Professional Engineers (P.E.) is a trademark in the US much like a PhD, MD, JD, etc. To attain the tittle of a P.E. (disclaimer, I have a P.E. in WA and a P.Eng. in Canada) an individual must meet a certain set of education, and vocational (job) experience requirements and take a notationally administered exam to prove competency in his/her field of expertise. An additional ethics exam is administered by each State. My state offers many types of professional licenses.

Under the "Engineer" category the following P.E. licenses are given:

Agricultural

Architectural

Chemical

Civil: Construction

Civil: Geotechnical

Civil: Structural

Civil: Transportation

Civil: Water Resources and Environmental

Control Systems

Electrical and Computer: Computer Engineering

Electrical and Computer: Electrical and Electronics

Electrical and Computer: Power

Environmental

Fire Protection

Industrial

Mechanical: HVAC and Refrigeration

Mechanical: Mechanical Systems and Materials

Mechanical: Thermal and Fluids Systems

Metallurgical and Materials

Mining and Mineral Processing

Naval Architecture and Marine

Nuclear

Petroleum

I'm not to sure if this just a rouse (which I suspect it is based on the replies) but I might point out the corresponding subsection of the "divide by zero" wikipedia entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_by_zero#Fallacies_based_on_division_by_zero

Dr. Freeman Gorden; He is a theoretical physicist (Ph.D. from MIT) who finds himself thrust into a battle for survival against both alien and the (Orwellian) human forces.

This option doesn't make sense. The engineers/mission controllers will do everything to ensure a higher probability of surviving than this.

See above.

See above.

This may not be too unreasonable, provided there is actually a plan in place to resupply and/or bring the astronaut back to earth within 5 years or less on the premise that we'll set you off to Mars right now, and pick you up later wen we get our better spacecraft/technology finalized. If more than 5 years passes, well, you may be screwed by a probability exceeding 50% if we can't get the technology to bring you back.

This would be the logical option, but the hardest to attain of them all.

Your standard, albeit stupid, nonsensical Slashdot option.

I voted for this as the majority has as well. I find myself always voting for the option with the highest probability of votes. This one was easy, because it is also the easiest to identify with on many levels.

Occasionally, we are faced with two nonsensical options in Slashdot polls.

Translation: The temperature is so high, it is somehow unimaginable using numbers. But since you are reading on, let me just pull a totally random number out of my ass and say a million degrees... wait no.. make it a millions, as in more than 1 million, which makes my claim sound sorta vague and not precise but makes it nevertheless appear I know what I'm talking about. That should cover the unimaginable bit of it. Besides, its not like you're going to check anyways so fuck it, lets and some em dashes for extra emphasis for no other reason other than because its really "HOT". I mean wow, can you imagine a place this hot? I'm just siting here in my office, thinking to myself, geeze this black hole stuff is not the usual environment I'm used to, most likely because I would have been obliterated and spit out as really "HOT" x-rays... there, you see where I'm coming from? HOT!

You can avoid the confusion and be cool at the same time by only considering Fibonacci prime numbers.

I can't readily disprove your theory, but I can disprove your grammar in that the 243,000,500,000,000,000,002th digit of Pi should in fact be the 243,000,500,000,000,000,002nd digit of Pi.

Reminds of the saying :opinions are like assholes, everyone has one."

Same goes for movies, whaaa... , what about "the Green Zone", "the Hurt Lock" (over-hyped POS movie, btw), and all of the other movies about the current conflicts the US is/has engaged in. True, they are in the point of USA, but only since a movie in the freedom fighter’s, uh sorry, I meant terrorist’s point of view wouldn't make it pas inception stage with the studios because BS backlash like this.

So, is this a challenge you are inviting...? Just saying because it seems like people have too much free time on their hands these days.

On topic to the post though, I find a (for me) good pw policy to go by for the multitude of sites out there is to have a basic password "frame" such as your hometown or whatever spelled backwards (to pass dictionay filters). This is easy for you to remember, and spelled backwards, the word is incompressible, seemingly random:

elttaes = seattle,

anozira=arizona,

nilreb=berlin

then you add on the frame for websites for online banking such as follows:

BOA## = Bank of America, ## = any digit(s) of numbers you like such as area code, year of birth, etc.

The password might end up looking like: elttaesBOA10

I know there are some sites that have silly PW requirements. I've seen requirements any or a combination that forbid some of the following:

- no special characters: " { ' / , @ ! etc. (escape character problems in code?)

- certain special characters ok, others not such as: @, !, %, (), * (why? hits to close to home, programming-wise? Afraid of invoking variables somehow through password string?)

- no number at end of password (this I've experienced only at financial institutions, must be an oracle DB thing?)

- no capitalization (why not...?, must be a MS legacy thing)

- not enough capital characters, too many capital characters (not sure why this is bad other than the ol' cap locks on thing)

- no all special characters (is this because of "!@#$%^&*()" abuse?)

- no repeating or incrementing, 1234... abcde... (but most likely 1!2@3#... aAbBcCdD... would be fine with such rules)

- no numbers at all (um ok...)

- too short / too long passwords

– misconfigured passphrase entry (I've been on a university SUN Unix systems where passwords were simply truncated to 8 characters; anything after the 8 legit pass phrase char, you can type wildly and your credentials would be accepted anyway.)

- then there’s keychain number thing (don’t remember what its called), biometric fingerprint, etc. in addition to password

I'm willing to bet that if his passport was scanned at an airport anywhere in North America, they (US Feds) would know and immediately detain in an interrogation room a la Swordfish/Jason Bourne style. I’m also willing to go as far to thinking that he’s a bagable asset (in the sense of unmarked van with a bunch of guys ready to jump out with zip ties and head shroud) almost anywhere else in world. The janitors have been activated in Europe via secure cell phone picture message, after emerging from their previous holding pattern consisting of lying on a hotel bed with gun in hand in Madrid, or driving their scooter randomly throughout Rome, or sitting in a shill boardroom meeting in Brussels, or giving Piano lessons to a child in Berlin.

Well, I for one am tired of reading about server room floodings (data center in Istambul) and welcome reading about sinking data centers in the near future. As an added bonus, I can even link to this posting.

[bookmarked for future use under /. predictions come true catagory] -- done

Does anybody still remember the digg revolt: en.wikinews.org/wiki/Digg.com_suffers_user_revolt

In not trying to read into any underlying cynicism with your post, I assume you going back to Europe, and thus forgoing the greencard process, is what you wanted.

How about the physical environment in which we drive...? Sounds to me like you live somewhere in the plains, but where I live we got mountains that you can drive right of the edge to your probable death because you might have been distracted for less than one second. Sure there might be a guiderail present, but it's mostly there to make you think you got some safety... This is not to say the mountain might hurdle a boulder at you at anytime, anywhere. Let's not talk about weather conditions, or a big elk smashing trough your windshield either. All these are independent of other drivers and engineered safety devices both in car and of the roadway. I can tell you from experience that nothing makes your fancy "stabili-track, AWD, 4x4, anti-lock, whatever" vehicle technology more useless than black ice on an inclining slope with an outward banking turn.

I think it has mostly to do with insurance as well... If there is no license for the pool in a township/municipality that has ordinances on the books that do require permits, then you are most likely required to get the proper insurance coverage as well. I read a report of a leaking pool in California causing a small landslide that affected several houses down slope and caused several millions in damage.

No imagine if the guy built the pool without permit. I can’t an insurance underwriter would cover this without a permit in place that might at least attest to the quality stands used in the construction. What assets do you think those affected home owners are going to go after then?