Oregon Fines Man For Writing a Complaint Email Stating 'I Am An Engineer' (vice.com) 734
pogopop77 quotes a report from Motherboard: In September 2014, Mats Jarlstrom, an electronics engineer living in Beaverton, Oregon, sent an email to the state's engineering board. The email claimed that yellow traffic lights don't last long enough, which "puts the public at risk." "I would like to present these facts for your review and comments," he wrote. This email resulted not with a meeting, but with a threat from The Oregon State Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying [stating]: "ORS 672.020(1) prohibits the practice of engineering in Oregon without registration -- at a minimum, your use of the title 'electronics engineer' and the statement 'I'm an engineer' create violations." In January of this year, Jarlstrom was officially fined $500 by the state for the crime of "practicing engineering without being registered." Since the engineering board in Oregon said Jarlstrom should not be free to publish or present his ideas about the fast-turning yellow traffic lights, due to his "practice of engineering in Oregon without registration," he and the Institute for Justice sued them in federal court for violating his First Amendment rights. "I'm not practicing engineering, I'm just using basic mathematics and physics, Newtonian laws of motion, to make calculations and talk about what I found," he said. Sam Gedge, an attorney for the Institute for Justice, told Motherboard: "Mats has a clear First Amendment right to talk about anything from taxes to traffic lights. It's an instance of a licensing board trying to suppress speech."
A liberal state doing what it does best (Score:4, Insightful)
Now if this were a conservative state run by big corporations, you would also have them suing this guy for violating the proprietary intellectual property right of the algorithms used to control yellow lights. See there is no difference between conservatives and liberals. They both want to fuck you in the ass and will use any governmental, corporate monopoly, or legal statute to ensure that your ass is good and fucked. Your government wants to fuck you, Verizon wants to fuck you,
All Gore wants to fuck you. Trump wants to fuck you. HILLARY wants to fuck you. Chipoltle wants to fuck you. CNN , Fox, MSNBC and ABC also want to fuck you. You have a very desirable ass. It is best just to allow yourself to be fucked for the good of society. If you don't you will be labeled a homophobic racist child molesting homosexual terrorist.
What's really sad here... (Score:5, Insightful)
Is the imbecile who sent the fine won't be fired.
Slashdot ads (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't need to be an engineer to measure slashdot advertisements now cover a full third of the screen while stories load and now 1/3 of the horizontal space which means the comment density requires much more scrolling.
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You don't need to be an engineer to use adblock...
Re:Slashdot ads (Score:5, Funny)
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Holy shit. I thought that new white space was supposed to be filled with ads, but I didn't realize just how bad it was. And apparently we can't "subscribe" anymore, so thank uBlock...
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It's particularly awful on mobile now. The comments are about five words wide.
I hope he wins his suit (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm all for restricting the use of credentials - like 'Doctor', for instance - to people certified by the state to use them. However, that restriction should only come into play when they're using those credentials professionally or to lend authority to a fraudulent claim, which this man was not.
He was speaking the truth, arguably for the public good, and he IS an engineer, just not one registered to work professionally in the state. His background does make his study and its findings somewhat more credible to those incapable of understanding it themselves... but he's RIGHT, so he's not trying to use that title to defraud anyone.
I hope he wins his lawsuit.
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Yes, medical professionals need to be board certified. But don't confuse that with doctors.
No, they don't. Board certification is an additional step that physicians can take, and many better ones do, but it is not required to practice medicine.
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Technically, it is possible to get into med school with only three years of undergrad education, and a fraction of a percent of M.D. degrees are actually awarded to people under those circumstances, but realistically, you won't get into medical school to get an M.D. without first obtaining an undergraduate bachelor's degree. Similarly, you won't get into law school to get a J.D. degree without an undergrad degree.
You could certainly argue that they're equivalent to Master's degrees, but they most certainl
Re:I hope he wins his suit (Score:5, Insightful)
He mailed the engineering board, the licensing authority, NOT the people in charge of traffic lights or having anything to do with them. Either he was trying to get fined by claiming to be an engineer or he's a fucking moron.
Some states have very strict licensing laws with regard to the term engineer, other restrict that to the term professional engineer. Nevada blocked Novell "engineers" from claiming they are such. The law on this is pretty settled, the guy is going to be lucky to pay that fine, by claiming he was an engineer directly to the licensing board he opened himself to the boards authority and they have the authority to incarcerate engineers under their authority and they can levy some pretty hefty fines.
I still can't figure out why he mailed anything to the engineering board. They have nothing at all to do with traffic lights, their sole purpose is engineering licensing. He mailed them a letter claiming to be an engineer. He might as well have mailed the bar claiming to be a lawyer or the medical licensing board claiming to be a medical doctor. That's how stupid what he did was.
Re:I hope he wins his suit (Score:4, Insightful)
Or he was alleging malpractice on the part of the state employed transportation engineers who never should have signed off on the defective system that fines people for running a red when they did no such thing.
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Should I be fined for practicing medicine without a license? Or do you understand that I actually need to offer to provide medical services to you for that threshold to be reached?
It's a common enough term (Score:4, Interesting)
I worked in a place with a lot of people who worked in the Engineering dept. These folks designed, revised, worked with the people on the shop floor to resolve problems, etc. None of these folks were "Engineers". They were all referred to as "Engineers". It's just a common term for people who do jobs like that.
We also designed and manufactured a couple of life-critical gadgets - things which might result in a death if they failed. Those drawings had to be signed and stamped by one of our two certified Engineers. But we would have been find into oblivion, I guess, 'cause we referred to just about everyone on that floor as an Engineer.
Re:It's a common enough term (Score:5, Insightful)
The question isn't whether you refer to someone as an engineer, the question is whether they put themselves out as an engineer. You can call yourself "doctor" all you want while you're hanging out at a bar with your buddies, and no one could or would fine you. But don't try to send a letter to the state health department claiming to be a medical doctor, if you're not one.
If you do engineering, you should be recognized. (Score:5, Interesting)
As an industry trained engineer, I've been doing engineering for a few decades. From designing computers and electronics in the 80's to performing and presenting current scientific research, it's just been a part of my life, but previously, I could only refer to myself as an "Amateur Engineer". It's not that I'm not trained, I just wasn't trained in a university. Back in the 80's when I learned to design computers ( as an autodidact ) there simply wasn't a university path open for me as I was in high school at the time, and I was taken in by an R&D lab before I could study further and quickly gained skills and experience beyond what the universities were teaching at the time so never went back to university.
Still, not being able to refer to myself as an engineer caused many problem, especially when registering for government projects or work - where are best I could only call myself a "technician" despite having working in many roles where I was the lead engineer and managed other engineers. It made it pretty difficult finding new work at times also.
Now the Australian government has finally recognized that if you work as an engineer, doing the kind of work that an engineer would normally be expected to do, for a period of five cumulative years, you've proven your point and are recognized not only as an experienced engineer, but as a professional engineer.
Anyone might still be able to claim to be an engineer in Australia, but at least those who have spent years actually doing engineering as a career and were trained on-the-job have finally gained formal recognition as providers of professional services now, whether trained in a university or otherwise. And it's in legislation.
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Agreed, and being licensed as an engineer by some board in Oregon does not make one an engineer. Would be nice to have someone from MIT or Caltech to go and check their licensing requirements, and subject the board to a simple test to see if they know some engineering to begin with
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Kind of sad to take that kind of an attitude. As I mentioned, universities weren't capable of much more than "Heath Kit" lessons of the era - Yes, I did do some study at university prior to getting a job in a lab, even if I never completed a course. Meanwhile, mid-80's I was already building computers from scratch, writing the OS firmware and then finding ways to improve on the architecture of the era.
What exactly do you think I was going to learn at a university that I wasn't expected to already know in th
Most States have these Occupation Codes (Score:2, Interesting)
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I've done some subcontracting for engineering firms and most of the "engineers" I worked with did not have PE certification. There were a few senior guys with PEs who signed off everything. I don't know, but after seeing the reams of drawings/plans I find it hard to believe that this system of requiring only PEs to sign off on projects is actually achieving the risk mitigation that is claimed because I don't think the volume of work is realistically reviewable by one guy.
I'm more inclined that PE certific
Add "engineering" to the list (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Add "engineering" to the list (Score:4, Funny)
Oregon prohibits drivers from pumping their own gas as only state licensed Gas Station Engineers have received the proper education and certification to properly perform such a complex task. You can only imagine the carnage that would result if lay people would refill their own vehicles.
Trekkin' (Score:2)
"Dammit, Jim, I'm a...
TL;DR Red light cameras? (Score:2)
Old boys network at its worst (Score:5, Informative)
This is a travesty*, the shameful, traditional closing ranks of an organization to protect their own. He is lodging a complaint with the board about a potential safety issue. Even if his analysis was entirely without merit it deserves a more respectful response.
For the record: I am a licensed civil engineer (PE). I am no longer a practicing engineer (retired/inactive).
*I do think he should have gotten a note warning him about the legal ramifications of using the term "engineer". Most people don't know it requires licensing. Having a foreign engineering degree means he doesn't have any background with US licensing standards.
Even then it's stupid. Most of the engineers in the world are unlicensed. You only need a couple of PEs in most cases.
Of course these days the term is already worn as thin as kleenex and no stronger than jello. IMHO we (professional engineers) lost all claims of governance over the term "engineer" the day the engineering license boards didn't wage war over "sanitation engineer".
Not News (Score:5, Interesting)
Happened before (Score:3)
Back in the Sixties, my California employer opened a new operation in another state where it was the first major aerospace activity. A press announcement said it would bring several hundred engineers to town, and the local engineering society made pretty much the same complaint as in TFA.
We sent them a letter saying "Sorry, we don't want to infringe on the law here. Would you please send us 300 membership application forms, 300 copies of the sample P.E. exam, and the schedule for your next officer election?"
Never heard back.
Jackass (Score:3)
Frankly, for using his job to create the false impression he's an authority on something completely unrelated - he deserves what he gets.
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As if all other First World countries don't have similar professional boards.
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But how many of those countries limit the use of the title "Engineer" to people with professional registrations?
Not all states in the USA require professional registration in order to use the title "Engineer", but really, it's meaningless: professional registrations generally don't cross state lines. Is physics different from one state to another?
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Canada and several European countries. Canada is prominent because they fined Microsoft repeatedly for handing out MCSE certifications to people who aren't Engineers.
Re: And the moral of the story is... (Score:3, Informative)
Canada neither. You cannot call yourself an engineer in Ontario if you're not a member of the Professiona Engineers of Ontario. It doesn't matter if you have an engineering degree.
Just like you can't practice law or call yourself a lawyer in a province/state without having passed the bar exam even if you've passed law school.
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Re:And the moral of the story is... (Score:5, Informative)
Oregon hasn't been controlled by Republicans in 30 years. This is Democrats doing this shit.
Re:And the moral of the story is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And the moral of the story is... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Yes but (Score:5, Insightful)
Right. You are NOT a lawyer, but you are free to represent yourself. It is only practicing law if you do things for a client.
You can be an engineer without practicing engineering. You can be a Doctor without practicing medicine. A title doesn't mean anything when it comes to practicing a trade.
Oregon law: Practicing means working, not saying (Score:5, Informative)
The Oregon statute also defines what practicing engineering means under the law. The statutory definition, while overbroad, covers *working* as as engineer, not *saying* you're an engineer.
https://www.oregonlaws.org/ors... [oregonlaws.org]
1) "Practice of engineering" or "practice of professional engineering" means doing any of the following: ...
(a) Performing any professional service or creative work requiring engineering education, training and experience.
(b) Applying special knowledge of the mathematical, physical and engineering sciences to such *professional services* or creative work as consultation, investigation, testimony, evaluation, planning, design and services during construction
To any Oregon bureacrats who happen to be reading this:
I'm an engineer. I'm also a train conductor. And a unicorn. Fuck you, Oregon.
Knowing how citizens of the left coast tend to think, they'll decide that the solution to this abuse of an overbroad regulation by power-hungry bureaucrats is to create more regulations, to be wielded by more power-hungry bureacrats.
Correcting myself (Score:5, Funny)
I just read ORS 672.007. Under Oregon law saying "I'm an engineer" counts as "practicing engineering". There is still a first amendment issue.
https://www.oregonlaws.org/ors... [oregonlaws.org]
Still, I must say:
I'm the tooth fairy.
I'm an engineer.
I'm a unicorn.
Fuck you, Oregon.
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So, yes-- he should pay the fine, and re-submit the letter with the word "engineer" blocked out, and demand to be heard.
Sadly, the same would be true if you represented yourself as a barber, at least in the state of California.
Re: Correcting myself (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Reserving bare ancient common words such as "engineer" is idiocy of the highest order.
2) In the state of Oregon, James Watt would have been apparently fined for not being "good enough", so this man is in a mighty fine company.
3) Again, what brainless assmonkey came up with the idea that applying math and physics to problems requires registration?
Re: Correcting myself (Score:5, Interesting)
It came from a very pragmatic, and not terrible, goal - to ensure peer review of massive infrastructure project designs - and peer approval of their designers. It's major outcome has been that very, very few suspension bridges have ever collapsed. These are not things the free market can reasonably function at - how would consumers know whether the materials in the supporting cables are really strong enough to keep it up past 5 years ?
Now it's quite possible the regulations are overbroad if just saying "I'm an engineer" in a context where you are clearly referring to "has the relevant qualifications" and are not trying to sell a design to anybody is covered under it - it could be that there is room for a constitutional challenge which may lead to a narrowing of what such regulations can actually say.
It's unlikely though. "I'm an engineer" is a statement of fact, the supreme court has consistently held that - where a strong government or public interest exists, the state has the right to restrict false statements of fact under narrow conditions. I am pretty sure that "we don't want shopping malls to fall on our heads" count as a strong government and public interest.
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Re: Correcting myself (Score:5, Interesting)
1) do you think the bare ancient common word "doctor" should be reserved for people who have completed a doctorate degree? Or is it cool with you if some high school dropout starts calling himself a doctor and dispensing medical advice despite not having any education, experience or certification to do so?
Doctors with a doctorate? It's a funny word that way, but at least in my country, medical doctors are technically masters.
2) He was fined for claiming to be an engineer when he was not registered as such. As someone who has an engineering degree (but is not a professional engineer) I find it difficult to believe he's a legitimate engineer and yet had no idea you can't claim to be an engineer without being registered. I don't know where he was trained, but it was made expressly clear to me that I am not allowed to do that.
Of course you can. In non-stupid places. (Another thing is that "engineer" is actually also a degree level in my country, in addition to all the other meanings you know from English, but I digress...)
3) It was decided that applying math and physics to problems requires registration because if you let just any asshole that swears he knows what he's doing sign off on it, bridges and buildings collapse and people die.
So because of falling bridges, you can't solder your own radio? Isn't it much more meaningful to require certifications and such for specific projects rather than for extremely vague words such as "engineer" in a broad sweep?
Re: Correcting myself (Score:4, Interesting)
That doesn't make him an engineer in the US. Learning the science and math is only part of being an engineer. The other part is the ethics and law. I know in Canada that these make up a significant part of the testing of the professional engineer. I'm sure that in many other countries it is the same. So an engineer from Ontario can't go and claim to be an engineer in British Columbia or Oregon because the laws are different.
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That's a strawman argument. You can solder your own radio all you want, obviously.
What you can't do is offer your radio-building services to the public, claiming that your expertise as an engineer means they can trust that the radios you create will be (a) electrically safe (which is an issue once you're talking about stuff with more transmission power than a cellphone or walkie-talkie) and (b) comply with FCC regulations.
To be fair, you can actually do that. You don't need to be an Engineer for either of those. If you build your own device you can certainly sell it; you can also have the design verified by a third party (just like FCC compliance). However, it would be smart if a Certified Professional Engineer (PE) signed off on the device but again - not necessarily required - depends on the field you are working in and what your *customers* may require - that PE doesn't have to be *you* but someone you contract. Most PE'
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Also, sending this complaint to the Board in charge of enforcing these laws was a bad move. Engineering for public works, such as yellow lights, and bridges, has required more licensing than just a degree for many years.
I think he would have been fine sending such things to Senators/Representatives/etc., it's just "send to board in charge mainly of professional licensing and not much else" was not the smartest plan if you don't want a fine. That's pretty much the only thing that board is interested in, licensing, and the enforcement thereof. It has nothing to do with traffic light setting standards, or much beyond several tests full of engineering questions.
This is like sending the Arizona Bar complaints about how the traffic lights are a problem, claiming to be a lawyer in the letter, and not having any credentials they recognize as "licensed lawyer".
The board is just doing their job, just like any other time they are sent something where someone claims to be an engineer. They are paid to enforce the laws regarding engineering practice. They have no choice. If they guy sent them a copy of his complaint, it tells me the guy is a complete idiot that really doesn't understand the professional practice of engineering. I assumed someone else sent this to the board, I didn't think they guy would be that stupid.
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Demand to be heard for what? The Engineering board has nothing to do with signal timing. Their sole function is licensing professional engineers. He wants to talk signal timing he should be talking to the people who own the signals, the cities, counties and state departments of transportation.
I don't think it's "most" states. (Score:5, Insightful)
Most states have some protection around advertising yourself as a "Professional Engineer" (PE) or similar term that implies you are licensed by the state to provide engineering services to the public. Only a few states apply this sort of orthodoxy to the general term "engineer", and the enforcement tends to be pretty lax.
Check on LinkedIn, there are several million people listing themselves as some form of Engineer--while most of them have an engineering degree from an accredited university, the vast majority of them do not have any PE licensure, for the simple reason that in many engineering fields there's just no reason get a state license.
Intel is in Oregon--and they employ thousands of degreed engineers and they definitely aren't PEs. Those job postings are advertised as "engineers" and the employees use the term "engineer" on their business cards and LinkedIn profiles.
Re:Correcting myself (Score:5, Informative)
This is common language for most states; the title "engineer" is reserved, and representing yourself as one without being registered in the state you "practice" engineering is a violation.
No, it isn't. What's reserved is the title of Professional Engineer (PE), which he didn't claim to hold.
Re:Correcting myself (Score:5, Interesting)
That doesn't seem to hold up in court, though.
https://scholar.google.com/sch... [google.com]
In that case, a woman completed a four year post-doctorate fellowship in psychology at Yale, had her Ph.D. for education published in a psychology journal, taught psychology at college, studied under psychologists, and was a member of the American Psychological Association for years. She did not, however, have a license to practice psychology in Texas. She would sometimes give psychological advice and, when she ran for a political position, she said she was an attorney and psychologist on her website. The Texas State Board of Examiners of Psychologists demanded she stop saying she was a psychologist because she wasn't licensed to be one in Texas.
The court basically said it was an infringement of her first amendment rights. She wasn't giving advice to a client. Her background suggests calling herself a psychologist is not misleading. In fact, the court said that commercial speech is speech that "proposes" a commercial transaction, not speech for profit. So even receiving compensation for speech isn't necessarily commercial in nature and can be protected.
So, at the end of it, he probably has a case that his speech is protected. There seems to be precedent.
Re:Correcting myself (Score:5, Insightful)
Oregon state law is wrong, and in violation of the first amendment.
Next topic.
Re: Correcting myself (Score:3)
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As soon as you get a degree for engineering then you are an engineer in the perspective of most jurisdictions (common outside the US).
It's only if you claim "Licensed Engineer" while not having the title that there is a problem.
Re:Oregon law: Practicing means working, not sayin (Score:5, Funny)
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I have the degrees and pay stubs to prove it.
According to Oregon your degrees don't mean jack shit unless you qualified and registered as an engineer in the state of Oregon.
Re:Yes but (Score:5, Insightful)
He IS an engineer, he is not practicing in the state of Oregon. Practicing is the part that requires registration, so this falls somewhere between a quick cash grab and wanting to shut him up.
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Practicing requires that you be hired or at least offer your services for hire.. He was not and did not.
Re: Yes but (Score:4, Insightful)
Does the state even have statutes for electronics and/or computer and/or software engineer? I am or have been assigned the title per an employer for all of the above, with a degree for the first but the locality here only has registrations up to electrical engineering (they got stuck somewhere in the late 40s I guess).
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>locality here only has registrations up to electrical engineering
Take a look at the subjects. It's all power distribution and 3 phase stuff. The electronics I do is all around 0.8V these days.
To get a professional license to do engineering in microelectronics would require that you study heavy duty power electronics.
Re:Yes but (Score:5, Interesting)
Thought experiment. Let's suppose you're a CIVIL engineer -- the type of engineer the regulations are intended to target. You're on vacation in Oregon, and you notice a serious structural fault in a bridge which means that it is in imminent danger of collapse.
Under this interpretation of the term "practice engineering" you wouldn't be able to tell anyone because you're not licensed to practice engineering in Oregon. In fact anyone who found an obvious fault -- say, a crack in the bridge -- would be forbidden to warn people not to use it until it had been looked at.
Which is ridiculous. Having and expressing an opinion, even a professionally informed opinion, isn't "practicing engineering". Practicing engineering means getting paid -- possibly in some form other than money. At the very least it means performing the kind of services for which engineers are normally paid.
A law which prevented people from expressing opinions wouldn't pass constitutional muster unless it was "narrowly tailored to serve a compelling public interest" -- that's the phrase the constitutional lawyers use when talking about laws regulating constitutionally protected activities. In this case the public interest is safety, which would be served by a law which prevented unqualified people from falsely convincing people that a structure was safe. But there is no compelling interest in preventing an engineer from warning the public about something he thinks is dangerous or even improper.
So if the law means what they claim it to mean, it's very likely unconstitutional.
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Also "engineer" is a very vague term. it covers a wide range of jobs. For instance "software engineer" isn't normally considered an "engineer", but there are also "computer engineers" that sort of straddle the border. I know electrical engineers that probably would never pass the basic engineering license exams in some states because it's been far too long since they had to use the mathematics on the tests.
A licensed civil engineer probably doesn't know much about traffic lights but someone who designs, bu
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At 500$ it really isn't a cash grab so much as it is a middle finger and telling him to fsck off.
Re:Yes but (Score:4, Insightful)
So quick cash grab then.
Re:Yes but (Score:5, Insightful)
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As soon as you grab the knife and fork with the intent to perform surgery, you are practicing.
As for traffic lights, actually there *IS* a conspiracy over the length of yellows in many places, especially where there are cameras. Not big conspiracies, a bunch of little ones.
Re:Trust me I am a doctor (Score:5, Insightful)
But they can regulate the conditions under which you are allowed to practice your trade as an engineer.
Regarding this particular case it's all legal skullduggery in order to shut him up instead of taking his complaint serious.
To me this tells it all. Are you going to help them with that?
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"Why didn't he ever register as an engineer"
For certain kinds of work that fall under "electrical engineer", there is no certification because it cannot be marketed to the public. For example, I do integrated circuit design in processes which require a $10 billion fab to manufacture. No individual is going to have a $10 billion fab laying around looking for electrical engineers to feed it designs. There's is no point to advertising these skill to the public as engineering, so no one bothered to come up with
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How is firmware timing of stoplights outside of the realm of an electrical engineer?
Re: Yes but (Score:5, Funny)
Spotted the Redflex employee!
Re: Yes but (Score:5, Interesting)
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Public discussion alone of suggestion of errors, principles, calculations and opinions should clearly not be forestalled by such suppressive action. The fine sounds like a power grab in two direction
Re: Yes but (Score:5, Funny)
He's and EE not a Civil or Mechanical engineer. He's got no business at all using his engineering degree to discuss things way outside the realm of his field. The state was 100% correct and should have fined him in the thousands.
Unless you're a civil rights attorney, you have no business at all using your degree (if you even have one) to discuss free speech. If it's not within your field of study, then you obviously can't know anything about it since civil rights are very technical and specialized and require years of study before you can even utter one word about the topic.
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There is one key difference between his example and yours.
Who is the GP discussing free speech with? A random on the internet?
Oregon would not fine someone who was just discussing things among others, even peers. What he did do was an analysis which was sent to the owner of the specific problem.
It's the difference between our discussion here, and walking into the court house and discussing it to the judge during the hearing. Would your free speech protect you there?
Re: Yes but (Score:3)
Electronics engineering is a valid degree in some non-US countries. I have a degree in it and was by virtue of it allowed to do certain things like program PLCs in a factory or make or repair robot arms.
In the US certification hasn't caught up to the electronics or computer fields or you get a very generic "professional engineer" license even though every help desk jockey gets engineer appended to their job position - not sure how Oregon takes that.
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I hate to be overly negative, but based upon my 30 years of experience of writing software for a living, your level of education is usually inversely proportional to your skill level as an engineer.
And yes, I did attend a very expensive and highly-rated engineering school at age 18, but I had been programming since I was a pre-teen.
Re:(sigh) You people still think you're engineers (Score:4, Insightful)
Several textbook fallacies there:
*appeal to accomplishment
*holier than thou
*appeal to ridicule
*ad hominem(s)
All to support censorship based on an allusion to ("think of the children") perceived harm of someone not so ordained into this clergy you mention misinforming the masses by whistleblowing on the system while not having a certain piece of paper stating he has officially been indoctrinated into a certain groupthink category.
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Not all of us incorrectly use that title. As a rule, I always call myself a "programmer" (or these days, I guess a "senior programmer" is more accurate) rather than a "software engineer". I think it's a more honest description of what I do.
I don't get my panties in a wad about what other programmers call themselves, but I can understand why certified/licensed engineers don't appreciate the watering down of a title they worked hard for. I guess it's the same sort of annoyance programmers feel when someone
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Or Excel a reporting solution...
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Your entire post is argument from authority. Just because someone has the blessing of some shitty organization of gasbags doesn't say shit about his abilities. If what you said was true, there'd be absolutely no engineering catastrophes on record simply because no one without said blessing is allowed anywhere near anything critical. Of course, we know this is not true.
An engineer is someone who designs machines. If you design machines, you are, or at least have been, an engineer. Someone who's designed lot
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The story is about an EE.....not some dude who said he is a Software Engineer or an network Engineer....
I know MCSE and MSCE look similar but they have different implications. An MSCE is a certified engineer with many years of post-bachelor education and practical training whereas MCSE is some Microsoft thing. Night and day difference. Like comparing the neighborhood drug dealer to a MD at a hospital. They both sort of do the same thing but good luck suing the drug dealer.
Re:(sigh) You people still think you're engineers (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Yeah... but no. (Score:4, Insightful)
If he wins the suit, there's nothing to stop people from claiming to be medical doctors and doing all sorts of (more) harm to society.
Just present the facts without claiming to be an engineer.
The thing is, he WAS an engineer, the fine was for practicing in the state without a license, even though that necessitates a transaction of some sort. They basically fined him for stating his education level in an e-mail as an excuse to punish him for disagreeing with them.
Re:Yeah... but no. (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps it's not illegal to say "I'm a doctor" as long as you don't then go on to offer a medical opinion or perform a medical procedure?
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Perhaps it's not illegal to say "I'm a doctor" as long as you don't then go on to offer a medical opinion
But he did claim to be a "doctor" offer a "medical" opinion.
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Perhaps it's not illegal to say "I'm a doctor" as long as you don't then go on to offer a medical opinion
But he did claim to be a "doctor" offer a "medical" opinion.
I'm not trying to say that literally you legally can't claim to be a member of one profession and offer any opinion or perform any procedure that's even loosely related to that profession. I would assume that only in the case where offering an opinion or performing a procedure would be considered to having been done in the role of performing that profession would it be illegal.
eg. Claiming to be a pilot and saying the new Airbus is crap (probably) isn't illegal. I believe that claiming to be an engineer and
Re: (Score:2)
Licensing was invented by professional guilds solely to lock in the profit
You go on believing that until some incompetent fraud designs something that kills your loved ones. Then you will be the one whining about the government not protecting it's citizens.
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I don't know whether it's illegal to claim to be a doctor if you're not offering a medical opinion. But it certainly is illegal to claim to be a doctor and then offer a medical opinion. Was this guy not claiming to be offering an opinion as an engineer?
What you would have to be suggesting, if this is meant as a defense of this guy, is that you can claim to be a doctor, offer an opinion about a medical topic, then say "well, I didn't directly say that the opinion about the medical topic was being made as a
Re:Yeah... but no. (Score:4, Insightful)
Afaik the question is wether he was practicing as an engineer. Offering a medical opinion is part of practicing as a medical doctor. If he claimed to be a pilot and offered an opinion on what he thought the pros and cons of a certain model of aircraft were I wouldn't expect that to be illegal as it isn't part of the role of practicing the profession of piloting an aircraft to offer opinions of the various qualities of different aircraft.
The question I would ask is "Is writing an unsolicited letter to the state engineering board regarding the safety issues resulting from the length of a yellow traffic light considered part of the profession of engineering?"
Re: (Score:3)
The engineering board does one thing, they license engineers. That's it, sending them a letter about anything while claiming in the letter to be an engineer is the equivalent of claiming to be any type of registered professional directly to the people that do the registering. It's beyond strange. This is like going before a judge and claiming to be a lawyer, that'll get you jail and a fine.
Re:Yeah, go ahead, blame TRUMP! (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh. What does Trump have to do with this?
This started in 2014 and finished up on 12 January 2017. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but Trump didn't swear in until the 20th.
So the entirety of this sad debacle in the suppression of freedom of speech happened on Obama's watch.
Not that it was necessarily Obama's fault either. But, by your brain-dead "logic" it is...
This is about a collusion between state government agencies to shut someone up who is attempting to alert the public to one or more agencies' shady practices at the expense of said public.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Well there are more reasons for that hope. Contrary to what so many people believe - being president is nothing like heading a company, and being good at one does not suggest you'll be good at the other, indeed the two jobs are almost exact opposites in the skills they require. I'll run through the differences just now - but it's worth noting that the republicans don't seem to recognize the importance of those differences and keep running businessmen for president. 3 of their last 5 candidates were business
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Yes, and we'll be one step closer to mimicking the heavy handed bureaucratic processes of the old Soviet Union.
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First I've heard of it, but yes, there are FE and PE exams for "electrical and computer engineering". I wonder how many hundreds of dollars they want to register you.
Re: Do Software Engineers Need to Register? (Score:3)
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Yes, you would be illegal. It's the same in my province and they actually enforce it.
Big lawyers? Microsoft also had big lawyers and they lost.
https://www.oiq.qc.ca/en/media... [oiq.qc.ca]
They updated their web site and now use the term Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert (MCSE) instead of Engineer.
https://www.microsoft.com/fr-c... [microsoft.com]