never be allowed to call yourself "software engineer". In a single short post you have demonstrated a contempt for regulation, law, clear communication, and honesty, which are all required for a Professional Engineer in Canada.
Despite knowing the regulations and laws behind the matter, you choose to willfully violate them, not to mention potentially defrauding others by impersonating a legal engineer.
Like others have said in this thread, being an engineer is not about being able to do your job, it's about accountability and the willingness to adhere strictly to established regulations and standards, something you obviously cannot do.
I always thought a "profession" had more to do with social class than anything about supervising, regulating, and discipline.
You are sadly mistaken. Doctors, accountants, lawyers, engineers, all are considered professions since they regulate their own behaviour. Accountants are liable for the accuracy of their work, lawyers have a strict code of conduct they must adhere to, and likewise engineers have a hefty tome of ethical and technical requirements they must always fulfill.
Most people in society aren't aware that a profession is a tightly regulated field, mostly because they don't need to, and it's a testament to self-regulation.
So you can't call yourself a "professional" unless you've been regulated by the government, or some other "official" organization?
Sure you can call yourself a "professional", just not a "professional engineer" or "professional accountant", or anything of that sort. Being a professional is more than merely being able to do your job, it comes with legal and ethical responsibilities that you accept, and which carry very real consequences when broken.
That's the difference between a professional and a non-professional. One accepts legal, social, and ethical responsibility for what they do, the other is hands-off the moment the work is delivered.
Except that if you look at the websites of these Canadian engineering association (such as the PEO), they make public all disciplinary proceedings, and document all punishment and consequences. LOTS of engineers those their licenses every year due to negligent and incompetent practice.
Licensing and regulation is not the problem. Perhaps you should ask yourself why the USA fails at it, and why other countries have had great success with it.
Even if you graduate from a software engineering program at university you're still not allowed to call yourself an engineer.
Incorrect, assuming you're talking about Canada. If you have graduated from a CEAB accredited program you ARE allowed to call yourself an engineer (in the lay sense anyway). You may NOT call yourself a Professional Engineer, that title is reserved for people who have achieved that licensing AFTER graduation.
IIRC and FYI, you need 3 years of work experience supervised by a licensed P.Eng, be a member of your local provincial engineering association, and then take a test.
CompSci graduates are definitely not allowed to call themselves engineers, not in this country anyway. It's always weird when I go on internships with American companies - they like throwing the word engineer around, and I always end up having to change my own title (not graduated yet, can't call myself an engineer).
Really? You wouldn't think that a battery designer is doing anything life-critical, until the batteries blow up in the user's face. You wouldn't think that the guy designing an electric fan is doing anything life-critical, until the motor detaches itself from the housing and sends a spinning blade into a poor bystander.
I've seen both, though the latter was a car radiator cooling fan, not fun, and luckily it only took my boss's finger off, and not his life.
You don't have to be engineering jetliners to be directly responsible for someone's life. Engineers do it every day, and that's what separates the guy coding spreadsheet apps vs. the guy coding embedded software for a heart monitor.
Yeah, it sucks that the iPhone only has EDGE, but if Steve is to be believed, and the battery life would've been seriously compromised with HSDPA, then I actually prefer it this way. There are engineering limitations that are yet to be overcome.
I don't get this argument that the browser has limited Web 2.0 capabilities. This is in comparison to your Blackberry, which has NO Web 2.0 capabilities? Or any other common phone browser that ALSO has zero Web 2.0 capabilities? None of your phones can run Google Apps, though the iPhone can do GMail very well (first hand experience).
And seriously, Google Docs on a phone? Masochist you are.
Well, in their defense, what if they're just trying to enjoy the football game and not have to watch content that they find offensive? What if, for some crazy reason, they DO find beer ads offensive?
If they were watching in their private homes, wouldn't they be entitled to switching the channel during commercial breaks? Or turning the TV off? Broadcasting "fake ads" in that case doesn't seem so extreme.
Public perhaps, but "good or valuable consideration"? I'm not Christian (or religious), but I know many people who are, and generally they see the act of evangelism as a non-personal gain, so they certainly do not do this sort of thing out of expectation of personal reward.
Besides, if this was, say, put on by aid workers keeping troubled youth out of harm's way, would YOU have a big problem with it?
Not only identifying its neighbour, but also needs to identify its own orientation. Think about common LEGO pieces like the archway, which can be oriented in 4 unique directions with only a single point of contact... You'd need 4 contacts in each "nub" in order to properly identify orientation...
You're right, theoretically, but it all depends on how you structure your network. If small pockets of nodes are connected using a wide-reaching backbone, and that backbone goes down, there may not be enough "content" on each of these small subnets for it to be of any use to anyone.
Add into the fray the fact that web designers don't give a hoot about localizing hosting. A Middle Eastern web server may decide to hook into a European database server, an Asian image server, etc etc. Unless the entirety of the website's services are self-contained in that subnet, any major outage will put it out of commission also.
Too sensationalist, tone it down will ya? Schools are STILL teaching real math and real science, despite all you doomsday theorists out there. This is especially true at the university level, where education is as good as it's always been.
You pick one example of a '60s era tech that has survived the ages, and conveniently forget the many thousands of inventions that never made it this far, and never made it long enough for us to even REMEMBER. Then you conveniently ignore all of the genius inventions being put forth today and focus on some crappy examples, kudos.
The US is suffering from lack of funding in basic research, but seriously, your "proof" is weak sauce.
There's no redundancy because people do not demand it. Why is it that military communications don't ever fail like this? Simple, because the customer understands the importance of fault-free operation and is willing to pay for it. Compare with the average internet subscriber...
The bonus stages are definitely challenging, though none are impossible by any stretch of the imagination. They do give your brain a bit to chew on though!
For REAL challenges, try to go for the "fewest portals", "fastest time", and "fewest steps" challenges. Some of those are nigh impossible. I like the fewest portals challenges, since they actually emphasize brainwork.
Er... Politically unstable? You haven't seen politically unstable, my friend. I am a Taiwanese living abroad (in Canada to be exact), and seriously, Taiwan is like a lily pad in comparison to other places in the world. It has free elections, which while rife with controversy, does not approach anything I would consider political instability. It certainly beats a communist dictatorship - your pet politician getting voted out of office is a lot less damaging than a full-out military coup!
Taiwan has its own problems with corruption, but where is this information on #4 most corrupt? I don't buy it. You want to compare yourself to political backwaters like most of Africa? Or do you want to compare yourself to China, a country with an even worse track record for corruption? At least Taiwan's political incompetence is contained to its legislative branch, the concept of rule of law barely exists in China.
Taiwan isn't too bad of a choice, though IMHO they're better off sticking it in Japan.
I find Valve's pricing to be very reasonable. I bought the Deus Ex collection for $30, a better deal than I would've gotten at any other store, and the ability to find old titles certainly beats rummaging around the bargain bin at EB.
$20 for Portal is iffy, I agree, but consider that you get TF2, Portal, HL2, Ep1, and Ep2 for $50, it's a fricking steal. Even if you've already played all the singleplayer Half-Life games, TF2 + Portal combined is IMHO easily worth $50, particularly TF2.
Way to miss the OP's point. This has nothing to do with how crappy Best Buy (or any other store) is. As you so eloquently put it, anyone with half a brain knows there are repositories for basically every bit of software you could want... except the VAST majority of the world doesn't know this, only geeks with nothing better to do (hey, including yours truly) know this.
The rest of the world wants to get a machine that will run their software. For the aspiring photographer this means Photoshop, because the open-source equivalent really, really, really, really, really, really sucks. This applies to many other apps also. Many people use financial management apps, tax filing apps, and all sorts of other stuff that is completely unavailable on Linux, or is woefully inadequate (in features and/or usability, which IMHO is the biggest obstacle facing FOSS).
The OP is absolutely correct. I have met many people who have expressed an interest in switching to a Mac, but have not done so because some apps very important to them simply do not have adequate replacements on that platform. In my experience people have no real loyalty to any OS, including Windows. The most computer illiterate people I know don't mind using Linux, since it's equally black box to them as Windows is, all they care about is if it will run the apps they need, and so far the answer is overwhelmingly no.
It's certainly taken hold of the enthusiast market rather than the world at large - but really, without contract subsidization that's the best they could hope for. I have one, I know 2 close friends that have one, and 3 more people I kind-of know that have one.
I've seen at least 5 others around town over the last 2-3 months.
Definitely not as popular as, say, the RAZR, but not doing too badly for itself I say.
FYI I did a full wipe and install for Leopard, feeling that my Tiger machine was taking too long to boot, and simply wanting to start with a fresh home directory... The kernel panics were abound all over the place, especially when I was pushing my throughput to its limits.
The only bug I'm experiencing now with 10.5.1 is the inability for the machine to use my router's DNS, necessitating me to specify my own (God bless you, OpenDNS). At least this has a workaround.
I *would* go back down to Tiger, but I love the new garbage collecting Objective-C too much to do that...
How do they get the data off the keylogger? I suspect something like this won't have much on-board storage... and in a lot of laptops there isn't enough room to cram in a full transmitter. The only realistic solution is regular retrieval by an operative, which seems kind of ass backwards.
Most certainly not. Leopard has been causing a lot of networking problems for many users, including myself. My MacBook Pro regularly kernel panicked (especially when running BitTorrent) when connecting on WiFi, back in 10.5.0. Thankfully.1 fixed that for me, but I'm still hearing sporadic reports of it for some people.
10.5.1 still has one major bug for me - it seems to not play nice with my router (whereas Tiger did perfectly), by refusing to use the router's DNS. I've had to manually enter my ISP's DNS addresses into Leopard just to go to websites. The more frustrating part of this is that the driver seems to refuse connections for CERTAIN domains, but OK others, and this "blacklist" seems to change from time to time. For about 2 days I couldn't access Slashdot, but after then I was fine.
This baby has a long way to go before I will call it a success. It's not a debacle on the scale of Vista, but it ain't nothing to write home about either.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure quite what you mean. There is no requirement of working in the field of your original study. You can be an electrical grad and be working in a mechanical position, and it will still counts towards your PEO mentorship requirement, so long as you're working with a P.Eng, who is keeping a journal for you.
There is also no time limitation on P.Eng, you can go 10 years doing nothing, then suddenly realize you want to pursue it, and get it.
If you don't mind me asking, which university do you go to? At UW we start our co-op experience early, and a lot of us were optimistic about our P.Eng's until we had about 2-3 jobs, then we realized that working with P.Eng's in a software environment is nigh impossible.
AFAIK the PEO does not accept any substitutes towards the mentorship requirement. I'm not sure who's promising what and if they're qualified to promise it - but having worked a few software jobs now... Maybe if you were working strictly in embedded software, but anything remotely high level is probably out.
There's the lay definition of a professional, and then there's the legal definition of it. The lay definition simply describes someone who's good at what they do, whereas the legal definition is far more rigorous.
It's a bit like my computer illiterate friends describing "memory" to each other (being interchangeable with "hard drive"). They understand each other quite well, but as a computer literate guy I'm completely stumped. Mixing lay definition with legal definition is a great way to cause confusion.
I'm glad you have so much optimism. I'm studying Mechatronics Engineering at a Canadian university, though I'm working mostly software jobs. As a CE and SE you will both have a tough time getting your P.Eng license. The software industry has almost NO P.Eng's, being dominated by CS grads, and it's likely you'll be perpetually unable to meet the mentorship requirement.
Or at the very least you will find yourself passing on perfectly good job offers just to stay in an environment *with* P.Eng's... The price you pay for the certification may be high.
Until some real bad judgment sees you putting a small plastic part into the door handle, making it potentially hazardous for children - we've seen it before and we'll see it again. Or maybe during all the cost cutting the company opts for shoddy plastic that deforms and gives off toxic substances in a particularly hot summer. Or maybe the plastic becomes brittle over time, allowing it to snap off and form sharp edges.
I was personally involved with plastic component design with car radiators - the number of issues you can have with them are immense, the same goes for almost every other branch of engineering. Something that on the surface seems simple and completely removed from life and death situations... are actually not. All of the examples I've brought up are perfectly plausible, and in fact I'd wager some of them have already happened.
And that is also why you should never be allowed to call yourself "software engineer". In a single short post you have demonstrated a contempt for regulation, law, clear communication, and honesty, which are all required for a Professional Engineer in Canada.
Despite knowing the regulations and laws behind the matter, you choose to willfully violate them, not to mention potentially defrauding others by impersonating a legal engineer.
Like others have said in this thread, being an engineer is not about being able to do your job, it's about accountability and the willingness to adhere strictly to established regulations and standards, something you obviously cannot do.
You are sadly mistaken. Doctors, accountants, lawyers, engineers, all are considered professions since they regulate their own behaviour. Accountants are liable for the accuracy of their work, lawyers have a strict code of conduct they must adhere to, and likewise engineers have a hefty tome of ethical and technical requirements they must always fulfill.
Most people in society aren't aware that a profession is a tightly regulated field, mostly because they don't need to, and it's a testament to self-regulation.
So you can't call yourself a "professional" unless you've been regulated by the government, or some other "official" organization?Sure you can call yourself a "professional", just not a "professional engineer" or "professional accountant", or anything of that sort. Being a professional is more than merely being able to do your job, it comes with legal and ethical responsibilities that you accept, and which carry very real consequences when broken.
That's the difference between a professional and a non-professional. One accepts legal, social, and ethical responsibility for what they do, the other is hands-off the moment the work is delivered.
Except that if you look at the websites of these Canadian engineering association (such as the PEO), they make public all disciplinary proceedings, and document all punishment and consequences. LOTS of engineers those their licenses every year due to negligent and incompetent practice.
Licensing and regulation is not the problem. Perhaps you should ask yourself why the USA fails at it, and why other countries have had great success with it.
Incorrect, assuming you're talking about Canada. If you have graduated from a CEAB accredited program you ARE allowed to call yourself an engineer (in the lay sense anyway). You may NOT call yourself a Professional Engineer, that title is reserved for people who have achieved that licensing AFTER graduation.
IIRC and FYI, you need 3 years of work experience supervised by a licensed P.Eng, be a member of your local provincial engineering association, and then take a test.
CompSci graduates are definitely not allowed to call themselves engineers, not in this country anyway. It's always weird when I go on internships with American companies - they like throwing the word engineer around, and I always end up having to change my own title (not graduated yet, can't call myself an engineer).
Really? You wouldn't think that a battery designer is doing anything life-critical, until the batteries blow up in the user's face. You wouldn't think that the guy designing an electric fan is doing anything life-critical, until the motor detaches itself from the housing and sends a spinning blade into a poor bystander.
I've seen both, though the latter was a car radiator cooling fan, not fun, and luckily it only took my boss's finger off, and not his life.
You don't have to be engineering jetliners to be directly responsible for someone's life. Engineers do it every day, and that's what separates the guy coding spreadsheet apps vs. the guy coding embedded software for a heart monitor.
Yeah, it sucks that the iPhone only has EDGE, but if Steve is to be believed, and the battery life would've been seriously compromised with HSDPA, then I actually prefer it this way. There are engineering limitations that are yet to be overcome.
I don't get this argument that the browser has limited Web 2.0 capabilities. This is in comparison to your Blackberry, which has NO Web 2.0 capabilities? Or any other common phone browser that ALSO has zero Web 2.0 capabilities? None of your phones can run Google Apps, though the iPhone can do GMail very well (first hand experience).
And seriously, Google Docs on a phone? Masochist you are.
Well, in their defense, what if they're just trying to enjoy the football game and not have to watch content that they find offensive? What if, for some crazy reason, they DO find beer ads offensive?
If they were watching in their private homes, wouldn't they be entitled to switching the channel during commercial breaks? Or turning the TV off? Broadcasting "fake ads" in that case doesn't seem so extreme.
Note: I'm not Christian, nor do I aspire to be.
Public perhaps, but "good or valuable consideration"? I'm not Christian (or religious), but I know many people who are, and generally they see the act of evangelism as a non-personal gain, so they certainly do not do this sort of thing out of expectation of personal reward.
Besides, if this was, say, put on by aid workers keeping troubled youth out of harm's way, would YOU have a big problem with it?
Not only identifying its neighbour, but also needs to identify its own orientation. Think about common LEGO pieces like the archway, which can be oriented in 4 unique directions with only a single point of contact... You'd need 4 contacts in each "nub" in order to properly identify orientation...
You're right, theoretically, but it all depends on how you structure your network. If small pockets of nodes are connected using a wide-reaching backbone, and that backbone goes down, there may not be enough "content" on each of these small subnets for it to be of any use to anyone.
Add into the fray the fact that web designers don't give a hoot about localizing hosting. A Middle Eastern web server may decide to hook into a European database server, an Asian image server, etc etc. Unless the entirety of the website's services are self-contained in that subnet, any major outage will put it out of commission also.
Too sensationalist, tone it down will ya? Schools are STILL teaching real math and real science, despite all you doomsday theorists out there. This is especially true at the university level, where education is as good as it's always been.
You pick one example of a '60s era tech that has survived the ages, and conveniently forget the many thousands of inventions that never made it this far, and never made it long enough for us to even REMEMBER. Then you conveniently ignore all of the genius inventions being put forth today and focus on some crappy examples, kudos.
The US is suffering from lack of funding in basic research, but seriously, your "proof" is weak sauce.
There's no redundancy because people do not demand it. Why is it that military communications don't ever fail like this? Simple, because the customer understands the importance of fault-free operation and is willing to pay for it. Compare with the average internet subscriber...
The bonus stages are definitely challenging, though none are impossible by any stretch of the imagination. They do give your brain a bit to chew on though!
For REAL challenges, try to go for the "fewest portals", "fastest time", and "fewest steps" challenges. Some of those are nigh impossible. I like the fewest portals challenges, since they actually emphasize brainwork.
Er... Politically unstable? You haven't seen politically unstable, my friend. I am a Taiwanese living abroad (in Canada to be exact), and seriously, Taiwan is like a lily pad in comparison to other places in the world. It has free elections, which while rife with controversy, does not approach anything I would consider political instability. It certainly beats a communist dictatorship - your pet politician getting voted out of office is a lot less damaging than a full-out military coup!
Taiwan has its own problems with corruption, but where is this information on #4 most corrupt? I don't buy it. You want to compare yourself to political backwaters like most of Africa? Or do you want to compare yourself to China, a country with an even worse track record for corruption? At least Taiwan's political incompetence is contained to its legislative branch, the concept of rule of law barely exists in China.
Taiwan isn't too bad of a choice, though IMHO they're better off sticking it in Japan.
I find Valve's pricing to be very reasonable. I bought the Deus Ex collection for $30, a better deal than I would've gotten at any other store, and the ability to find old titles certainly beats rummaging around the bargain bin at EB.
$20 for Portal is iffy, I agree, but consider that you get TF2, Portal, HL2, Ep1, and Ep2 for $50, it's a fricking steal. Even if you've already played all the singleplayer Half-Life games, TF2 + Portal combined is IMHO easily worth $50, particularly TF2.
Way to miss the OP's point. This has nothing to do with how crappy Best Buy (or any other store) is. As you so eloquently put it, anyone with half a brain knows there are repositories for basically every bit of software you could want... except the VAST majority of the world doesn't know this, only geeks with nothing better to do (hey, including yours truly) know this.
The rest of the world wants to get a machine that will run their software. For the aspiring photographer this means Photoshop, because the open-source equivalent really, really, really, really, really, really sucks. This applies to many other apps also. Many people use financial management apps, tax filing apps, and all sorts of other stuff that is completely unavailable on Linux, or is woefully inadequate (in features and/or usability, which IMHO is the biggest obstacle facing FOSS).
The OP is absolutely correct. I have met many people who have expressed an interest in switching to a Mac, but have not done so because some apps very important to them simply do not have adequate replacements on that platform. In my experience people have no real loyalty to any OS, including Windows. The most computer illiterate people I know don't mind using Linux, since it's equally black box to them as Windows is, all they care about is if it will run the apps they need, and so far the answer is overwhelmingly no.
It's certainly taken hold of the enthusiast market rather than the world at large - but really, without contract subsidization that's the best they could hope for. I have one, I know 2 close friends that have one, and 3 more people I kind-of know that have one.
I've seen at least 5 others around town over the last 2-3 months.
Definitely not as popular as, say, the RAZR, but not doing too badly for itself I say.
FYI I did a full wipe and install for Leopard, feeling that my Tiger machine was taking too long to boot, and simply wanting to start with a fresh home directory... The kernel panics were abound all over the place, especially when I was pushing my throughput to its limits.
The only bug I'm experiencing now with 10.5.1 is the inability for the machine to use my router's DNS, necessitating me to specify my own (God bless you, OpenDNS). At least this has a workaround.
I *would* go back down to Tiger, but I love the new garbage collecting Objective-C too much to do that...
How do they get the data off the keylogger? I suspect something like this won't have much on-board storage... and in a lot of laptops there isn't enough room to cram in a full transmitter. The only realistic solution is regular retrieval by an operative, which seems kind of ass backwards.
Most certainly not. Leopard has been causing a lot of networking problems for many users, including myself. My MacBook Pro regularly kernel panicked (especially when running BitTorrent) when connecting on WiFi, back in 10.5.0. Thankfully .1 fixed that for me, but I'm still hearing sporadic reports of it for some people.
10.5.1 still has one major bug for me - it seems to not play nice with my router (whereas Tiger did perfectly), by refusing to use the router's DNS. I've had to manually enter my ISP's DNS addresses into Leopard just to go to websites. The more frustrating part of this is that the driver seems to refuse connections for CERTAIN domains, but OK others, and this "blacklist" seems to change from time to time. For about 2 days I couldn't access Slashdot, but after then I was fine.
This baby has a long way to go before I will call it a success. It's not a debacle on the scale of Vista, but it ain't nothing to write home about either.