Actually, that is not necessarily true. I get what you are trying to say, but you seem to gloss over the differences between QA, manual tester, and what the OP was referring to: Software Test Engineer.

To highlight some of the differences:

QA is responsible for "assuring quality". This is different from QC which is "checking quality". More often than not, a good QA is a process expert, with the assumption being that good processes ensure good quality. Their goal is to avoid the problem, not to detect the problem or fix the problem. Where the line gets blurred is the fact that a QA often performs the role of a manual tester. This usually depends on the size of the team.

Manual testing is usually QC - understanding what to test, how to test, and going ahead and testing it. They start off by translating the requirement specification (or user stories if you are agile) into a suite of test cases, add other test cases that might be non-functional or regression related, and finally test the system manually every time before it is released to customers.

Generally (although not always true), a "test engineer" is more of a developer than a tester. They are usually tasked to develop test frameworks using third party tools or even creating their own framework. The former usually involves scripting and lightweight coding and the latter can involve full blown coding. They can be developing a test framework for executing and managing unit tests and functional tests (often white box), and integration tests, regression tests, and performance tests (often black box). While many project teams skimp on devoting this much engineering to testing, it can give huge returns, perhaps even better returns than development can after a certain point.

To be fair, the OP has not mentioned anything else beyond "software test engineer" so the role might very well be manual testing. However, the word "engineer" leads me to believe it is more of a automation role. Having said this, companies often embellish their titles with "engineer" to make it sounds weighty.

For what it is worth, Dark Side Of the Moon is widely considered as one of the most well recorded albums of all time.

The way this is done, dear sir, is to use the mouse middle click or ctrl+click to open up said article in a new tab, and then to avoid switching to the new tab and instead type up a supposedly witty or insightful one-liner to a random comment... erm like I have done.

I like the hard science fiction sub-genre quite a bit. Any recommendations?
What I've read and liked so far (hard sci-fi and sometimes merging with cyberpunk) - Stephen Baxter, Peter F Hamilton, Neal Asher, Alastair Reynolds.

Desperately looking for more authors and books to read. Please help if you can.

Is it a coincidence that most of these authors are from the British isles?

Fair enough, in this case, the captain was indeed worthy of ridicule. All I'm saying is that there may be more to this than meets the eye. I like reading and participating in /. because in general, the audience displays a high level of intelligence. You can see this manifest itself in posts that challenge the "basic premise" and are often trollish in nature, besides pedantic arguments about grammar and accuracy, My post was not a reply to the OP but a general statement that lately, /. posts have become more uni-dimensional in nature and is becoming more "mob-like".

For example, the root cause in this case may very well have been a systemic organizational screw-up that others are now frantically trying to cover up. If the captain did indeed veer off the suggested course and was "showboating", was it because of personal reasons or was he mandated to do so as an unwritten rule?

Again, please note that I am not trying to defend this guy - admittedly, his story and his excuses sound quite pathetic. I just didn't want this thread to become too one-dimensional. Plus, everyone is blaming the captain alone as if he was single handedly running the ship. What about the rest of the crew??

One thing needs to be said here - The captain was probably qualified to manage and navigate a boat. However, you and many of the other critics on this thread wanted him to automatically be a *hero* as well, and found him wanting. I'm not trying to defend this guy, but I find it surprising that so many armchair critics demand such an incredibly high standard of professionalism and performance and even heroism from others. I'm not sure if it is Marvel comics to blame or the media that tries to invent its heroes at the drop of a hat, but really, aren't we all going a bit over the top here?? This is the same stupid media overhype that has wrapped a halo around every fireman and coast guard employee and emergency response worker.

Everyone is doing a job to clock their hours, get paid, and go back home to their families with enough money to feed their loved ones. Professionals in every discipline display the same human strengths and weaknesses - varying levels of passion for their job, varying levels of professionalism and commitment, varying levels of hard work, varying levels of intelligence etc. Don't diss someone's screwup to such an extent that you make them the devil incarnate or Mr. Incompetent. Everyone, naysayer or supporter, will only discover their own levels of competence when they find themselves in the middle of a horrifying and paralyzing crisis like this.

This guy was probably weak and lacked the capacity to handle a crisis of this magnitude, but let's also not fall over each other in making him out to be such an incompetent fool as well. Please also remember that in crises like these, most people also go into "Cover Your Ass" mode and usually look for a fall guy to pin everything on.

We're falling into the same 21st century trap that the media has created and oversold - quick to judge and quicker to forget.

I don't understand how people are speaking with conviction at numbers that are based on guesstimates and hearsay, and to the extent that they have already written off a chip that is just launching. Plus, these numbers seem to be wildly incorrect based on initial actual tests.

Please see the Anandtech article that contains actual performance and power numbers:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5365/intels-medfield-atom-z2460-arrive-for-smartphones

The Intel Medfield SoC idles at 18mW, consumes 1W during 3G browsing, and 850mW when running a 720p video.
The SoC does NOT consume 2 or 2.5W.

Medfield's power performance at idle is significantly better than iPhone4S, somewhat better than Galaxy S2, is somewhat better than both at 3G browsing, and trails a bit in video playback. While Medfield isn't killing ARM with a much lower power consumption, it is definitely at par with ARM chips that are *currently shipping* and will likely be competitive with the slew of upcoming chips as well.

Sorry for replying to my own comment, but I just realized that my link to the Anandtech article got stripped out.
Here's the link: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5365/intels-medfield-atom-z2460-arrive-for-smartphones

Anand has done a really good job analyzing Medfield's performance and power usage, with actual comparisons against other shipping competitors.
So, to answer your questions:

1. Performance comparison -
Sunspider javascript benchmark (lower is better) -
Intel Medfield - 1331 - compare to iPhone 4S - 2250 & Galaxy Nexus running Android Icecream Sandwitch - 1988

Browsermark benchmark scores (higher is better) -
Medfield - 116425 - compare to iPhone 4S - 87841 & Galaxy Nexus running Android Icecream Sandwitch - 97381

Intel's Medfield has a good 20-50% performance lead against currently shipping top of the line ARM. Granted most ARM phones are due for a refresh in 6 months which will give them an expected performance boost of about 30-50%, Medfield will still be in the same ballpark performance. Its definitely a viable option. Plus, a Medfield upgrade will also come out in 9-12 months.

2. Power consumption on standby -
Medfield standby - 18mW - compare to iPhone 4S - 38mW & Galaxy S2 - 19mW

3. Power consumption during 3G web browsing -
Medfield standby - 1W - compare to iPhone 4S - 1.3W & Galaxy S2 - 1.2W

Power consumption during 720p video playback -
Medfield standby - 850mW - compare to iPhone 4S - 500mW & Galaxy S2 - 650mW

Barring video playback, Medfield actually has better power consumption numbers than iPhone 4S and Galaxy S2. Even in video playback, Medfield is only a little bit higher. Unlike what people have been warning about, Medfield is NOT a power hog and is in fact at par with currently shipping ARM.

Instead of getting into fanboyism, people should be excited by this news. Firstly, Intel is the small underdog here, while ARM is the 800lb gorilla. Secondly, it sounds like a cliche but competition is almost always A Good Thing. Thirdly, I am personally extremely excited at the idea of a Medfield based tablet - it would give us enough flexibility to run multiple OSes and the millions of legacy x86 apps and games sloshing around in the great wide interweb. It would also allow us to run Win8 when it eventually releases which is also an attractive proposition.

Lastly, if you put aside the purist RISC/CISC debate, x86 over the years has promoted and ensured an open ecosystem of OSes, applications, websites, and open source projects/communities. For all the goodness that ARM contains, its advent into smartphones and now tablets has caused more walled gardens and vendor lockdowns, not less. The root cause may very well be greedy corporations (heck, even El Goog is turning into one) and nothing to do with ARM per se, but I'm calling it like I see it.