They didn't just take a test, in many jurisdictions, they are bonded, as well.

Those people you refer to working for Intel are not engineers any more than a homeowner doing their own electrical work is an electrician. Any of us can do engineering work but if we represent ourselves as engineers, the legal expectation is that we are Professional Engineers and, thus, legally responsible for our work. This is established through licensing that requires that a) we have passed certain tests and b) are bonded.

I think it is more likely to teach the internet a little about the actual meaning of the word "engineer". Legally, it carries the same weight as "doctor" or "lawyer" and for exactly the same reasons.

It applies to anyone who wants to use the term "engineer" to refer to themselves in exactly the same way similar laws apply to people who wish to refer to themselves as a "doctor" or a "lawyer" and for exactly the same reasons. People in high-tech have been ignorant of and over-casual in the use of the term "engineer" for many years. You will not find civil, chemical and other longer-established fields of engineering being so casual. To use the term "engineer" means that you a) have passed a competency test (that most software engineers wouldn't have a hope in hell of passing) and b) are bonded so that c) you can be held legally responsible for your professional opinions.

Especially in electrical engineering, people have been very casual about the use of the word engineer. Legally, when you say you are an engineer it literally means you are a "Professional Engineer" or PE. It's like saying you are a lawyer, JD, or a doctor, MD, and has important legal meaning. Specifically it means that you can be held responsible for your professional opinions and usually carry a bond to insure yourself against liability and that you have passed a competency test (one which I doubt many EEs could actually pass if they are more than a few years out of college.) Representing yourself as an engineer when you are not is, therefore, against the law and for good reason, having to do with expectations of assumption of liability.

In a nutshell, if the only tools you know how to use well are the tools specific to your current and no other possible employer, then you are stuck and screwed if they no longer need you. Your negotiating position is shot. That is some hyperbole but quite a bit of truth.

I think the problem isn't so much that this generation doesn't know how to tinker. That seems to be a common complaint with every generation. I think the real problem is that, with each generation, we get further and further from the life skills that sustain us. Farming, blacksmithing, animal husbandry, basic mechanics, basic electronics. All are quite accessible with a little training and practice but there is no reason or drive to know the skills. Ask a kid under 10 where the meat in his hamburger comes from. The kid won't know and his parents will yell at you for scaring their precious. So much of this situation is attributable to our restricting the manner and freedom with which children play and also due to technology and infrastructure having advanced so far that our disconnect from self-sufficiency is nearly complete.

Seriously. I got my BSEET from DeVry 20 years ago and have had, by any measure, a successful career as an engineer in the semiconductor industry. I've always been valuable enough to my employers that I've never been layed-off and have enjoyed excellent compensation. The degree had exactly the same accreditation that the local state university had (Arizona State) for it's engineering college. Furthermore, I feel that the education I received from DeVry was far more practical and useful in my career that what I saw from the traditional school and from what I see in new college grads, today. Moreover, the smaller class size and year-round trimester system closely matched my desire.

However, your perception is not unusual and that general perception held me back early, one time in the last 20 years when I was looking for a new job. Also, I am a naturally curious self-learner so my personal characteristics may have had more to do with my success than my degree.

The fact is, a few years out of graduation, your degree will matter not a whit. It is your experience and capabilities that will provide you security. Having had to hire many people into engineering over the years, I have this to say. Don't get a Bachelor's of Science degree because engineering or computer science pays well, get that degree because that's what you are or what you want to be.

In your specific case, all you need is a piece of paper that says you stuck out a degree program to satisfy your need and that of those who might hire you. If you describe yourself accurately, you won't get much from any undergraduate degree program.

If you really feel that way and can not be dissuaded, I would suggest looking at a BSEET degree instead of a BSc. Still a four year degree, still accredited, but it leaves behind most of the humanities. The ones it retains are primarily communication oriented such as English I and II, Technical Writing and Public Speaking. Just the minimum to be accredited.Those particular humanities are far more important to you than they may seem, right now, because for career advancement, communication skills are paramount.

However, the less critical humanities (history and other social sciences, etc.) are also more important than you may think. Again, for career advancement you need to interact with people. Who exactly do you think those people are? Is it possible they may have interests beyond the work at hand, that you may need to form relationships to gain what you want out of your career? Do you think they might work in other disciplines (accounting, management, sales?) Maybe you will even need to interact with customers. Being a bit worldly goes a long way towards interacting with people you hardly know, at first. If all you are fit to discuss is your work, you will be boring company, indeed, and a poor communicator.

Finally, breadth of education lends a certain variation and inspiration to your thinking. If you think Art History is all about looking at pretty pictures and memorizing names and dates, you miss the point of the class. Each of those artists had problems to solve related to the technology of the day. Many of those artists became of historical interest because they saw the world in a unique way. Many of them changed the way we see the world. As a brief example, compare the human figures present in the art of the ancient world to that of the 15th century. In that time span, humans had to learn how to change the way they thought about what they saw so that images of humans went from being symbolic to being realistic. It wasn't about pretty pictures, it was about advancing the state of thinking.

I work in a technical field. I hire technical people. I vastly prefer to hire Bachelors fresh-outs than PhD.s even though PhD.s have a far higher concentration of relevant education. The reason why is simple, outstanding Bachelor's fresh-outs have shown the ability to adapt their thinking and learn a breadth of topics. Outstanding PhD.s have shown the ability to excel in a very narrow category and please their professors specific interests. It turns out that when I hire them, within a year each is as productive as the other, but I have to pay the PhD. 2 grades higher salary. I WILL test your knowledge about many things when I interview you and at least one of the scales I will grade you on will be your out-of-the box thinking, something you will learn nothing about pursuing an on-topic only degree.

Finally, for better or worse, until you have a reputation behind you (roughly 10 years of continuous employment, with references) your resume is what will get you called in for the interview. If your resume does not let me know that you are a well-rounded individual, you will be unlikely to make it in for the first interview. For every self-taught genius that I miss out on, there are 100's of self-aggrandizing morons. I will not take your word for it that you have what it takes, I need other people to stand up and say that you've proven yourself. A BSc on your resume, at least, begins to tell me that.

I don't agree about transparency. Bitcoin is pretty darned transparent with regard to monetary policy compared to, for instance, the Federal Reserve or the IMF. What bitcoin is not, presently, is stable. That stability might only arrive once the Bitcoin money supply is worth billions rather than millions of dollars. The value of the money supply is, in fact, the measure of the integrity of the currency. It is the measure of user's confidence, defined.

Why not teach a simple buffer overflow exploit? A simple bit of C code with a scanf into a fixed length character array is your starting point. Have them craft a string to input that overflows the buffer and does something identifiable.

Commercial traffic is usually around 30,000 - 35,000 feet.

"What can Android 1.6 offer me that 2.2 can't?"

Reliability, that's what. Not that 1.6 is inherently more reliable than 2.2. It is that 1.6 has been fully verified by the manufacturer to run reliably on their hardware. There is a cost to doing such verification so for some phones, especially ones toward the end of life, verifying them for 2.2 will not happen. This is a large part of the reason why a new Android OS release isn't instantly available for your phone when Google releases to the general market.

Maybe you shouldn't next time. You are not that funny.

Reading comprehension FTW. Read a little lower to the "usage" section as I suggested. That people have (mis)used "less" that way is not in question.