Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror

Comment Re:Hypocrisy, thy name is Greg Mills (Score 1) 210

by Skagit (#59524804) Attached to: Arizona Man Sues State Agency Over Right To Call Himself an Engineer
There are several exams and it is a fairly rigorous process.

At the end of your specifically-accredited bachelors degree, you take a Fundamentals of Engineering exam to prove you paid attention. After that, you need several years of experience working under a professional engineer. You present your degree, FE results, experience and get licensed engineers to vouch for you. A licensing board evaluates your credentials and allows you to take the Principles and Practices of Engineering exam. You also have to promise not to practice outside of your area of expertise. Passing that exam gets you a license. In some places, especially those prone to seismic, you need a more detailed Structural Engineering exam to be able to design more than simple structures.

You don't need those exams to do work as an civil or structural (or other life-safety engineer). You can happily detail, calculate and manage projects, but somebody who did take those exams and is recognized by the state has to review your work and say it is good.

The process of getting a license ensures that when the general public hires a licensed engineer, you're getting some minimum standard of quality and responsibility. Even if it isn't design of fire suppression systems for a hospital, you still want to make sure the guy designing your packaging has spent some time on material science, mechanics of materials and economic analysis. A standard of professional certification is never a bad thing for the consumer, especially when it has been peer-reviewed.

There are 15 P&PE exams, each with several specialty areas. NCEES has a specific exam that he could take and prove he is willing to take on the responsibility for a design.

Comment Re:slight exaggeration (Score 1) 220

by Skagit (#59457688) Attached to: How Texas Instruments Monopolized Math Class
It is more than a slight exaggeration. To take the Fundamentals of Engineering or Principles and Practices of Engineering, you can't use a graphing calculator. You use a basic $15 scientific calculator like a Casio fx-115 to become a person in responsible charge of a real-world design. When we hire a new engineer, I give them a calculator from the NCEES approved calculator list and tell the to take their TI-eightyshit home. If that calculator is good enough for the exam to become a Structural Engineer, it is certainly good enough for high school and college math.
Science

Computers Emulate Neanderthal Speech 220

Posted by Zonk from the borrow-a-cup-of-evolution dept.
Clarence writes "After some 30,000 years of silence, the Neanderthal race is once again speaking thanks to some advanced computer simulation. A Florida Atlantic University professor is using software vocal tract reconstructions to emulate the speech of our long-dead distant relatives. 'He says the ancient human's speech lacked the "quantal vowel" sounds that underlie modern speech. Quantal vowels provide cues that help speakers with different size vocal tracts understand one another, says Robert McCarthy, who was talking at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Columbus, Ohio, on April 11. In the 1970s, linguist Phil Lieberman, of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, inferred the dimensions of the larynx of a Neanderthal based on its skull. His team concluded that Neanderthal speech did not have the subtlety of modern human speech.'"
Sun Microsystems

Submission + - Sun releases ODF plugin for MS Office (heise.de)

Submitted by extra88
extra88 writes: Heise online reported that Sun has released their OpenDocument Format (ODF) plug-in for Microsoft Office 2000, XP and 2003. The plug-in allows Microsoft Office (for Windows) users to open ODF files and save their work in ODF formats used by OpenOffice, StarOffice, and other programs. According to the ReadMe, the plug-in adds "ODF Text Document (*.odt)" as a format to Word's Open and Save dialogs and adds Import and Export options to Excel and PowerPoint. Support for Excel and PowerPoint in the Microsoft-sponsored OpenXML/ODF Translator Add-in for Office is yet completed and that Add-in supports only Office 2003 and 2007.
Businesses

Submission + - The First Thing IT Managers Do in the Morning?

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: When I was a wee-little IT Manager, I interviewed for a IT management position at an online CRM provider in San Francisco, a job I certainly was qualified for, at least on paper. One of the interviewer's questions was "What is the first thing you do when you get to work in the morning." I thought saying "Read Slashdot" wouldn't be what he was looking for — so I made up something, I'm sure, equally lame. Needless to say, I didn't get the job. But the question has stuck with me over the years. What do real IT and MIS managers do when they walk in to the office in the morning? What web sites or tools do they look at or use the first thing? Tell me. And remember, this is for posterity, so be honest.
Censorship

Submission + - UK - 'Extreme' porn proposals spark row

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: The BBC reports on the row over proposals by the UK Government to criminalise possession of "extreme" porn. The bill, published last week, would include fictional depictions of violence and images of acts between consenting adults. The law would also apply to screenshots taken from a legal film, if the screenshot was made for erotic purposes. Backlash opposes the law.

The bill follows from plans initially announced last August.
Music

Day of Silence On the Internet 276

Posted by kdawson from the silence-speaks-louder-than-tracks dept.
A number of readers sent in stories about Net radio going dark for a day. Not all of it, but according to the Globe and Mail at least 45 stations representing thousands of channels. The stations are protesting a ruling establishing royalty rates that will put most of them out of business on July 15. "The ruling... is expected to cost large webcasters such as Yahoo and Real Networks millions of dollars, drive smaller websites like Pandora.com and Live365.com out of business and leave a large chunk of the 72 million Net radio listeners in the dark." SaveNetRadio has a page where US residents can locate their senators and representatives to call them today.
Intel

Submission + - Intel Patches Flaws in Processors 4

Submitted by Nom du Keyboard
Nom du Keyboard writes: According to this article in The Inquirer and this Microsoft Knowledge Base article, a fix for some significant problems in many of Intel's most recent processors, including Core 2 Duo E4000/E6000, Core 2 Quad Q6600, Core 2 Xtreme X6800, XC6700 and XC6800 has been quietly released. Details on just what has been fixed are scanty (it's called a "reliability update"), however, it's probably more important than either Intel, or Microsoft, is openly admitting. Does this give the feeling of a cover-up?
Wireless Networking

Wireless Networks Causing Headaches For Businesses 187

Posted by kdawson from the help-desks-needing-help dept.
ElvaWSJ writes "Wi-Fi was supposed to reduce complications, not create new ones. But in many offices Wi-Fi has been a headache. Like all radio signals, Wi-Fi is subject to interference. Its low power — less than even a typical cellphone — means that walls and cabinets can significantly reduce signal strength. Wi-Fi also creates networks that are more open than wired ones, raising security issues. And Wi-Fi has caused problems for virtual private networks. Some VPNs require a lot of processing power. If a wireless access point — at home, at the office, or on the road — isn't robust enough, a user often gets bumped off the connection."
Software

Open Source Network Management Beats IBM and HP 100

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the slow-and-steady-going-for-the-win dept.
mjhuot writes "Last week SearchNetworking.com announced their Product Leadership Awards for 2007. It was a pleasant surprise to see an open source project, OpenNMS, win the Gold in their Network and IT Management Platforms category. OpenNMS beat out the established players of Hewlett-Packard's OpenView and IBM's Tivoli. This was based on a user survey of all IT solutions, not just open source; it demonstrates that open source software is indeed making inroads into the enterprise."

Slashdot Top Deals

If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith. -- Albert Einstein

Close