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Oregon Man Fined For Writing 'I Am An Engineer' Temporarily Wins Right To Call Himself An 'Engineer' (vice.com)
Mats Jarlstrom, an electrical engineer fined by the Oregon engineering board for calling himself an "engineer" and talking about traffic lights, has been granted the temporary right by a judge to both publicly call himself an "engineer" and talk about traffic lights. Jason Koebler reports via Motherboard: Last month, Jarlstrom sued the engineering board for violating his First Amendment rights, and Tuesday a federal judge gave Jarlstrom the temporary right to call himself an engineer, pending the results of his case. "Plaintiff Jarlstrom may study, communicate publicly about, and communicate privately his theories relating to traffic lights throughout the pendency of this litigation as long as [his] communications occur outside the context of a paid employment or contractual relationship," Anna Brown, a federal district court judge for the district of Oregon, ordered. He "may describe himself publicly and privately using the word 'engineer' throughout the pendency of this litigation." Jarlstrom's attorneys say this is a promising sign and a "critical first step in protecting Oregonians' First Amendment rights."
This is surely a triumph for sanitation engineers everywhere!
seems to prevail. But until a decision has been made I remain sceptical.
This guy got fined for exercising his constitutional rights. And now you dare to strip him of his right to get his day in court? That I call frivolous.
He is an engineer just not registered in their state from the previous Slashdot post. Think it's more a registration body cracking it over title usage rather than the problems he's addressing.
The first time I saw that was probably more than a decade ago. Right after I was kicked out of an electrical engineering degree.
Except the dude is an engineer. He's an electrical engineer
SJW n. One who posts facts.
you ignorant cunts.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
well, as long as you didn't say that you're a registered and licensed professionally qualified state of the art philosophiae doctor, we can still assume that you're a guy who almost not even close to being registered and completely not recognized or known by anyone doctor.
Yeah thats right. Hes actually identified a fault in the timing logic in the traffic light system, and in describing it and trying to get it fixed, mentioned he is an electrical engineer. And he is, but not in that state. So he was fined and is fighting that.
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/17/04/25/2129234/oregon-fines-man-for-writing-a-complaint-email-stating-i-am-an-engineer
As a doctor, purple heart recipient, and inventor of both the cure for cancer and this one weird way to power your car with water that the oil companies don't want you to know, I thank you for your support to prevent the government from restricting my claims.
Did you get that degree in Oregon? If not I assume you also support yourself being fined.
That or you are a hypocrite.
Except that he isn't because he isn't licensed.
He might have an engineering degree, and he might design stuff, but under Oregon law you must be licensed to be an engineer.
In a sense, this attacks any point he was trying to make: if he doesn't know the law about his own profession, what does he know about traffic lights?
But he only called himself an engineer. Not Professional Engineer or Registered Engineer.
The single word engineer itself doesn't have specific protection as far as I know.
I am also not sure that trying to uphold a certain prestige to the word engineer is a good thing.
While I've not seen it misused that much I've seen plenty of opinion pieces where the author uses their Ph.D. as an way to assert authority despite it being in a completely different subject.
If people have respect for the word engineer in itself then they will make the assumption that a mechanical engineer will be more qualified to design an electrical circuit than a layman or that an electrical engineers opinion on a bridge matters.
Without the full title the word engineer itself is meaningless and we are better off if more people realize this and uses it that way.
Not, under Oregon law you must have an engineering licence to call yourself a licenced engineer, and he didn't call himself that.
> I disagree with the judge allowing him to use the title, as it dilutes the prestige and the specific legal meaning of the Professional Engineer designation.
No it doesn't. There is a distinct difference between Professional Engineer and Engineer. If you graduated from university with a Bachelor of Engineering, then you are an engineer, and I personally don't see any reason why you shouldn't be able to go around saying you're an engineer.
You aren't a P. Eng, because that requires further tests and licensing, but you are an engineer.
Having an engineering degree makes you an engineer, in the same way that having a PhD makes you a doctor, or having a masters in the universe makes you He-Man. If Oregon wants to legislate having a specific certification to call yourself a very specific title and practice a very specific profession, fine but they can't change the English language where the word engineer has already meant something for centuries, nor can the change the fact that he practices electrical engineering in a professional manner.
>if you don't know legalese you can't know anything about engineering.
That's the whole point of engineering, either things work or they dont, his formulas are correct, or they're wrong. it doesn't matter if it's coming from albert einstein or al the janitor. He shouldn't be allowed to call himself an engineer, but prohibiting him from engineering on his own time/money is insane.
He didn't lie about his qualifications. He is fully qualified as an engineer - with a degree from a top-notch university.
He just isn't certified as one in Oregon because he has never worked as one there.
He did not present himself as one in any scenario where government has reasonable justification to restrict the usage of the title. He wasn't trying to sell a bridge design or anything. He was just publicly commenting on public infrastructure and stated the qualifications he has to form those opinions - he didn't try to get employment.
It is a much more complicated case than you let on.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Reminds me of a Jewish clerk in a Swiss patent office who dabbled in physics and thought he was a Physicist.
I agree with you.
I'm an engineering technologist and a licensed tradesman. I've designed systems, and saved companies millions of dollars or helped protect lives. Regardless, I'm not an engineer.
If I want to become an engineer, I can do the same as the engineers did: go through the process, write my FE exam, check all the boxes and get my stamp in the mail.
Part of the job is knowing the rules and sticking to them. Even if this guy wins his case, the first Google hit on his name is going to be "unlicensed designer charged for breaking Oregon law about use of title". That would definitely give me pause if I was hiring the guy. If he can't follow a simple rule like "don't call yourself an engineer if you're not licensed", what other rules is he going to break in the workplace? Am I going to have to go to bat for this idiot because he thinks seat belts don't apply to him? Or that the national electrical code is merely a suggestion?
There should be a distinction between an engineer (as in any person performing engineering actions or with such knowledge) and a diplomed 'Engineer' (a formal title received upon graduation from specific studies). Similar distinction already exists in Germany and other countries with "Dipl.Ing." or Poland with "mgr inz." - these are formal titles.
Some jobs would require "Dipl.Ing.", you could be still sued for naming yourself "Dipl.Ing." without completing specific education, but you may freely call yourself an engineer.
Yeah, your argument really makes sense. Traffics lights has everything to do with law of a profession. Thanks for your valuable contribution.
if he doesn't know the law about his own profession, what does he know about traffic lights?
I'd rather have the one with knowledge about traffic lights than legalese. There are too many around already who haven't got a clue about the real subject of their profession.
> under Oregon law you must be licensed to be an engineer
To work as an engineer, you mean.
if he doesn't know the law about his own profession, what does he know about traffic lights?
Perhaps he realises that this state law is unconstitutional so the state can stick it up their ass.
okay so everybody just switch to "I am engineering".
thats great. by the way, I want to know if slashdot servers are hosted in oregon so I can know what to call myself.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
False. That only applies if you are practising the trade in that one state. Nice try though, troll.
Read into it. The guy is an engineer. The issue was that he wasn't a member of some weird US cartel system he probably didn't even know about.
He shouldn't be allowed to call himself an engineer
The guy is an engineer. Why should he have to lie about that fact?
To elaborate, his education granted him the credentials.
Interesting. Now I believe lawyers are also effectively registered in one state. So has a lawyer ever been fined for referring to themselves as a lawyer in a state other than that in which they are registered?
Just wondering if this has only been applied to engineers or has it also been applied to other professions.
There is no constitutional duty to tell the truth. You can tell your date you have a 12 inch cock for all the constitution cares. It limits when the government can get all up in your business.
At the same time, I wonder what is bothering these guys more? Is it because he said he was an engineer, but not licensed in the state, or that he found a fault in the system and they are trying to hide this, but ended up with the Streissand effect?
At the same time there probably should be a distinction between licensed engineer vs engineer? Just because he isn't licensed, does this negate his engineering degree, even if he can't perform in said jurisdiction. Some place the distinction appears to come down to whether the said degreed expert can have an opinion vs sign off on that opinion.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
There's no right to defraud in the constitution. Care to point it out? There's no right to misrepresent yourself either.
I think we'll stick with troll... you are a troll. and a fuckwit.
Well, he got his degree in Sweden, it says he's an engineer. He's Swedish and can call himself Swedish without a license. Since he's an engineer, he's also calling himself an engineer but may have been unaware of the different legal protection attached to the title in Oregon.
The main problem is that English calls anybody working with an engine for an engineer. In addition to the university trained people, it includes car mechanics, train drivers, anybody working the engine room on a ship and likely many more people. If you look at Swedish (or Danish, or German or many other languages), those types of engineers are all translated into different words. This means when Mats calls himself engineer, the word he is thinking of in Swedish applies only to engineers with a minimum of a bachelor's degree from a university of a reputation where the quality is known to be ok. Generally it's accepted from anything we considers universities, but if you had a 12 week education to repair cars in Africa, don't count on it to be recognized as an engineering diploma, even if Africans call it that (yeah, there are people claiming to be engineers with such a background)
In countries where university trained engineers have a special name, claiming to be one without having the degree is illegal as it is viewed the same as faking your identity or faking documents. This means unlike English, just saying engineer carries the weight that you went through university, which means you know about math and scientific approaches etc regardless of if you studied computer science, buildings or chemistry.
In other words if Mats had written under Swedish law, he would be allowed to write as he did and it would have to be viewed as an expert contribution. It's my impression that Oregon once tried to do the same, which is a good thing, but their implementation is severely broken as it never dealt with the underlying problem of using words for each type of engineer. Also I suspect somebody in administration spotted this as a potential way of fining people, hence a new income.
One interesting note on this is that as an engineer, I get less respect in English. "Master of science in Electrical Engineering" is too long to use naturally in normal conversation and people outside the university environment doesn't really get the title anyway and just view using such a long title as a sign of being a snob. All they get is that it's something about electrical engineering. Might as well be an electrician, who can install an electric stove for me. Using a protected title avoids that problem. I noticed this particularly when I was in Germany. One word and people instantly viewed me with more respect than the word engineer has ever given me. Granted it's hard to tell apart from the impression I leave from being able to communicate well in German, which apparently isn't that common with foreigners on temporal visits.
okay so everybody just switch to "I am engineering".
thats great. by the way, I want to know if slashdot servers are hosted in oregon so I can know what to call myself.
Call me Leyte Fordinna.
It looks like a very heavy handed and transparent tactic to drive off someone who dared to complain. I don't think they actually cared about his qualifications and title, it was just the method used that time in using the legal system as a blunt instrument against a citizen who was "stirring up trouble". This time it just didn't manage to scare him off.
Most mechanical engineering degrees do require some electrical engineering courses, so a mechanical engineer would be more qualified than someone who has no knowledge of the subject. They just wouldn't be as qualified as an electrical engineer.
Your point about electrical engineers and bridges is pretty valid though as there is no training beyond college physics for engineers. My electrical engineering degree at least didn't cover any structural engineering except at the mostly subatomic level (an EE materials and devices course).
Never saw that one during my engineering degree.
But I do remember "Economics degree. Please take one." written above the toilet paper dispenser in one toilet.
The only bit of specific engineering mockery I recall (it was a long time ago) is it being said that the Yellow Pages entry for boring said "See civil engineers".
You still have to clean up your room before you can go online.
rewriting history since 2109
Imagine that! A loud mouth moron like Opportunist thinks he got the whole story from some headlines and reading part of a summary. No different from the "Science!" crowd that thinks that they understand science from watching garbage on the Science Channel.
Knee-jerk reactions from self-serving wannabe intelligentsia. Does it get any better than that? Certainly much more dangerous and damaging than the religious masses, at least those people admit that they don't know and don't care to know.
Not meaning to offend any 'official' engineers here - I understand the work that goes into an engineering degree, and I understand the legal and ethical need to protect the title from pretenders. What I really don't get is that people automatically place more trust in the opinions of an engineer, (or a doctor, etc), than people who don't hold the title, yet have similar or greater accomplishments in the field.
I've spent my life working in the electronics field. I once worked for a degreed electrical engineer whose idea of heatsinking a component on a PCB was blobbing some heatsink compound on it. (No, I'm not kidding). This same engineer casually implemented some resistor-diode logic between 74HC logic inputs and the outside world, without so much as a couple of protection diodes from the inputs to the supply rails. In this case the 'outside world' happened to be various points in the noisy, spikey electrical system of a large military vehicle. The design was being field-tested just prior to production. 'Nuff said. A bit later in my career, I worked for a guy who, (thankfully), actually merited his engineer's title. But he told me about an engineer who once worked for him, who couldn't understand why trying to start his car with a 12-volt lantern battery wasn't working.
There are smart, knowledgeable, competent people, and there are incompetent fools. In my experience, a degree, (or lack thereof), is no kind of an indication of which category a given person falls into.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
His education is a degree, while professional licensing requires 2 competency tests as designed by appropriate professional societies, several years of professional practice under licensed engineers, and proof of continuing education. It also stipulates that a licensed engineer does work outside of his area of competency. A microelectronics engineer would not be credentialed to work on power systems. If traffic lights are not within his area, then he is still wrong. I'm a licensed mechanical engineer that tinkers in electronics, but I can't professionally tell someone to reverse a pair of wires when it is blatantly obvious. I can suggest in an unofficial capacity, but I would never go before a government board and present improper credentials for a given problem, no matter how competent I may be.
Wrong! What poor education we have in the US.
Bill of Rights only applies to the state and federal govt. See United States v. Cruikshank. At first it only applied to federal govt.
You think you have first amendment on here or any other private webserver? Nope. You guys need to do some learning.
He's not an engineer in the field he's arguing about, traffic engineering. And he's not registered as required by state law to perform engineering work, which his submittal is claimed to be. And now due to this court ruling anybody can call themselves an engineer.
Earnest trainspotters in Britain (and we are many) mostly would have preferred in another, steam-age, life to have been long-apprenticed 'engine-drivers' (Brit-English), but have always understood that that function in the USA has been called 'engineer' for a century. How do such (esteemed) USians describe their job-title today?
There's no constitutional duty to let someone walk around calling themselves an engineer either.
This board levying the fine was deputized by the State, so, yeah, First Amendment.
Actually, according to cases tried by SCOTUS, lying is protected by the Constitution, but it depends on the type of lie, if it was done with malice, and other factors.
Just another day in Paradise
In the world of engineering, like in Law and Medicine, getting a degree does not automatically confer a title. There is an examination process to get a license to practice engineering in all states and many countries. For any work which involves signing off plans like construction plans, a licensed engineer's signature is required for approval. For some disciplines like Electrical Engineering it is not essential to a career to get one as they rarely will sign off on construction plans. However as an electrical engineer, what expertise would that give him when it comes to traffic patterns and traffic light timing? I don't see anything that would qualify him to provide any expertise in these matters.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Under Oregon law, you have to be a licensed engineer to call yourself one publicly. For other states, they add clarifications like "professional engineer" or "licensed engineer"
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Interesting. Now I believe lawyers are also effectively registered in one state. So has a lawyer ever been fined for referring to themselves as a lawyer in a state other than that in which they are registered?
No. A lawyer is licensed to practice in a state. Other states recognize that lawyer's license in his/her state; however, to practice in another state, a lawyer has to get licensed if they intend to practice law. All states will grant exceptions if the lawyer is only trying one case and will grant temporary status. I believe the term is hac pro vice.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I'm a engineer from Virginia. If I go to Oregon, and tell someone I'm an engineer, I'd apparently be breaking Oregon law because I'm not licensed in Oregon. That doesn't make me any less of an engineer, it only makes me ineligible to practice engineering when I cross the Oregon state line. These officials are clearly stepping all over this engineer's constitutional right to call himself an engineer, and if you don't believe me, you can simply google some case law at the SCOTUS level.
Just another day in Paradise
I am the Master of my Domain
Just another day in Paradise
I don't remember anywhere that Jarlstrom was banned from talking about traffic lights. What he was fined for doing was using the term "engineer" to describe himself while doing it. In this particular case, the State Board told Jarlstrom very early in his complaint that the traffic lights in question were under the control of the city (I think it was Beaverton) and that he needed to bring the issue up with them.
Something less reported was that Jarlstrom was interested in an upcoming seat on the State Board; however, the position he wanted requires a license which he does not have. I believe there are positions that do not require licenses but they are not open at the moment.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I have both undergraduate and graduate degrees in engineering disciplines. I even have a doctorate in electrical engineering. I am more than qualified to say that I am an engineer. I cannot, however, say that I am a professional/licensed engineer, since I have not taken the PE exam.
It's not that difficult to understand the distinction between the two terms.
When someone is titled as an engineer in one location, and they cross the Oregon border, they don't suddenly become a non-engineer. They simply are not allowed to practice, or be called a PE. This is a clear case of officials who fucked up, but don't like being called out for it, so let's screw with the guy who did.
Just another day in Paradise
Excellent, so if we catch a lawyer posting online we can have them fined!
It's arrogant presumption for some engineering board to claim ownership of a word. I'm a Network Engineer. Did I go to the engineering school, take the classes and tests related to levers and gears? No. But when it comes to computer Networks I will do circles around some snot nose kid that thinks those degrees are the most important thing.
Who gives a fuck?
Apparently you do if you're commenting on an article about whether or not an engineer can call themselves one.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
He said he was an engineer which to me indicates he has studied in a field of engineering. This means to me that his point is validated somewhat as he has a fairly decent understanding of physics, is quite capable at problem solving and is most likely fairly decent at math. In other words, he's not just some yahoo throwing number out.
Where I would have a problem was if he'd claimed he was a traffic engineer or if he'd claimed he was a PE. But he didn't call himself either of those. And in most areas, the only actually legally defined engineer is a PE. You can call yourself an engineer all day long and be fine, but if you start calling yourself a PE, then you get bitch slapped. Granted my bias is I hold a BS in EE, an MS in CS and refer to myself as a software engineer because though idiots would like to call me a "programmer" fact is I spend large amounts of time creating architecture diagrams, defining interfaces and generally coming up with designs before I get to coding, which all feels very similar to my days as an EE. Yes, I even pull out math quite often to prove my algorithms are correct for data manipulation.
He Did Nothing Wrong.
and I know, I'm an engineer and a lawyer.
-Dr. Admiral Anne Nonymous, Esquire, Ph.D, M.D, P.Eng, D.M.A I.R.Q
That depends on the state. But yes report any lawyers to your state board.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Back when I was a kid my parents had a player piano and one of the rolls was "Ramblin' Wreck From Georgia Tech" which was probably the one we used the most.
Despite not having attended Georgia Tech my father taught my siblings and me the words....
"I'm a ramblin' wreck from Georgia Tech and a hell of an engineer"
He did have an engineering degree but never worked as an engineer. I did eventually earn an engineering degree not from GA Tech too, but also never worked as an engineer.
We totally got away with it too.
And we've done quite well at not being engineers.
You comment is baloney, and you're full of it. He did not call himself a "Professional Engineer". Stuff it.
However as an electrical engineer, what expertise would that give him when it comes to traffic patterns and traffic light timing? I don't see anything that would qualify him to provide any expertise in these matters.
Perhaps he studied and learned?
...Is that one real? I mean, there is really a Traffic engineer as a carreer? At much seems more like an odd specialization.
Also, giving an opinion shouldn't get a person fined, they didin't pay him for that and he seems to didn't ask for money so he didn't do any work.
And you clearly have no argument.
Actually, that depends. In some states you can call yourself an engineer. What you can't do, without getting certified, is call yourself a Professional Engineer. There actually is a difference.
He shouldn't be allowed to call himself an engineer
The guy is an engineer. Why should he have to lie about that fact?
Yup, the term "licensed engineer" just springs to mind.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Everyone knows that EEs aren't REAL Engineers.
Until they pass the EIT, are mentored for 5+ yrs and pass for the PE exam.
Just like all other engineers in most other states.
I think you aren't terribly familiar with how the PE system works. I hold a BSEE. If I were to become a licensed engineer I would demonstrate to the state that I understand EE. Yet I would be granted a license that gives me permission to act in any area of engineering I "feel competent in". That's actually how PE works. I knew a guy who was a PE in aerospace, knew nothing about building design, yet would sign off on blueprints.
If you extrapolated, if licensed PE means an engineer can choose where he's competent and can professionally work, than certainly it can be applied that an unlicensed engineer can choose where he unprofessionally gives his opinions.
"Is that one real? I mean, there is really a Traffic engineer as a career?"
Absolutely. It's transportation engineering and is a branch of civil engineering. Like most engineering professions, it generally requires a four year degree, a four year internship, and passing two eight hour examinations to legally practice.
You must be skipping on your meds. Go back to the nice people with the white coats. So many post, all with the same blathering, idiotic content.
Fuck off, nutjob.
In most states and provinces, the test is calling yourself an engineer where the "professional engineering" can reasonably be assumed by the general public. Dropping the title "engineer" to reinforce your point when discussing a technical subject, meets the test of implying professional engineering.
Sorry this hurts all you Slashdotters that have been calling yourselves engineers and architects without earning the title for the last 15 years but there are, you know, laws and such controlling this subject.
Nope. He has an Electrical Engineering Degree from and was an airplane camera mechanic, but at no point was he ever licensed as an engineer.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Oh man, the amount of stupid in this quote. Seriously dude, it's math.
So much wrong here. No, you don't have to add PE to the title engineer for it to be the illegal use of the term. Using the title engineer where professional engineering can reasonably be assumed is the test. He crossed the line on this by using "engineer" to reinforce his opinions on a technical subject. I hope it costs him a small fortune in court.
I am very familiar with how the PE system works. I hold an engineering degree. If someone with a PE in aerospace wants to sign blueprints, it's his neck. And his company's too. If something went wrong, one of the first questions asked would be why they would have an aerospace engineer sign off on those blue prints.
As for working in any area of engineering, that's bullshit. As a EE you know jack shit about how a distillation column works or what the stresses on a bridge are. You can work for a chemical company or a construction company but I suspect those companies would never hire you for anything other than EE.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Traffic lights are easy. I worked for APAC in the southern USA. They produce asphalt, concrete for paving roads from Texas to Virginia. They also build bridges. But in the late 1980's they also produced a traffic control system. I took over the system in 1992. It used simple embedded computers in I believe if I remember correctly an A100 card cage.
I was their software developer developing a system to replace a worker on the asphalt plant pulling levers at the top of the asphalt tower to not only produce a correct mix of rock and AC oil to asphalt but to dump the mix into a truck. We(plant services) developed a system using actuators and electronic scales to automate the plant.
But every now and then, I would update the traffic control system to do special things for small town middle America. It is a timer based system that counts down a timer to change lights. Depending on the time of day, an induction coil in the road itself is also used to detect if a car or multiple of cars are waiting.
It you want the light to change for you faster, stop at edge farthest from the intersection. Every second, inch up. Keep it up till you are in the middle of the coil. The system measures the inductance every second. Every time the reading changes to a higher value it registers a new vehicle. The more vehicles registered the quicker the light will change.
Traffic control systems are not rocket science, especially to a lowly just out of college computer programmer in the late 1980's
Just because you have a brain doesn't mean you have a well functioning (or in Trump's case, functioning) one.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
"there was fuck all need for him to claim himself a professional engineer"
He did not claim to be a "professional engineer", he claimed to be an engineer. He is an engineer, he has a degree in engineering and does engineering for his work. The powers that be in Oregon got upset about this guy pointing out that those so called "professional" engineers that work for the state did not do their job correctly. They thought they could shut him up with a fine. It blew up in their face and now the distinction between "engineer" and "professional engineer" will be set in law with this case.
I suspect they pulled this stunt before to make people keep quiet about where they screwed up but this guy fought back. If there is anyone making a mockery of being a "professional engineer" it is the people in the Oregon government.
shut the fuck up already you stupid cunt neckbeard Cheetos eating dick stain.
I don't see what he big deal is, nothing has stopped visa/outsourcing maggots from calling themselves engineers especially things like education or experience.
That doesn't make me any less of an engineer, it only makes me ineligible to practice engineering when I cross the Oregon state line.
If I understood the previous article on the case correctly, they consider writing a letter to the city officials as "practicing engineering".
However as an electrical engineer, what expertise would that give him when it comes to traffic patterns and traffic light timing? I don't see anything that would qualify him to provide any expertise in these matters.
Well, unless you are both an engineer, a lawyer and a medical doctor, each properly licensed in both your and my locations, you have no right to comment on this matter.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Engineering degree and certification be damned. I am an engineer.
Apart for the detail that a judge just said he can, and that you're just some dumb shit who can't tell the difference between an engineer and a P.E. Or wait, you do, you're just the dipshit who felt the need to justify your stubbornness by lying about the guy claiming to be a PE, which he never did.
With such a cavalier attitude to truth and facts, I sincerely hope you are just some random troll and not someone who actually calls himself "Engineer" in real life.
Before it was Keep Portland Weird. Now it's Keep Oregon Weird?
Is it possible for any government in the U.S. to make any law, no matter how confusing, and not care about whether someone may make a mistake, or whether they may not know the law?
To me, anyone who has a Tektronix oscilloscope on a shelf above his desk is likely to call himself an "engineer".
How about writing a letter?
If a Swedish engineer writes a letter to city officials in Oregon, he is an engineer when he writes it. But when the letter arrives, he is not? How would that work?
Part of using a language is knowing the meaning of words and using them that way.
The word "engineer" has a very clear meaning (which can be observed in every day communication, job titles, and university degree names for example).
Why in all the world do you think that a silly law in some backwater US state should have absolute authority over language and be allowed to define the meaning of words to whatever it want?
If some US state made a law that "car" now meant "dead rat", would you then tell everyone buying a "car" there to not be an idiot and that they should have know that they would get a dead rat? Or what about that law defining PI to 3 (not quite what happened, but still)? Should everyone have changed their calculations accordingly, no matter that nothing they'd design would work?
There is an examination process to get a license to practice engineering in all states and many countries.
No, you need a license to practice under the title "Professional Engineer", and to perform certain duties such as signing off on certain things. You do not need a license to actually practice engineering. As such its reasonable to call oneself an engineer, but not Professional Engineer. If not you end up with absurdities like not refusing to call Isenbard Kingdom Brunel an engineer.
I call myself an engineer. I think that's reasonable since I've got a degree in engineering, and I've designed from scratch and made (as in taken through to mass manufacture) things within quite strict regulatory frameworks. What would you call someone who does such things?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Technically, (at least in most US states) a lawyer is is anyone who graduated law school. It is an attorney-at-law that is licensed to provide legal representation and appear in court on behalf of a client. That said, you can still get yourself in trouble calling yourself a lawyer in any context in which it seems you might be acting as an attorney.
He is fully qualified as an engineer - with a degree from a top-notch university.
No, that does not make him a fully qualified engineer. If I have a law degree that does not mean I am a fully qualified lawyer, and if I have a medical degree that does not mean I am a fully qualified doctor.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
In other words, the government's power to control speech, censor in First Amendment terms, is only permissible here in the context of commercial speech (some think even that is an overreach, but that's an argument for a different day.)
So if you are advertising for clients, or dealing with a client, the government can make sure you are a Professional Engineer, or whatever they define there. He isn't, so they tried to punish him for claiming so.
The difference here, though, was that the government isn't one of his clients, and anybody has infinite First Amendment rights to beak off about the government and its behaviors. That is the most highly protected of all speech (even knowing lies are protected, IIRC, lest the government become the Decider of Truth in speech against it.)
And in that context, the commercial concept does not apply, so the government has no power to stop him from calling himself an engineer. The takeaway: Courts treat the First Amendment seriously and delimit the government's powers to censor to very strictly-controlled areas.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Except, studying electrical engineering does not make you an engineer, the same way that studying anatomy does not make you a doctor. He has never taken any of the steps required to be licensed as an engineer in any jurisdiction, so his claim of being a "good engineer" is false. At no point in his life in America could he ever claim to be an engineer by our standards.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Considering that it is the board in charge of licensing engineers who is making the complaint your theory doesn't really hold water.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
And telling you you can't call yourself an engineer is a violation of the First Amendment. In order to get away with this, the government relies on some kind of truth in advertising/snake oil concept. As such, the government's authority to override the First Amendment only swells in the context of advertising for or satisfying a client.
There was no client in this case, just a citizen talking about the government's behavior (the most highly protected of all speech) and as such, the government has no power to stop him from calling himself an engineer.
There are many posts concerned about him calling himself an engineer, but they're all oriented about this concept even though they don't realize it. Courts are happy to clear this up by defining what it means: Searching for, or satisfying, an actual client.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
By that argument, that describes all of engineering. So people with Math degrees can do engineering?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
1 big difference. You are a licensed engineer in another state, this man has never been licensed, he has no credentials as an engineer other then having a degree in electrical engineering, but as I am sure you know a degree alone does not make you an engineer.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
How does being a doctor provide any expertise in traffic engineering?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
What he said was technically true and was outside of a professional setting. He's obviously using "engineer" in the general usage.
A judge is rather a different thing- seeing as you can't get a degree in "judging", the vast majority of people with law degrees do not become judges and there is thus no correlation whatsoever between "judges" and "law graduates". Most of what you learn to become a judge rather than a lawyer you learn AFTER you finish university - by working in the field.
This is now how engineering works - you get a degree in engineering you can do an engineer's job. You may not be as good as the guy who has been doing it for longer, but it's not like only one in a thousand engineering graduates become engineers. It's basically a 1:1 ratio. And in fact, the vast majority of engineering grads are engineers by default since in almost every territory you are automatically registered when you graduate.
He never claimed "I am an engineer in Oregon", just "I am an engineer" - since Sweden is a country where all grads are automatically professionally registered this claim is a factual truth. He graduated with an engineering degree in Sweden, and is thus an engineer.
Saying "I am an engineer" in his case is factual truth - it would only be a false claim if he added "in Oregon".
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Read my statement again. I said there is an exam to get a license to practice engineering. I did not say you need an exam to practice engineering. If you read the rest of my statement I clearly state that a license is not required to have a career but that it is essential when signing off on plans.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
As long as you don't stop your mom from using the washer and dryer.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
How is he an engineer? He has never been licensed, tested or held actual engineering credentials. He studied electrical engineering but never took the actual steps to become an engineer.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
So you choose two fields where graduation does not usually come with automatic professional accreditation and claim this means the same is true of a field where, in almost the entire world in fact, graduation DOES come with automatic accreditation ?
He didn't claim to be an engineer in Oregon, just to be an engineer. Since he graduated in Sweden where all engineering graduates get automatic accreditation he IS an engineer, and indeed an accredited engineer- he just isn't accredited as an engineer in Oregon - but he never claimed he was.
Legal definitions vary by region - if you make a claim that's true in ANY region and you don't SPECIFY a region then that claim is factually correct.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Oh so anyone who graduates from college as pre-med is a doctor?
Except the dude is an engineer. He's an electrical engineer
I think the reason this causes so much gnashing and wailing of teeth on slashdot is that there are a lot of people here who are successful coders/programmers/software architects or whatever with no actual written qualifications as such.
So, on the normal slashdot basis that if it doesn't apply to me it's not true, there is nothing wrong with calling yourself an engineer as long as you've done some engineering.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Under Oregon law, you have to be a licensed engineer to call yourself one publicly. For other states, they add clarifications like "professional engineer" or "licensed engineer"
No, Oregon Revised Statutes 672.020, 672.045 do not allow someone to practice engineering in Oregon without a license. Oregon Administrative Rule 820-010-0730 states that no unregistered persons may hold themselves out as an engineer in Oregon by use of the title “professional engineer,” “registered professional engineer,” or any of their abbreviations or derivatives. Mats Jarlstrom did no such thing. He was very specific about what his credentials were and in no way misrepresented himself as holding a valid certificate in Oregon or any other US state or territory. His exact words are displayed below, and they are both very specific about his credentials and completely void of any mention of being a professional or registered professional engineer.
My Swedish engineering degree is in electronics and I’m an expert in motional feedback (displacement, velocity and acceleration feedback) of powered speakers which includes the full understanding of motion of an object such as a loudspeaker cone (or a vehicle stopping or traveling through an intersection as in ORS811.260(4)).
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
A degree in engineering does not make you an engineer.
In the same way having human DNA does not make you human. Obviously you must be officially sanctioned to call yourself human. If you are not human, you are not a person and therefore have no rights. STFU. This is an issue of free speech.
So much wrong here. No, you don't have to add PE to the title engineer for it to be the illegal use of the term. Using the title engineer where professional engineering can reasonably be assumed is the test. He crossed the line on this by using "engineer" to reinforce his opinions on a technical subject. I hope it costs him a small fortune in court.
But it could not be reasonably assumed that he was a PE based on his words, which were as follows:
My Swedish engineering degree is in electronics and I’m an expert in motional feedback (displacement, velocity and acceleration feedback) of powered speakers which includes the full understanding of motion of an object such as a loudspeaker cone (or a vehicle stopping or traveling through an intersection as in ORS811.260(4)).
He doesn't even call himself an engineer. He just says he has an engineering degree from Sweden.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
He is not a licensed engineer in the state of Oregon. Claiming to be an engineer is lying about his qualifications, because to claim to be an engineer you must be licensed.
His exact words were:
My Swedish engineering degree is in electronics and I’m an expert in motional feedback (displacement, velocity and acceleration feedback) of powered speakers which includes the full understanding of motion of an object such as a loudspeaker cone (or a vehicle stopping or traveling through an intersection as in ORS811.260(4)).
No reasonable person could believe he is implying he is a registered professional engineer in the state of Oregon from this statement.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
You are conpletely off base, since 1) he IS an engineer, and 2) he is not claiming to be licensed or practicing in Oregon. It is the same with almost all licensed professions. I, for example, am certified to practice law in New York. I am perfectly at liberty to go to California and state that I am a lawyer by profession. I just can't practice law there without the proper credentials. It's the same with doctors (and notably, all 3 professuons have exceptions for certain situations).
Nope. Having a degree in engineering makes you a person with student debt. Engineer is a legal title, protected by whatever state or province you're in.
Having a law degree doesn't make you a lawyer, you gotta go through the bar.
You can call yourself anything you want publicly EXCEPT when you are representing yourself as an engineer in an official capacity, such as a job that requires a registered engineer in the state of Oregon. Otherwise, you can say whatever you want.
This guy wrote an unsolicited letter to the state of Oregon. He can say whatever he likes in a letter like that. It's feedback, nothing more.
He is an engineer just not registered in their state from the previous Slashdot post. Think it's more a registration body cracking it over title usage rather than the problems he's addressing.
I think it's more the state of Oregon cracking it over a citizen getting uppity.
I did not say anything to counter your arguments. I merely said that other states restrict the term "professional engineer" or" licensed engineer" to distinguish those who have a license as opposed to simply "engineer" to those that do not.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
It is a much more complicated case than you let on.
No, it is not complicated at all. It's a simple 1st Amendment issue. But ever since 1798 free speech in the USA is quite dead.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I think the board had issues with him going to the press using the title as well on all his business advertising using the title as well.
Dropping the title "engineer" to reinforce your point when discussing a technical subject, meets the test of implying professional engineering.
It isn't clear that the case law actually says this, and even if it does it isn't clear that this would pass a first amendment test. If you have links to actual case law backing up your point that is one thing, but your baseless statements are meaningless. The Oregon statutes mentioned in the complaint only claim he cannot practice engineering, so any case law which defines practicing engineering as merely mentioning your prior education in engineering in a public discussion would suffice to back up your claim.
Although even if you do that, it doesn't have much bearing on this case. He was very specific about his credentials and no reasonable person could assume he was implying he had a PE license. His words were as follows:
My Swedish engineering degree is in electronics and I’m an expert in motional feedback (displacement, velocity and acceleration feedback) of powered speakers which includes the full understanding of motion of an object such as a loudspeaker cone (or a vehicle stopping or traveling through an intersection as in ORS811.260(4)).
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Or the headline might have read, "unlicensed designer charged for breaking Oregon law about use of title, identified the flaws of a professional engineer's design in traffic light system". Let's face it, when something is crap and it is proven to be crap who cares what title they use.
Not sure about the legality of practicing as an engineer across state lines but there is a process of licensure for existing professional engineers: https://www.nspe.org/resources/licensure/resources/licensure-comity
Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?
Look at me I'm claiming I'm a judge so now the public must treat me as a fully qualified judge even though I have not government accreditation as a judge.
I'm not sure what you are trying to say with this analogy. Are you claiming that if a Swedish judge writes to the Oregon State Bar and says "I am a Swedish judge" he would be breaking the law? Because that is how your analogy would apply to this case.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Jim, I'm not an engineer - I'm a Doctor!!
How does being a doctor provide any expertise in traffic engineering?
You mentioned three different fields. Unless you are properly educated, and licensed in both our jurisdictions, you have no right to an opinion.
Look, obviously I'm engaging in reductio ad absurdum. Because this entire case is just that. This was not a court case, where a person who is being called as an expert witness needs to present some evidence of that expertise. It isn't a case of an engineer practicing their profession without a license. It is just a person offering their opinion, and perhaps their worst offense is that they are arguing from authority.
Which is probably what pissed off the powers that be, that someone disagreed with them, and tried to present a bona fide.
I am Groot.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
So he is not a state licensed engineer. Okay, got it.
Getting an electrical engineering degree does make you an engineer, just like getting a phd makes you a doctor whether you are in a medical field or not. There is a difference between being an engineer and being a licensed engineer recognized by a particular state.
Having a law degree doesn't make you a lawyer, you gotta go through the bar.
False equivalence.
"He just isn't certified as one in Oregon because he has never paid the RICO-RATTLING pay-to-play-fee despite having the inherent jurisprudence to call himself an engineer (and by Federal Law, if you have the right to it, the gov't can't require you to have a license for it.)"
FTFY.
"It is a much more complicated case than you let on"
Not even close. This is a licensing board trying to usurp jurisprudence/jurisdictional authority from the people in an attempt to make money they're not entitled to. It's pretty fucking simple, really, if you knew anything about Federal Law.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Is it a title, or a descriptive word?
I see why people should be willing to band together and draw their guns and aim them at other people's faces with intent to kill, in order to make sure that engineering in certain types of projects (e.g. important stuff like roads and buildings, where peoples' lives are on the line) gets done correctly.
I do not see why people should be willing to band together and draw their guns, for purposes of trying to define a word, such as "engeineer." We know that far more than 99% of the time that people perform engineering, they are usually not doing something of public concern. If you engineer your home file server's scripts to do whatever you want, that is not something the public should make a government regulate. Yet "engineer" might very easily and trivially be the best word for what you have done.
Government can't define a word or a concept. Government can enforce certain requirements on various types of public works. We need to keep conscious of the vast difference between these two things.
In this case, the government was dramatically and inexcusably overstepping its bounds, and the bounds of common sense. Saying that you are an engineer, is not the same as doing the kind of work that people want the government to regulate.
"As to the case of this oregon man, there was fuck all need for him to claim himself a professional engineer"
I haven't read anything that says that he used the "professional engineer" term, or claimed to be practicing in Oregon. And, that's where these officials fucked up.
Just another day in Paradise
Stop.
"Doctor" is the precedent here. Doctor's of geography, mathematics, art, even are all over the world. But you wouldn't expect them to be able to work in a hospital performing surgery without being appropriately qualified. You wouldn't expect them to be able to misrepresent their doctorate (e.g. by saying "it's okay, just take your top off and show me, I'm a doctor"). You also wouldn't expect them to be fined to oblivion for booking a restaurant table in the name of Dr Smith, either. Because that's what they are and referring to that title isn't compulsory or indicative of a specific qualification at that point.
Doctor comes from the latin "I teach", and the association of physicians with the term is both a modern trend and mostly limited to the US. A doctorate is not supposed to be a professional distinction but an academic one. The idea is that you have added to the sum total of human knowledge in some way, which take note is not what medical students actually do. In the UK and related countries the initial degree would be a Bachelor of Surgery and an M.D. would be a research degree.
Your overall point may be good, but you picked the worst possible example.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Just go on the Internet and tell lies?
I don't think it's possible.
He said he was an engineer which to me indicates he has studied in a field of engineering.
If you say "degreed engineer" or "PE", that has specific qualifications, but "engineer" just means you know how to build stuff.
I know how to build stuff.
I also have a degree in engineering.
It is the first qualification that makes me an engineer, not the second.
Would you say that the people that built the Egyptian pyramids were "not engineers" because they didn't go to college?
I did not say anything to counter your arguments. I merely said that other states restrict the term "professional engineer" or" licensed engineer" to distinguish those who have a license as opposed to simply "engineer" to those that do not.
Sorry, I thought your statement was trying to refute the one you were replying to. If it was meant to back up his statement then I read it wrong.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
He is not a licensed engineer in the state of Oregon. Claiming to be an engineer is lying about his qualifications, because to claim to be an engineer you must be licensed.
His exact words were:
My Swedish engineering degree is in electronics and I’m an expert in motional feedback (displacement, velocity and acceleration feedback) of powered speakers which includes the full understanding of motion of an object such as a loudspeaker cone (or a vehicle stopping or traveling through an intersection as in ORS811.260(4)).
No reasonable person could believe he is implying he is a registered professional engineer in the state of Oregon from this statement.
That is not what he stated in his complaint. He said he was an engineer.
Look at me I'm claiming I'm a judge so now the public must treat me as a fully qualified judge even though I have not government accreditation as a judge.
I'm a sex instructor for Swimsuit models.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
He said he's an engineer, not PE.
I'm an Engineer who specializes in Traffic lights.
They go Green, Amber, Red. Then in America they turn Green again. (other more sophisticated countries they go red and amber together before turning green).
Suck it Oregon!
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
That is not what he stated in his complaint. He said he was an engineer.
In a later document he did use the words: "And yes, I'm an excellent engineer." This was after he had specifically established his credentials as an engineer, which was very specific. Once again, no reasonable person could look at his discussions with the Oregon Board and believe he was presenting himself as a licensed professional engineer in the state of Oregon.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
The point of confusion is that the US awards a "doctorate" for what should be a professional certification or bachelor's degree. A doctor is someone who holds a doctorate, and as a rule this is a research degree, denoting academic distinction. In any other field and many other countries, it would be considered unusual for a doctor to have a professional practice. That is to say, one can certainly hold a doctorate of mathematics or computer science and have a professional practice, but that's not the point of the Ph.D.
US medical practitioners have co-opted the word 'doctor', or tried their best to do so at any rate, and a century or so of use has legitimized it. However, it should be in no way surprising or negative that a person in medical research does not hold a license to practice medicine, and whether or not that person also has a doctorate of some sort is probably their own concern.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
except your wrong. so lets clarify:
Credibility dinged ever so slightly, right from the start. lol.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Oh yeah my bad. It was perfectly clear in hindsight.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
...with Zombo.com
I think it is about time "The Oregon State Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying" proves they are licensed to that title. I mean just because they are part of that board and do their job on it means they can be honest about who they are. They better start proving that they have licenses for claiming to be Oregon State as well as being Board of Examiners. And I don't mean some dumb PE license, that doesn't give you the right to call yourself that. Hell, while they are at it, I'm sure they've claimed to be human at some point and they better show the paperwork that they are licensed to call themselves human.
Of course i'm being tong in cheek here. But I don't see why anyone would have respect for people who say someone who has been educated and works as an engineer isn't an engineer? Forget about any kind of legal implication, that is just pure rude. I say they aren't human, they better get to start proving it, the dumb-asses.
Like Judge Judy?
Not really though. I call myself an engineer. I've got a degree in engineering, and I've taken products from my initial design through to mass manufacture and regulatory compliance (I did the product side of that, not the paperwork thank god), which included hand making the custom one off test kit for the contact manufacturer to validate all the produced items.
So yeah I'm an engineer, but I'm not a licensed processional one. Personally I think I'd be absurd not to refer to myself as one because there isn't another word for someone who does a job like that.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Most judges are voted into position in the USA, there is very little government accreditation in place excepting the highest court position.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
""So you choose two fields where graduation does not usually come with automatic professional accreditation and claim this means the same is true of a field where, in almost the entire world in fact, graduation DOES come with automatic accreditation ?"
incorrect sir! in Canada there is also a requirement of work served under another engineer (which is usually equal to 3-4 years ) during which the applicant is called an engineer in training. This is also followed by another examination called the PPE (which isn't a walk in the park.
I think you should go back to your statement and re evaluate what you are saying because i would wager that there are other places that have more stringent testing requirements than Canada has and most certainly includes time served under an existing engineer.
Nope and I don't see how that would follow.
Look up the definition of the work "engineer" in the dictionary. None of the dictionaries that I have just read include in the definition that concept that one must be licensed, or even have a degree, to be an engineer. That's little "e" generic engineer. However, in the United States, at least in the ones with which I am familiar, a person can achieve an official certification of their status as an "engineer" by satisfying certain conditions, including taking a test and paying a fee. At that point they can call themselves a "Licensed Engineer" or a "Professional Engineer" or whatever title is conveyed by satisfying those conditions. At that point that person is a big "E" engineer of whatever type they have proven that they can swing the weight of. And those jurisdictions can and usually do specify certain occupations or positions that require such licensing of the people in those occupations or positions. Those positions require the extra weight of official licensing because of the responsibilities of those positions.
To suggest that the only people in the United States who are "engineers" are the ones who have taken those extra steps is a gross mischaracterization of the licensing/PE process and willful ignorance of the considerable weight of evidence that, in fact, an extraordinarily large number of people in the United States are considered by just about everyone to be "engineers" despite not being licensed or certified as a "Professional Engineer". For starters, one could look at the job titles of a large number of companies in the United States which include the word "engineer" in conjunction with adjectives describing the type of engineering expected from the person holding that job title. You could also look at the popular use of the term engineer in many types of media and literature, where it is common to use the term without reference to the official status of a "licensed" or "professional" engineer. In fact, if the common usage of the word "engineer" included the concept of official licensing, we wouldn't need the specific capitalized titles of "Licensed Engineer" or "Professional Engineer."
To use an example from another, similar, domain, look at "Doctor." Any PhD can call themselves "Doctor" (and many insist upon it) without being a licensed medical doctor. They can even use the title "Dr." professionally. What they can't do is use the initials "MD" or "Doctor of Medicine" - the capitalized reference to official licensing or credentialing under a legal framework that grants special privileges and responsibilities to those using that official imprimatur.
Getting an electrical engineering degree does make you an engineer, just like getting a phd makes you a doctor whether you are in a medical field or not. There is a difference between being an engineer and being a licensed engineer recognized by a particular state.
This. I really don't understand why this is so hard for people to understand. I work at a medical school. Once a medical student graduates, she is called a doctor and can put the initials M.D. (or D.O. if it's from an osteopathic school) after her name. That doesn't mean she can practice. She still has to go through residency (internship, 3-4 years) before she can do general practice, and then through a fellowship (2-4 years) before she can have a specialty, such as cardiovascular, pulmonary, and so on. But at all times after graduating from medical school, she is a doctor or physician.
Circling back to the EE degree, of course a person who graduates with an EE degree is an engineer. Others on this thread have said "You're not an engineer if you haven't taken the two exams." Bullshit. Surely they're referring to a PE, since a licensed EE would never have to take the two exams they're referring to, which are meant for PEs. And EE does not have to take an exam and know how to calculate the thickness of the concrete at the base of a dam, but surely he's still an engineer.
Is that a roll of dimes in your pocket or are you happy to see me?
There are thousands of working engineers in Oregon who do not have any "Professional Engineer" licensure but yet have engineering degrees, refer to themselves as engineers, practice engineering, and get paid for it. For example, think of the thousands upon thousands of engineers that work at Intel in Oregon. Is there a PE exam for semiconductor engineering? Hardware design verification?
You DO NOT need a state license [even in Oregon] to get hired as an engineer by a private company. If you are an engineer working for Intel, you don't need a license. The PE license is focused on engineers who market themselves to the public and/or work on public works projects (bridges, buildings, drainage, etc.)--the idea being that you need some level of state license to prevent charlatans from building bridges that collapse.
Now it turns out that if you read the letter of the law in Oregon, they have pretty restrictive laws on referring to oneself as an "engineer"--whereas most states just protect the term "Professional Engineer" (or similar). However those laws are clearly not enforced, or enforced very asymmetrically, because it would take 5 minutes on LinkedIn to find 10,000 violators.
You have to be licensed to work as an engineer in certain narrow fields related to public safety. There are thousands of engineers at Intel [for example] in Oregon who do not have any PE license.
This may be true in one or two countries, but it is by no means a universal concept. In the overwhelming majority of countries, obtaining the degree is precisely what makes makes one an engineer.
From what I understand, that is even true in the case TFA is about. There is a specific job title called 'Professional Engineer' in Oregon which requires a separate certification, but that does not apply to the description that someone is an engineer as such.
I doubt it's complicated at all, he is a pain in their ass, they brought suit to attempt to stifle him, and they stretched the law past the breaking point in said attempt.
Our legal system being what it is, I can't say whether he will win or lose - I do hope for his sake that his trial is heard by the same judge who "granted his temporary right to speak."
I have been registered as an engineer in over twenty states. In not one of those states could I call myself an "engineer" without being appropriately licensed.
Yes, they have to apply for comity before practicing across state lines. Same is true for PEs.
The engineers who designed every facet of the computer you are using right now did not have any sort of state-granted license. The state license law does not apply to engineers engaged in R&D for private companies. Intel is in Oregon and they employ thousands of degreed engineers (and they are called engineers in the job listings, LinkedIn profiles, tax forms, etc.)--and they don't have any state license.
To the first order, PE licenses are for people who design roads and dams and bridges. There is a whole lot of engineering that does not fall into that category.
Most engineers in the US don't have any sort of license--it's just absurd to get & maintain one if you work in a field where it is irrelevant.
but they can't change the English language where the word engineer has already meant something for centuries.
Which I think we all know, means you can drive a train.
In this case, the law says he can't call himself that.
Bzzzzt. WRONG! Obviously YOU don't understand the difference between an engineer and a professional engineer. Oregon Administrative Rule 820-010-0730 states that no unregistered persons may hold themselves out as an engineer in Oregon by use of the title “professional engineer,” “registered professional engineer,” or any of their abbreviations or derivatives. You see that? They specifically say "professional engineer" and "registered professional engineer", neither of which he claimed. He merely stated that he had an EE degree.
Now get off my lawn.
Is that a roll of dimes in your pocket or are you happy to see me?
This is incorrect. He mailed a letter to the engineering licensing authority claiming to be an engineer and offered engineering advice to the licensing authority. That's enough to put them under their authority.
That would depend entirely on how the Professional Engineering and Architecture licensing laws are written. Nevada's were found to be strong enough to control the use of the word engineer in any circumstance when the state went after Novel Certified Engineers.
Eh. I'm pretty sure the "public" in your "public opinion" above doesn't give a hell about this case because:
1) They don't know about this case, nor do they care, nor will they ever.
2) They think this is how things work anyway, because it is. Language is a shared construct and the consensus is "engineer" means you have an engineering degree, while more formal terms ("licensed" or "professional" etc.) signify greater formality when needed.
3) The plaintiff has a commonsense, grokable, gut-feeling-it's-right position. The OR board has a nitpicky, facially counterintuitive position that manages to come across as both unfair and "over-regulatory". Which one sounds like an argument that tends to go over well with "the public"?
4) The public is generally aware of the 1st Amendment and has a vague notion that it's good. To the extent they understand what it protects, I'd wager they believe it covers "stopping the government from fining you for truthfully describing yourself in a public consultation regarding government activity."
5) If you took a nationwide poll of the non-technical folks that make up "the public", asking them why they don't like—or don't trust, or have a low opinion of—engineers and other science-types, "'misrepresenting licensure status' by truthfully communication educational background" wouldn't make the Top 25. In fact, it may not be mentioned once by a single person.
So... no, I don't think this case lowers "public opinion for all engineers." On the other hand, the handwringing pedantry (in favor of the OR board) you see all over this thread probably only reinforces low public opinion of engineers as handwringing pedants.
Nothing posted to
That doesn't necessarily hole either. I have performed the act of engineering. I have no relevant degree, no licensing, and no insurance for it. Since I have engineered, I have some logical claim to a general term like engineer. Not all engineering requires all of that. In many cases, that's just fine as long as the work is ultimately reviewed and signed off by a P.E.
I do NOT have any claim to more specific terms such as Licensed Professional Engineer. The Oregon board needs to pull it's cranium from it's posterior and focus on controlling the use of the more specific term rather than trying to redefine a generic term that has been in use centuries longer than they have existed.
You forget the part where he offered engineering advice under the guise that he's an engineer and did so directly to the licensing authority.
You forget the part where he offered engineering advice under the guise that he's an engineer and did so directly to the licensing authority.
You forget the part where he specifically described what his engineering credentials were to alleviate any confusion. Which means you either didn't read my whole post or have a very short memory.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
My Swedish engineering degree is in electronics and Iâ(TM)m an expert in motional feedback (displacement, velocity and acceleration feedback) of powered speakers which includes the full understanding of motion of an object such as a loudspeaker cone (or a vehicle stopping or traveling through an intersection as in ORS811.260(4)).
He doesn't even call himself an engineer. He just says he has an engineering degree from Sweden.
That's not how he phrased it in his innitial communication with the egg heads at the Engineering Board.
But they are still being a bunch of Pedantic fools.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Nevada's were found to be strong enough to control the use of the word engineer in any circumstance when the state went after Novel Certified Engineers.
Do you mean the case where Novel won? Because the only case law I could find was one where Nevada's Board of Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors conceded they had no authority to limit the use of the word engineer as used by Novell Certified Engineers. The board even had to pay Novell damages as part of their settlement.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
The law in question can be find here
(From https://www.oregonlegislature....)
I am not a lawyer. This is my Layman's opinion.
I have been reading the law in question and the complaint in attempts to argue against you... but I can not. The Oregon law literately says that a person can't refer to themselves an "engineer" in Oregon without the appropriate certifications. What a ridiculous fucking law.
In the world of engineering, like in Law and Medicine, getting a degree does not automatically confer a title.
Except when they get an M.D. it's a doctorate degree, so they are entitled to call themselves "Doctor." [so's anyone with a J.D. law degree]
And if somebody with an engineering degree is not an "engineer," what are they? Here we're talking about licensing, not academic degrees.
He didn't lie about his qualifications. He is fully qualified as an engineer - with a degree from a top-notch university.
He just isn't certified as one in Oregon because he has never worked as one there.
He did not present himself as one in any scenario where government has reasonable justification to restrict the usage of the title. He wasn't trying to sell a bridge design or anything. He was just publicly commenting on public infrastructure and stated the qualifications he has to form those opinions - he didn't try to get employment.
It is a much more complicated case than you let on.
He did not take the PE exam, passing that exam is a qualification he does not possess. It is no easy task to pass that test. He is also not an engineer in the technical field he is making an argument in.
Anyhow, the case has not been decided yet, this is just temporary until the case is tried.
The Professional Engineer (PE) certifications only apply to review and submission of official documents as required by the specific regulating agency (and there is a lot of variability), otherwise "engineer" is just a word that holds no special legal meaning. The PE test and certification is very generic too... all engineers get the same PE certification regardless of their specific field expertise, so having a PE license grants no de-facto credentials in other engineering fields and if anyone thinks it does they are lazy dolts. It's up to us to look into a person's credentials in the specific field, regardless of certifications, just like we would if someone says they are a scientist, doctor, pilot, financial advisor, etc. FWIW, I work for an engineering company, many of my colleagues and friends are state-certified Professional Engineers, and I personally hold state-certified licensure in a science-related field. I also know and work with many non-certified science/engineering professionals who are just as and sometimes more knowledgeable and experienced as those with certifications... you have to dig behind any titles to see who you can trust, to do otherwise is negligent.
That's Oregon's failure. The term 'engineer' in the generic sense has been in use in Europe since before anyone there knew Oregon existed.
If that is true, it may prohibit him from practising engineering in Oregon. However, it does not and cannot change a thing about the fact that he is an engineer.
Jarlstrom has clearly presented himself to the press and in his business advertising in Oregon that he is an engineer. It's not just him presenting an opinion. It's mis-representation. If he stated his opinion as a member of the public that would be a different story. The board has already told Jarlstrom that any changes to the traffic lights have to be presented to the city that owns them, not the state board that does not control them.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The point of this whole thing is it was just a stupid gimmick they used to censor what he was saying about the traffic lights. Face it, common sense tells you he IS an engineer just by the fact he was able to deduce a problem that their so-called engineers could not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_public_participation
Well since the guy in Oregon didn't attempt to sign off anything nor did he claim that he was entitled to, none of this should be an issue.
Neither was DaVinci.
"I am Mats Jarlstrom, ... and I am an Engineer."
Basically, that's what engineering is. Applying science to solve problems.
Your first problem is that you assume that Engineers always know exactly what they are doing, well guess what - they don't. For instance, the first guy who designed an aircraft guess what, he wasn't a PE aircraft designer. Same thing when aircraft started going supersonic. NOBODY had a certificate to build supersonic aircraft back then.
The second problem with your statement, is that you apparently are quite happy to use products designed by people who went to the exact same school as this guy did, namely cell-phone equipment designed by Ericsson, who employ quite a few electrical engineers from KTH - that's "Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan" for you. But you don't trust him to sort out a traffic light.
You have to chose, either the people who designed the cell network aren't Engineers, or you're an idiot.
I know what my vote is.
He has engineered, therefor he is an engineer. What he isn't is a licensed professional engineer.
That's not how he phrased it in his innitial communication with the egg heads at the Engineering Board.
But they are still being a bunch of Pedantic fools.
Perhaps I am misreading the court documents, but this is the document presented by the Oregon State Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying investigator when informing Mats Jarlstrom he was in violation of their laws. It appears to be the first communication, and it would be odd for them to only attach this communication if there were other communications where he actually did potentially violate their laws.
From:
Mats Jarlstrom [mailto:mats@jarlstrom.com
Sent:
Wednesday, September 03, 2014 9:24 AM
To:
OSBEELS
Subject:
Help and support "to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the general public"
To whom it may concern,I would like to have your support and help to investigate and present the laws of physics related to transportation engineering in the State of Oregon. I am already working to “protect the health, safety, and welfare of the general public” especially in the City of Beaverton where the two transportation engineers are misreading Oregon Vehicle code, how the law applies to the laws of physics for a vehicle in motion traveling through an intersection and the well-known engineering practices. By misapplying engineering practices and Oregon law they are putting the public at risk.
I have spent a year investigating and I have a clear understanding how the law should be applied and why it is written the way it is. I have source documents for the wording of ORS811.260(4) which is the main misunderstanding by the City of Beaverton but also by the Oregon Department of Transportation. I would like to present these facts for your review and comments.If you are looking for a Board member I might be interested since I’m already doing this kind of work and it would be nice to get paid.
My Swedish engineering degree is in electronics and I’m an expert in motional feedback (displacement, velocity and acceleration feedback) of powered speakers which includes the full understanding of motion of an object such as a loudspeaker cone (or a vehicle stopping or traveling through an intersection as in ORS811.260(4)).
Thank you.
Best regards,
Mats Järlström
13520 SW Hart Road
Beaverton OR 97008 USA
503-671-0312 Phone
503-671-0454 Fax
mats@jarlstrom.com
www.jarlstrom.comwww.jarlstrom.com/redflex
Complaint Ex. 1 Page 2 of 2
Case 3:17-cv-00652-SB Document 1-1 Filed 04/25/17 Page 2 of 2
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
>If you say "degreed engineer" or "PE", that has specific qualifications, but "engineer" just means you know how to build stuff.
Just to be difficult, PE is an internal grade of engineer in my mega-corp, completely unrelated to state licensing.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
> I mean, there is really a Traffic engineer as a carreer?
There's one who goes to my wife's knitting group. She gets the brunt of people's complaints about the local traffic.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
>except your wrong. so lets clarify:
What about his wrong?
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Yes. Those things are falling apart big time.
If I have a doctorate in philosophy and tell someone "I'm a doctor" while giving them medical advice, that's obviously a problem. This guy just didn't do that exactly. If he had been, say, giving someone plans for a bridge or a structure or something while claiming to be an engineer, I don't think anyone would have a problem with penalizing him for that since he'd potentially be putting lives at risk while definitely misrepresenting himself.
Maybe he's a social construct engineer? I don't see the difference in any of the other ways that this is used.
Depends on where he did his degree. Here getting a masters in engineering automatically gives you the title of engineer and the legal right to sign off on certain things. It made it especially funny when my Ph.D. in electrical engineering gave me the right to sign the construction plans of my own house.
I'm laughing because the guy was being sarcastic and they took him seriously. Very West Coast. He's making fun of the trivial problem of describing a vehicle's motion in an intersection by comparing it to the difficult problem that he is trained for (speaker dynamics), and they took his statement as a claim that his electronics degree made him an expert in vehicle dynamics.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
If he claimed he was a professional engineer, or an engineer licensed to practice in Oregon and he was not, I could see the state having a case. But since he has an engineering degree, the statement "I am an engineer" is factually correct, and should not be illegal.
Otherwise, states could fine people with Ph.Ds for stating "I am a doctor" because they're not a licensed medical practitioner.
Who is giving all these unelected non-government entities the right to levy fines against people? Why is the government enforcing fines some assholes just made up?
I'm grabbing popcorn and waiting for someone to tell you that you don't understand the law... You know it's coming.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Sweden is in Canada now? When the hell did that happen? I need to get out from under this rock more... Or, maybe you need to work on understanding context.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Well, unless you are both an engineer, a lawyer and a medical doctor, each properly licensed in both your and my locations, you have no right to comment on this matter.
If you do not know the difference between a Lawyer and an Attorney, you have no right to comment on this matter.
Why are you defending an electrical engineer who doesn't state that he is an electrical engineer while commenting on something outside his particular field of engineering?
Perhaps because he did state that he is an electrical engineer?
My Swedish engineering degree is in electronics and I’m an expert in motional feedback (displacement, velocity and acceleration feedback) of powered speakers which includes the full understanding of motion of an object such as a loudspeaker cone (or a vehicle stopping or traveling through an intersection as in ORS811.260(4)).
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
(This actually varies by province so ymmv) In the ethics and law classes I took ... we were encouraged NOT to label yourself as an engineer in public discourse unless specifically discussing your area of authority. Even then most may not as it opens you up to litigation if someone relies on what you say (even if free or offhand ..). This is why I rarely see anyone in the media throwing around the "I am an engineer so speaking form authority ..." Unless they are a public servant for obvious reasons, or sometimes large companies. These are all well covered by professional liability insurance ...
He studied engineering in Sweden, where your degree is your engineering credential. His studies resulted in a degree. Therefore he does, in fact, hold actual engineering credentials.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
He has never taken any of the steps required to be licensed as an engineer in any jurisdiction
Except, you know, in Sweden, where he earned his degree and where earning an engineering degree is the sole step required to become a licensed engineer. Or does Sweden not hold jurisdiction over itself?
He never claimed to be an engineer licensed in the state of Oregon, he claimed to hold an electrical engineering degree in Sweden.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
this man has never been licensed, he has no credentials as an engineer other then having a degree in electrical engineering, but as I am sure you know a degree alone does not make you an engineer.
In Sweden, that degree is the license. He is licensed in Sweden if he does, in fact, hold that degree, and that is his engineering credential.
Where he earned his degree, the degree alone does make him an engineer. He was also clear about where he earned his degree and which specific field his degree covered; he also never claimed to be licensed by the state of Oregon, nor did he use either of the specific terms covered by Oregon's laws, nor did he attempt to practice as an engineer in Oregon without being licensed in that state.
In short, yes, he is an engineer and, based on the information presented in court filings, no, he did not violate Oregon's law regarding the use of the title. Of the licensing board left some detail that proves otherwise out of their filings, well, the court can not and should not consider that detail; effectively, those court filings represent the sum total of the facts of the case and those facts support the position that this man did not break the law.
While I do have a strong legal background, I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. It would seem, though, that at least one Oregon judge agrees with this opinion, so maybe take it with half a grain of salt, rather than a whole one.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
In the world of engineering, like in Law and Medicine, getting a degree does not automatically confer a title.
Except in Sweden, where he earned his degree.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
So you're saying that unless I have a medical degree I can't state a fact that to practice medicine, a person needs to pass their boards and get licensed?
You should probably google "reductio ad absurdum".
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Six months ago I couldn't spell engineer and now I are one
No, but anyone who graduates with a doctorate degree is.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Is it a title, or a descriptive word?
To clarify your point to those who might miss it, it is both.
An engineer is someone who has engineered something, an Engineer is someone with an engineering degree. Further, a Professional Engineer is someone who is licensed as such.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
There is also a distinct difference between an Engineer and an engineer, which only makes your point stronger. He did say, at one point, "And yes, I'm an excellent engineer." That's engineer with a little-e, not Engineer, though his degree does so entitle him. If anything he under-represented himself, likely because he was commenting outside of his field of expertise and did not want to mislead.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
You're half right; Engineer is a legal title, but engineer is just a word. I know, millennials have trouble with syntax such as capitalization, but it's really not that difficult to follow if you slow down and realize that taking the extra second to apply what you were taught in middle school English class isn't going to cause you to miss out on life.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
In fact, having a law degree does make one a Lawyer, just as holding a doctorate makes one a Doctor. Passing the BAR makes one an Attorney at Law and passing medical licensing exams and meeting various other requirements makes one a Medical Doctor.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
> That is not what he stated in his complaint. He said he was an engineer.
But he is an engineer. That doesn't in any way imply he's registered or working as an engineer in Oregon is the point.
If your doctor moves to another state and takes a landscaping job, is it illegal for him to tell people he's a doctor?
Wait, you read a month ago about a court decision that was made just two days ago?
Check the dates on http://ij.org/wp-content/uploa... and learn to fucking read before you post here. No wonder you like Reddit.
"Under the First Amendment, you don't need to be a licensed lawyer to write an article critical of a Supreme Court decision, you don't need to be a licensed landscape architect to create a gardening blog, and you don't need to be a licensed engineer to talk about traffic lights," Sam Gedge, a lawyer at the Institute for Justice, said in a statement.
A degree alone makes you an engineer. A degree alone does not make you a Professional Engineer. That is the distinction.
An engineer needs no license. A PE does.
What Oregon is doing right now is intentionally equivocating the two. I assume those agreeing with Oregon are merely unintentionally confused.
Dude,
political sympathies aside, just think about it:
1) Guy started as millionaire and ended up billionaire
mkay, that was a while ago, so just now he:
2) Started as primaries outsider, ended up hands down main candidate, oh, and then the president of US
Now, bashing his voters aside (a hefty part of population, mind you) isn't it a bit too much for someone with non-functioning brain?
He is an opportunist, sure, troll, yeah, liar, yep, but certainly not an idiot.
Anyone with an engineering degree is, by definition, an engineer. He may not be a 'licensed engineer in Oregon', but he is still an engineer.
he has no credentials as an engineer other then having a degree in electrical engineering
That's like saying Emmanual Macron has no credentials as a President of France other than having been elected by the French people as their president and installed as such following to the French constution.
but as I am sure you know a degree alone does not make you an engineer.
One can, by definition, not know something that is not true. At best, it is a belief, which you apparently hold for some reason. An engineering degree is exactly what makes a person an engineer. That is why it is called an engineering degree.
New finding: Rigol owners are engineers, obviously.
Good. In Oregon, "Engineer" is a protected title along with "Professional Engineer" for people who has passed the PE license exam and is in good standing with the Oregon State Board for Engineering and Land Surveying. This is a mistake, everywhere else, it's just "Professional Engineer" and related that are protected titles.
APEO (now called PEO) has not required, until recently, any exmaination on technical ability. They figured that, if you got the engineering degree, then you are technically competent. The professional licensing exams are all about Law and Ethics in engineering.
When I called to ask in detail, they even said specifically: once you are a Professional Engineer, you are always qualified to be a professional engineer even if you haven't taken any exams since first doing the licensing exam (even if it was decades ago).
So, is it forever? Once you get a Professional Engineer's license from Ontario, isn't there anything that you need to do to maintain the license? The answer is: yes.
You have to pay your fees; otherwise you lose the license.
Shows you where their values lie. More recently, they are implementing a "competency upkeep" type system, which makes much more sense and should have been done in the first place.
So, no, not quite the same as a US engineering license.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
while commenting on something outside his particular field of engineering?
You mean commenting on motion equations while being an expert...on motion equations? :-p
He should be excoriated, not defended, because he just lowered public opinion for all engineers.
Bullshit, what happened was that Oregon just lowered world's opinion of Oregon.
Ezekiel 23:20
By that argument, that describes all of engineering.
Well, they literally punished him precisely for doing math, so the Oregon Board of Idiots apparently concurs.
Ezekiel 23:20
> He mailed a letter to the engineering licensing authority claiming to be an engineer and offered engineering advice to the licensing authority. That's enough to put them under their authority.
That's not how advice works. Can you explain the nature of how advice subjects you to legal or moral authority anywhere else in the world? If I tell a doctor that I think I'm sick with a cold but I really have cancer, I'm now subject to a malpractice lawsuit? Can't tell if you're kinda stupid or really stupid.
I disagree with the judge allowing him to use the title, as it dilutes the prestige and the specific legal meaning of the Professional Engineer designation.
Yeah, except that it's not a title but a generic English noun, and even older than the Oregon bureaucracy. How do extant generic English nouns "dilute the prestige" of legally privileged compounds using these nouns? Am I not allowed to call the rectangular things on my Linux desktop "windows" because it "dilutes the prestige" of Microsoft Windows (C)(R)(TM)(WTF)?
Ezekiel 23:20
Having a degree in engineering makes you a person with student debt.
Not really...he's from Sweden, not from the US. :-p
Ezekiel 23:20
How would that work?
Extradition and/or a CIA kidnapping team, of course.
Ezekiel 23:20
In Texas, when I took my Engineer-In-Training (Fundamentals of Engineering) exam we had at least 2 tests to choose from, one for Civil Engineering and one for General Engineering. The general exam could not later qualify for a Civil PE and practice in that field, so that is not correct in Texas and I assume elsewhere.
The letter Mr. Jarlstrom received stated he violated two laws. The first was claiming to be an engineer without being registered as an engineer in Oregon or any other jurisdiction in the USA. The second was "practicing engineering" without a license. By writing his letter stating he did a study on traffic patterns and the layout of the roadway he "testified" or "investigated" on matters concerning "public utilities, processes, works, or projects" as defined in 2007 ORS 672.005.
What is worse is that the law defines such acts on private property as "practicing engineering". Practicing engineering without a license is a violation of the law. So, you measure a room and compute the wall area so that you can make sure you buy enough paint to cover the walls you are "practicing engineering" under the law. If you take those calculations to the hardware store to buy paint, and you are not a licensed engineer in Oregon, then you have violated the law.
If you measure out your yard so that you can buy enough fertilizer for your grass then you have done "surveying to determine area or topography" or "surveying to establish lines, grades or elevations, or to determine or estimate quantities of materials required, removed or in place" as defined by the law. Even on private property this applies. Since Mr. Jarlstrom did some surveying on public property, the intersection in question, and stated so in his letters to the various government agencies then he's been "practicing engineering" without a license.
The $500 fine he paid was for claiming to be an engineer when he was not, under the law. What got him in trouble in the first place was showing expertise in engineering and using that knowledge to complain, or "testify"", to the government. It seems they thought they could not get him on that law, or they didn't want to bother arguing that to a judge. I lost where I saw it but it seems there is a statute of limitations of two years on this violation. Since he keeps talking about the problems with the traffic lights to anyone that asks him about it the clock keeps getting reset on this violation and/or he is committing multiple violations of this law. Each violation carries a possible fine of up to $1000.
After receiving these letters the Oregon state government could have done one of two things, fine him for violating the law, or shut up and listen to what he was telling them. If they didn't fine him then others would have got the crazy idea in their head that they could use devices that measure time and distance, and "apply special knowledge of the mathematical, physical and engineering sciences" to check the work of government "engineers". I suspect the government wants him to shut up so that they can keep collecting fines on people running red lights.
He's paid his fine, can the government come back and fine him again if he doesn't stop talking? I guess that's why the federal courts are now involved.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I am Groot.
Are you licensed as a tree?
lol captcha: harassed
I am Groot.
Are you licensed as a tree?
lol captcha: harassed
Everywhere but the District of Columbia and North Carolina. There I had to register as a potato.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
It's not the board itself though is it? It's a petty government official taking their name in vain and starting legal proceedings.
Exactly. My official job title is "Senior Member of Engineering Staff", and my degree is a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the College of Engineering at Drexel University. In fact, looking at the diploma, it simply states "Bachelor of Science from the College of Engineering". I had all the same freshman/sophomore classes that all the engineering disciplines had (multiple calculus, physics, chemistry, courses, along with multiple engineering design labs, ethics, critical reading/writing, and law). Sure I also had much more specific course work on programming, lambda calculus, discrete mathematics, logic, probability and statistics, which not all engineers required, but by any sense of any definition, I am an engineer. Just not a certified professional engineer (which cover almost exclusively the activities of civil engineers... Which leads me to one of my more favorite jokes. Want to know the difference between a civil engineer and a mechanical engineer? A civil engineer makes targets.)
YEEEEEEEEEEEEEE HAAAAHH
25 APRIL 2017
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/man-fined-dollar500-for-crime-of-writing-i-am-an-engineer-in-an-email-to-the-government?utm_source=mbfb
April 25 2017
I've found this on Reddit
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/man-fined-dollar500-for-crime-of-writing-i-am-an-engineer-in-an-email-to-the-government?utm_source=mbfb
That is like having someone with a Doctorate in Women's Studies operate on you to remove your spleen because they are a "Doctor".
Not all engineering degrees are the same. Not all Engineers are qualified to do all "engineering" work. Do you want a civil engineer to do your electrical work, or an electrical work done by a civil engineer?
Also he is a "Software Engineer" which in many circles is not actually considered a real "engineer". At best it might mean they may adhere to a specific code of ethics and conduct... maybe. In most areas (also in this case) unless you pay your dues and belong to your association, you lose the right to call yourself an engineer.
I think the judge is just waving his hand here to get at the crux of the argument to say, "OK OK for the sake of argument you are an fracking engineer, and you can make engineering kind of noises, wtf are you getting on about these traffic lights and why is it such a big deal to you and the association?"
It is about PROFESSIONAL accountability.
I may not be a Doctor, but I'd recommend some rino horn for your sore thumb, and perhaps some tincture of ham. No because you are not PROFESSIONALLY a Doctor, so you cannot give that advice, and yes it is illegal to do so and call yourself one. Similar for a Lawyer, or an engineer, or any "profession". Yes there are those that skirt that definition and rules, which is why their associations (the BAR, the College of doctors, the engineering association, etc...) try to come down hard on those that do, to protect the INTEGRITY of their profession. Because if they don't anyone can say anything, and it will be a mess. What the court has to decide is if this bums rights to bitch and complain about a traffic light is more important than that (which it might be, who cares really)... Honestly I think the association made a mountain out of a molehill, and I bet they are regretting everything now that this has blown up in their faces legally.
Same applies to say an unlicensed doctor, or an unlicensed lawyer. There are reasons why licencing exists. Accountability for ones actions being one of the primary ones.
He is effectively "practicing" engineering if he is giving professional advice on an issue while referencing that he is an engineer, which is what he is being called on.
If he just said, I have a technical background and think your traffic lights are crap, no one would care. However he said something like I'm an engineer and in my opinion your traffic lights are crap, to which the association basically said, ahhh actually your not, because you aren't licences, haven't paid your dues, and fsck off, and here is a fine for your trouble and being a jerk about it all, to which this guy was like ohhh my free speech etc... bs. I guess it serves the association right for being petty about it all (i.e. fining the guy, they could have just dismissed him) as I bet they regret it now for all the trouble it's caused.
I'm a Doctor. Here take this drug.
I think it is mostly for ease of use than anything else.
I used to be involved with some legislation that had some very flexible wording around it. It was a nightmare to actually use. Certain individuals needed to be vetted as to their qualifications, work experience, background, education, etc... while those engineers that belonged to the association did all the vetting for you. In the end after years of having to deal with that (with no staff or resources to do it or managers willing to sign off on the responsibility should something go wrong), the wording was changed to "engineers".
This isn't a slight against you or that you are any less qualified, it is just because it is easier to administer, as you are basically outsourcing all the vetting and the responsibility to the association.
There's no problem with unlicensed doctors or unlicensed lawyers. There are things they are not allowed to do. Similarly, an unlicensed engineer in Oregon is not allowed to do certain things. There are reasons why licensing exists in all three cases, but it doesn't affect the fact that a guy with an engineering degree working in an engineering job that does not require licensing may reasonably be called an engineer.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Showing someone on paper that they've made an error in their calculations, and NOT billing them, is NOT practicing.
Just another day in Paradise
Interesting, BronsCon states he is an "Engineering Lead" (note the capitals) on his web page and he is not licensed in CA (where his office and residence is). A bit of hypocrisy here? Of course, he may be a millennial.
https://bronstrup.com/team/
Well, in fact a lawyer is someone who practices law. I don't know about other countries, but in the USA in most jurisdictions if you want to practice law (with the exception of representing yourself), you need to have more than a law degree---in fact you need to pas the bar; i.e. meeting the qualifying procedure by which a person is licensed to practice law in a given jurisdiction. An "attorney at law" is one who is practicing law (i.e. a lawyer) in certain jurisdictions.
I don't see why this is so hard for people like you to grasp that.
Too bad he isn't in Sweden, or did Oregon secede from the US and join Sweden when Trump became president?
BronsCon, actually, you do not understand the law. So be careful and don't choke on that popcorn while you eat your own words.
You realize I was agreeing with him, right? Check yourself, Alexander.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
If you're an Engineer anywhere, you're an Engineer. He's not an Engineer licensed in the state of Oregon but, then, he never claimed to be.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
There is no formal licensing requirement for Software Engineering. In fact, there 's no Software Engineering license at all. If there were, I would be licensed.
Also, consider that the word "engineer" may be capitalized for reasons other than its use in a title; for example, being the first word in a sentence or standalone phrase like... oh... engineering lead. Thanks for the publicity, though; I did just finish a round of hiring, perhaps I'll need to hire a few more.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
In fact, there 's no Software Engineering license at all.
That's because "software engineering" isn't engineering at all. It's a bunch of script kiddies like you producing shit products that nobody will stand behind. Licensed engineers have skin in the game with real responsibilities and liabilities.
LOL: "finish a round of hiring"
Hmm. It looks like you only have one "employee". Also, it's kind of strange that a website developer hasn't even updated his own website in several years and only mentions one paltry website project.
Now you say you just finished a round of hiring? What for? Updating your website? Did you finally give up on surfing Stack Overflow for help on HTML or that crappy framework your website is built on?
Do you know Mr. Rogers? I only ask as it sounds like your business is based in his land of "Make Believe". Does Daniel Striped Tiger have a big web portal project for you? Oh, now I see. That's why you are staffing-up. I'll also bet your employees get perks like free use of the Fisher-Price phones and all the Pull Ups they can wet.
Let's face it. You are such a blowhard it isn't funny. So, let the grownups finish discussing this. You are out of your league.
I stand behind my work, I support what I put out there, and I write liability clauses which very much mimic the liability your typical PE might face, as well as the protections they enjoy, into my contracts. That last one, I bet you're asking yourself "why in the hell would you codify your own liability into a contract?" Well, it's simple: it keeps my head on straight and, oh, did I mention I charge a premium for that?
As for the legal aspect of calling myself an Engineer, well... Again, the capitalization of "engineer" on that page is stylistic, rather than syntactic; having "engineering Lead" next to "Design Lead" would look silly, wouldn't it? Meanwhile, there's nothing stylistic about capitalizing it in the middle of a sentence; that's pure syntax; and when it's not capitalized at all, it's clearly not being used in the legal sense. The exception to that last bit, of course, being its use in a legal document defining the term, where it may or may not be capitalized depending on stylistic decisions made earlier in the document; you'll find an example of that below.
That said, if I wanted to use it in the legal sense in the state of California, I sure as hell could, so long as I don't
practice civil, electrical, or mechanical engineering
and avoid using the titles
“consulting engineer,” “professional engineer,” or “registered engineer,” or any combination of those titles or abbreviations thereof
and, even then, there are well-defined exceptions where someone may be allowed to practice Engineering and/or use those titles without a license. Keep in mind that those are quotes, used in the correct context, from California Business and Professions Code Chapter 7 Paragraph 6704.
As defined by the law that governs the use of the title of Engineer in my state (you can find these definitions in the same above-linked document):
Civil engineering embraces the following studies or activities in connection with fixed works for irrigation, drainage, waterpower, water supply, flood control, inland waterways, harbors, municipal improvements, railroads, highways, tunnels, airports and airways, purification of water, sewerage, refuse disposal, foundations, grading, framed and homogeneous structures, buildings, or bridges
which I don't do professionally,
Electrical engineering is that branch of professional engineering described in Section 6734.1 that embraces studies or activities relating to the generation, transmission, and utilization of electrical energy, including the design of electrical, electronic, and magnetic circuits, and the technical control of their operation and of the design of electrical gear
which I don't do professionally,
Mechanical engineering is that branch of professional engineering described in Section 6734.2 that deals with engineering problems relating to generation, transmission, and utilization of energy in the thermal or mechanical form and also with engineering problems relating to the production of tools, machinery, and their products, and to heating, ventilation, refrigeration, and plumbing
which I also don't do professionally. Those activities, and the use of the titles specifically mentioned above, are the things I can't do without a license (and, in the case of the activities themselves, I can do them under the supervisio
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I can only imagine how rattled this little prat is.
Just picture the frantic typing while stuttering
I--AM--A--EN--GIN--EER-.
I--WILL--SHOW--THEM--I--HAVE--A--REAL--COM--PAN--Y.
What a complete loser!
No, it's because software alone does not put lives at risk.
Way to pass the buck there.
Maybe if you read the entire post you'd realize there's no buck-passing going on here and that I actually support licensing the use of the title. I was merely pointing out why it's not currently a licensed title.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Do you seriously believe that software alone does not put lives at risk? If so, you are a fool.
I don't know about anyone else, but I take issue with his use of the term "lead". Sounds like there he is the leader of nobody.
I went through a bar once during a pub crawl. Does that make me a lawyer?
It seems that you have too much free time to keep responding to all of the flames fanned your way. Kinda pokes holes in your "too busy to update my webpage in 3-years" argument you professed. But since you seem to be a addle-minded moron hogging the troll bait, is anyone surprised?
What a pathetic loser.
You could use some pondus minuere.
Do you seriously believe that a lack of physical safety interlocks in hardware is the fault of software? Take Therac-25 as a prime example. Yes, the radiation overdoses were caused by a software glitch; however, it was the lack of physical interlocks that allowed that glitch to cause damage. The software running on the Therac-25 was reused from an older model which did have hardware interlocks; the developers who wrote it did not intend it to be used in an application without such safety measures and certainly did not sign off on that use. The damage it caused was entirely a failure of the physical design; specifically, that it was used with hardware for which it was not intended.
Provide a counterexample and I'll be more than happy to pick it apart, as well.
Software merely controls hardware. Hardware that is not sufficiently designed to prevent unsafe operation is what puts lives at risk; that's why we require licensing for the people who design it.
Now, were Software Engineering a licensed profession as well, a Software Engineer would have had to sign off on the reuse of the existing software for Therac-25. No licensed Software Engineer would have taken that liability; they would have insisted on hardware interlocks and kicked the design back down to the ME who signed off on it.
And that's why I believe it should be a licensed profession.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
The posts get more frequent...
And he claims he is doing work while in a flame war.
Sounds like the typical developer to me.
Well, if software alone cannot put lives at risk, there is no need for licensing software engineers. So, programmers will always be subordinate to other engineering disciplines.
OMG! This is the same neck beard that claims he pulls in a 7-figure salary.
https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10664343&cid=54508381
Provide a counterexample and I'll be more than happy to pick it apart, as well.
Well, since you mentioned the Terac-25, let's go medical here. Hospitals are full of examples:
Of course, I suppose you will assert some lame theory such as the "engineer" that designed the shoes worn by the nurse didn't have an interlock that prevented the wrong entry on the database to be displayed on the medication order from being provided to the patient, so software isn't to blame here.
All of those represent situations where bad *data* can put lives at risk. If the software pulls the incorrect record from the database, its output would also show the incorrect patient name, which is something the human handing out the medication, performing the procedure, or treating the patient should be reviewing; if they're not verifying the patient name, they're going to kill someone eventually even if the software is perfect.
Mind you, I never said that software doesn't or can't contribute to putting lives at risk; it certainly did in the case of Therac-25. But cause? No. Relying on software as the sole safety mechanism in a system is the cause of many dangers, but that's a fault in the system itself.
If you think I'm wrong, buy a 737 and strip out any physical safeties that are made redundant by software, and see if you can find a pilot willing to fly it. If you manage to find one dumb enough, plan yourself a route that's mostly over water, buckle up, and enjoy the flight.
I specified a water route to limit casualties, because there will be at least two.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Oh, so now you can predict how software will fail without looking at a line of code or anything else. Delusional!
So, tell me, what is the weather like in your castle in the sky?
If an algorithm allows bad data to pass unchecked, it is a bad algorithm.
Again, in Oregon, you can't publicly call yourself an engineer without a license. In some states, they clarify the restricted title is "Professional Engineer" or "Licensed Engineer". It does not matter that he does not sign off on plans. Signing off an plans requires a license.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Well, they literally punished him precisely for doing math, so the Oregon Board of Idiots apparently concurs.
No they are punishing him for repeatedly declaring himself to be an engineer despite warnings not to do so. As for the math itself, they've already told Jarlstrom that the traffic lights are within the city's jurisdiction, therefore, they have no control nor say about validity of the math itself. The city of Beaverton must make the change should they wish.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
You should read more carefully. The OP said: "You mentioned three different fields. Unless you are properly educated, and licensed in both our jurisdictions, you have no right to an opinion." He is literally saying I can't state a fact if I don't have a degree. It is a fact that a doctor needs to medical license to practice medicine and that merely a medical degree is not enough. It is a fact that a lawyer needs to pass the bar to practice law in a state. While a license is not necessary to do any engineering work, it is a fact that an engineer needs a license to use the title in certain states.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Look, obviously I'm engaging in reductio ad absurdum.
In other words, he was saying "Take lightly what I have written above, for it is absurd and should hold no weight." He, then, even goes on to explain:
Because this entire case is just that. This was not a court case, where a person who is being called as an expert witness needs to present some evidence of that expertise. It isn't a case of an engineer practicing their profession without a license. It is just a person offering their opinion, and perhaps their worst offense is that they are arguing from authority.
Further, he explains:
Which is probably what pissed off the powers that be, that someone disagreed with them, and tried to present a bona fide.
He, then, ends his post on one of the most serious notes I have ever encountered:
I am Groot.
In short, you took seriously the obviously (and intentionally) absurd portion of the post and ignored the remainder of the post, which explained why the portion you paid attention to was absurd.
Reductio ad absurdum is, for reference:
a form of argument which attempts either to disprove a statement by showing it inevitably leads to a ridiculous, absurd, or impractical conclusion, or to prove one by showing that if it were not true, the result would be absurd or impossible.
In this case, OP was attempting to show that the train of thought being used here ultimately leads to the conclusion in his first statement. You, sir, missed the point, as you typically seem to do here.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Because he was warned that using the title as he was doing was the problem. Also he was told that the State Board has no control over the traffic lights in the city of Beaverton, Oregon. Whether it has a "fault" as you describe it, it is not up to the board to correct so "hiding" is not a motive on their part.
At the same time there probably should be a distinction between licensed engineer vs engineer? Just because he isn't licensed, does this negate his engineering degree, even if he can't perform in said jurisdiction. Some place the distinction appears to come down to whether the said degreed expert can have an opinion vs sign off on that opinion.
It does not negate his opinion, however, the lack of license does diminish his credentials. If someone got a medical degree or a law degree but never passed their respective exams to get licensed to practice, would you regard their opinion less respectable than someone who did pass their exams?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The OP also said this: " It isn't a case of an engineer practicing their profession without a license. It is just a person offering their opinion, and perhaps their worst offense is that they are arguing from authority." which is http://ij.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/OR-Math-Jarlstrom-Final-Default-Order-IJ084769xA6322.pdf>factually untrue but like always you don't seem to do any research before interjecting yourself.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The law clearly states (and this is in your document, as well):
OAR 820-010-073 0 provides, in pertinent part:
(1) A person who is not registered in Oregon as a professional engineer, but holds a substantially equivalent unexpired certificate of registration in another state, territory or possession of the United States, the District of Columbia, or a foreign country, may use the title, "engineer," "professional engineer," "registered professional engineer," or any of its derivations provided that the jurisdiction(s) in which they are registered is written/printed after the title so as not to mislead the public regarding their credentials.
Now, he refers to himself as a "Swedish engineer", which is true; he holds an engineering degree in Sweden, a degree is a type of certificate, degrees do not expire, and an engineering degree is all the certification required to be considered an engineer in Sweden. We're dealing with a matter of semantics, as he wrote the jurisdiction before the title, rather than after. When your case is built on semantics, you have no case at all. Even more so, he didn't use "engineer" as a title; he didn't call himself "Mats Jarlstrom, Engineer" or "Mats Jarlstrom, Swedish Engineer", either of which would have been in violation of the above-quoted law (incidentally, "Mats Jarlstrom, Engineer (Sweden)" would be the correct use of the title), he used it in a manner consistent with the reality of him holding an engineering degree. The law is very clearly intended to protect the use of the title, not simply the word itself; it even literally says "title" right in its text, not just in the bit I quoted here, but throughout. Other uses of the word "engineer" not as a title are not subject to this law.
And OP is correct, by the way. If you apply the law, so absurdly, to consider even engineering opinions not done for hire in the state of Oregon to be "work", you place every engineering student in Oregon on the wrong side of the law. In the course of earning their degree and preparing to become licensed, every engineering student must do mock engineering "work", which is all Jarlstrom did here. If engineering students in Oregon aren't in violation of the law, neither is Jarlstrom.
And if they are... well... Oregon needs to reconsider their laws.
But, since they're not all being sued by the state, I'm leaning toward you being wrong and them (and Jarlstrom) being right. At the end of the day, it was simply cheaper for Jarlstrom to pay the $500 fine than it would have been to defend himself so, being a pragmatic and educated engineer, that's exactly what he did.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.