Slashdot Mirror
State Board Concedes It Violated Free Speech Rights of Oregon Man Fined For Writing 'I Am An Engineer' (oregonlive.com)
According to Oregon Live, "A state panel violated a Beaverton man's free speech rights by claiming he had unlawfully used the title 'engineer' and by fining him when he repeatedly challenged Oregon's traffic-signal timing before local media and policymakers, Oregon's attorney general has ruled." From the report: Oregon's Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying unconstitutionally applied state law governing engineering practice to Mats Jarlstrom when he exercised his free speech about traffic lights and described himself as an engineer since he was doing so "in a noncommercial'' setting and not soliciting professional business, the state Department of Justice has conceded. "We have admitted to violating Mr. Jarlstrom's rights,'' said Christina L. Beatty-Walters, senior assistant attorney general, in federal court Monday. The state's regulation of Jarlstrom under engineering practice law "was not narrowly tailored to any compelling state interests,'' she wrote in court papers. The state has pledged the board will not pursue the Beaverton man any further when he's not acting in a commercial or professional manner, and on Monday urged a federal judge to dismiss the case. The state also sent a $500 check to Jarlstrom in August, reimbursing him for the state fine.
Jarlstrom and his lawyers argued that's not good enough. They contend Jarlstrom isn't alone in getting snared by the state board's aggressive and "overbroad'' interpretation of state law. They contend others have been investigated improperly and want the court to look broader at the state law and its administrative rules and declare them unconstitutional. In the alternative, the state law should be restricted to only regulating engineering communications that are made as part of paid employment or a contractual agreement.
Jarlstrom and his lawyers argued that's not good enough. They contend Jarlstrom isn't alone in getting snared by the state board's aggressive and "overbroad'' interpretation of state law. They contend others have been investigated improperly and want the court to look broader at the state law and its administrative rules and declare them unconstitutional. In the alternative, the state law should be restricted to only regulating engineering communications that are made as part of paid employment or a contractual agreement.
You should look up acceleration in the dictionary.
A car coming towards you at 20 MPH need not accelerate to squash you.
Ok, so who's getting fired?
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Maybe this guy won his case, but it's pretty damn clear now that he is not an engineer.
Doh, okay, it's abundantly clear I didn't read the article. He is in fact an (electrical) engineer, just not one who is licensed to practice in the state of Oregon. Sorry.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
To all those on Slashdot who defended the Oregon Board of Examiners (and there were a few of you that did), this would be a very good time for you to sit down and have this here warm cup of STFU.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
You should look up acceleration in the dictionary.
A car coming towards you at 20 MPH need not accelerate to squash you.
Hmm E=1/2 m*v^2. Suppose m is around 1500kg. 20mph = 8.94 m/s. I believe all the units are correct, so multiplying that out yields about 60k joules of energy. Terminal velocity is around 53m/s, so assuming a 62kg human, you get 87k joules of energy if you just went splat from an aircraft.
The first would assume you were between a car and a brick wall and you received all the energy, which is an extreme case. At any rate, I suspect the 20mph one might be survivable, as long as your thrown out of the way, since your only getting a fraction of the available energy. (It could also easily be lethal or crippling.)
I'm too lazy to read all the details about the Oregon man, but if he got a fine for saying he is an engineer, can't we give Trump a fine every time he says believe me, or maybe every time he resorts to juvenile name calling?
Perhaps we could start with a 1 cent fine and double it each time. I'm betting he would be bankrupt within a month.
He is Mats Järlström from Sweden, earned a degree in electrical engineering from Sweden’s Ebersteinska gymnasium in 1980.
The crucial part of it is the way the law was written allowed overly broad abuse against anyone who called themselves an engineer while not registered in Oregon even if they are engineers.
The application of this law in this case is suspect because the lights generate revenue and his correction of a 1959 mathematical formula (which treats yellow lights as red lights) would have decreased revenue.
They want lots of lovely ticket revenue and he demonstrated mathematically that they had rigged the lights such that it was not always possible to obey the light even while driving lawfully. That would cut into that ticket revenue and could even cause them to have to give some back.
People were hearing his message and starting to raise a fuss about it so they acted in haste to shut him up. Now they're going to be educated in the Streisand effect.
Considering the fine against him was essentially a SLAPP action, and Oregon has anti-SLAPP legislation, Mr. Jarlstrom should make the argument that an additional fine/restitution against the State Board should be applied in this case. Even if the specific legislation exempts the government, it could be argued by analogy.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
I'm an EE. I looked into getting a license a few times, but nothing was relevant to the work that I do. The test seemed to cover things like electrical codes, power distribution networks and safety. Engineering is a wide field, the sample tests did not even touch on verilog, vhdl quantum mechanical or device geometry.
Those who did know they did.
Ah yes... The old SCO gambit. "You know what you did, and if you didn't I'm certainly not going to show you."
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Why did they go to such lengths over traffic lights?
Generally speaking? Because small-minded people in power love to push others around, just because they can. Doubly so when someone dares to calls them out on an issue within their two-bit little fiefdom.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Except that he very clearly stated what his expertise was and does, in fact, hold the degrees he claims to hold. He phrased the traffic issue in terms of his expertise as "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, then, provided an analysis of the issue framed by that expertise.
And his analysis was correct, so you can hardly say he doesn't have the expertise he claims.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
He's not an "engineer" by their definition, but I bet the asshats that pursued this wouldn't hesitate to label themselves as "public servants"...
Many years ago I started a small software "engineering" shop with about a half dozen "engineers" (we used to call them that a lot more back then). Naturally, I thought it was a good idea to have "engineering" in the name of the company.
This was fine for quite a while as we never advertised and we certainly would never have even dreamed of passing ourselves off as some kind of structural or electrical engineering company. Then one day I added another phone line to the office and the local telephone company (without my knowledge) put a "free" yellow pages "ad" in their listing for the company...
The Association of Professional Engineers called me... They were good about it, but quite firm that I was absolutely not to do business under that name anymore unless I wanted to be sued out of existence. I changed the name at my inconvenience and expense. For good measure, I also changed my phone numbers.
I honestly had no idea that there was a group of people (with a lot of lawyers) who had a claim over a word in the English language. I still think it's wrong.
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
license is a good to make sure you have the basic skills ...
That is not really saying a lot.
... to do such a job safely.
Basic skills and Safely aren't really in the same ballpark IMHO.
I happen to know people who should be "engineers" but don't have the piece of paper to say they are, as well as people that have the piece of paper, that really shouldn't. Piece of paper is just a barrier to entry and doesn't indicate any real competency.
Once you realize that, you look beyond the paper for actual experience and proof of skill, which is what you should be doing regardless of the piece of paper requirement by the state.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Those "exceptions," you mention are not, "free speech." Like making money pretending to be an engineer, those are simply, "illegal."
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.