The parent comment was:

It is strictly illegal for anybody (including law enforcement without a warrant) to use ANY means to view something on your property that isn't clearly visible to a common pedestrian or vehicle going past.

I doubt the law is that draconian or even enforceable. I countered with:

So have they issued warrants against Google yet?

You know because they used a satellite to photograph the contents of the Jane's backyard and she did say "ANY means to view something on your property".

and the rest of the real engineers, do some actual work.

With the difficulty you are having with context, I sure hope you aren't a real engineer.

During that 12 week class you spend about a week learning a couple of formulas that you realize will be very helpful when coding accounting software, but just as you're getting into it they switch topics and start teaching you about business management and then spend 4 weeks on "How to use Excel"...

If only they would offer a more specialized class after the introductory course is taken.

This looks like MIT's marketing department is running their learning programmes now

This is nothing new. MIT is known for issuing press releases for their staff and students that read like something that never been accomplished before despite the fact that it's not only been done a long while back some of it is still in practice.

In your subject you claim "Software Engineer" is a myth and in your first sentence you called the term "software engineer" a bit of a misnomer.

I'm pointing out that you're mistaken.

To use your analogy: Automotive Engineers are a myth because all of your generalizations are based on automotive mechanics who aren't known for documenting their work.

Could you imagine if, say, aerospace engineers didn't document their work? Automotive engineers?

A "software engineer" that didn't document their work is a code slinger pretending to be an engineer.

I think you've confused software developers who work in the consumer applications sector (release fast, often and cheaply) with software engineers in the industrial, manufacturing, enterprise, and control systems sector.

I think you mentioned another reason documentation is lacking in FOSS. It gives an incentive towards paying for support.

JavaDocs are only as good as the person writing the documentation. I've seen useless JavaDocs which were nothing more than a list of API calls, and I've seen JavaDocs that were so well done that it could have easily been published to a book.

You'd think they would remember RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. which affirmed that space shifting (from media to hard disk) for personal use was considered fair use under the act.