If Canadian law enforcement accessed your data, you could legally know about it.
After it happened. If you disclose to your target that you are seeking a search warrant, especially for a computer that can be accessed remotely, they'll just delete anything they don't want you to see. Much better to be charged with obstruction than posessing CP, isn't it?
But in neither country is there any guarantee that law enforcement will not have access to your data. Your only point is that in the US they won't tell you that they have gotten access, but that doesn't change the fact that they've accessed it.
I don't think the OP's issue was that he wouldn't be told about law enforcement access to his company's data, but that there could be access in the first place. The Patriot Act doesn't have anything to do with it, since in neither country is there any guarantee.
Car analogy? Well, if you are going to accuse Ford of being untrustworthy because they won't guarantee the tires on your new Ford car for 100,000 miles, then you should realize that this lack of trust should apply to Chevy, Fiat, Mercedes Benz, and every other car company. There is no guarantee.
I'll just err on the side of caution -- not trusting the US government is just a bonus at this point.
And you trust the Canadian government? What guarantee do you have that law enforcement will not get your data in Canada? Is your only real concern that they must tell you've they've copied your entire disk after they do it? Does that make it better?
Worse, if you try talking to one of the more nefarious companies - think broadcasters, news websites, etc. - don't be entirely surprised if they suggest that you should be thankful that your image was used, and that the added exposure to you is nothing but free advertising that you should attempt to monetize.
Many years ago I came across a broadcaster in a distant city that was hosting a web page that included an img tag (not just a link, it loaded the image) to one of my images. Not only did they not attribute it to me or the research group that produced it, they attributed it to someone else altogether. Email reporting the issue went unanswered.
It wasn't long before I learned how to use the Referer header data in Apache to selectively send that one referrer an image advertizing an ABC television show. Oh, did I mention, the broadcaster was affiliated with NBC.
As a long term solution, I started watermaking all the publicly available images with the organization logo in a prominent place. "Monetizing" the product wasn't a viable option, so their free "advertising", which actually advertised a different outfit, was useless.
Peer review is often unpaid under the current system
Peer review is often paid in a quid-pro-quo manner. I.e., if you publish you are expected to review in return.
If every scientist can publish without having peer reviews, why would they volunteer to peer review other people's work? It's not a fun job.
You do not need a journal to organize peer review when researchers can communicate with each other rapidly on the Internet
The ability of folks to communicate quickly amongst their own group has nothing to do with peer review and does nothing to reduce the need for it. One scientist publishing a paper cannot be expected to deal with potentially thousands of other scientists in his field sending him questions or comments about a paper he's already published. You can't unring the bell. You can't unpublish a bogus paper. Peer review can keep the bell from being rung initially.
Peer review happens constantly - you're reading papers from your field, you're publishing papers others are reading.
That's not "peer review". Peer review means changes are made to correct errors prior to publication, or entire papers are withdrawn because they are bogus. It's not a "peer review" when someone arbitrary reads your paper. Google won't help you figure out if a paper is crap or not, it will only tell you that it contains a high percentage of the right keywords.
And peer review doesn't mean the paper is sent to your friends to review, it is sent to people who sometimes are your harshest critics. If a paper can withstand that kind of review, then it probably has some merit. Reviews, in most cases, improve the paper by suggesting better methods of presenting data or more easily understood language. Peer Review is a Good Thing.
Publishers don't just formalize the process a bit. They are the reason the process exists.
Open access without peer review is a bad thing. Relying on "reputation" is a bad thing, since even the most highly regarded scientists can publish nonsense. (Just last week, one such highly regarded scientist was approached by a grad student who referred to an old paper of his, to which he said "that was crap, ignore it." Names witheld to protect the honest.)
Open access will be to science what Pons and Flieschman's press conference was -- a way for more people to publish less correct work. Unless there is some mechanism added to enforce peer review, and that doesn't look likely. The scientific literature will become like wikipedia -- often wrong but ubiquitously referred to.
... because under the Patriot Act, we have no guarantee that this data wouldn't become visible to American law enforcement.
Ummm. Asking a question here. What does the Patriot Act have to do with anything? Does a US citizen using a Canadian server have any guarantee that his data won't become visible to Canadian law enforcement? Do you not have search warrants in Canada? Can Canadian law enforcement not walk into a Canadian court and say "we have evidence of illegal activities on this server, we need a search warrant so we can look at everything..." and get access to whatever data I have on that server, whether or not it is illegal?
If you cannot guarantee that Canadian law enforcement won't get access to my data there, and you have a similar lack of guarantee for your data here, then just how does the Patriot Act (which you don't have there) play any part? A lack of guarantee is a lack of guarantee.
Now, I understand that your laws regarding search may (or may not) take into consideration your data privacy laws while our laws on search would, naturally, ignore them. But it would be all of our laws, not just the Patriot Act, that would ignore Canadian data privacy laws for data that is located on US-based servers. Again, if the Patriot Act is irrelevant to this, how is it relevant?
What can possibly go wrong? I hang my balls everyday in front of a CRT monitor connected to a megavolt power supply, in fact its a pretty good contraceptive:P
And it works even better on the days you forget to retrieve them and take them home with you, right? I can hear it now, in the car on the way home, "Damn, I've got an itch and no place to scratch."
I would seriously like to see the TSA removed and each airport and airline worry about their own security.
If it wasn't trivial to move about after passing the security screening, I might agree. Since someone who flys airline X can freely mingle with someone who flies on Y, if X has lax security then so do, effectively, Y. Same for the issue of mixing people between airports. If airport X has no security and Y does, the first plane to land at Y that came from X means Y also has no security.
Much worse was the kind of issue created when England temporarily enacted really draconian security policy. If you weren't aware of the nutiness, you could get on an airplane going there and then not be able to carry your stuff back out. My boss was stuck like that. He carried his laptop in but couldn't leave with it. If airlines were each responsible for their own, you could start a trip with a really nice laptop and expensive electronic gadgets, only to have them confiscated when you were trying to make your connection on a different airline. Trying to make a 45 minute connection at a distant airport is the worst time to find out that you can neither carry on that electronic device nor check it.
Not saying that TSA is not a problem, just that the solution is not a mishmash of mix and match systems. There needs to be national standards and a national implementation.
because there is no proper analogy between a service provided by an educational institution and a physical good, and it's not possible in any meaningful sense to take a college degree from somebody.
There is no way to take the information and education from someone, but in a very real sense, if you are applying for a job where they want you to prove you have a college degree and you cannot get the college to send a transcript, the college has taken the degree away from you. Thus, the reposession of a vehicle for failure to pay the loan is a very real and applicable analogy. The only failure is in who the contractual parties are, and those are set by the loan agreement signed originally.
Further, the continued service of proving to potential employers your degree status is what is being withheld, and that certified transcript is very much a good, physical or not. Let's use the car analogy of leasing a car from the dealer. Even if the dealer decides not to reposess, he certainly isn't going to keep servicing the vehicle for you to drive about town. Likely he'll simply keep the car when you next try to get free service.
In effect, what this means is that even though you've completed the educational requirements to hold a position and you're perfectly qualified, an arbitrary third party is allowed to step in...
Not an arbitrary third party, a third party that YOU invited to the party by asking for money to pay for something you wanted but could not afford yourself, from them. There are no arbitrary parties in this arrangement. You picked them ahead of time, and they aren't "stepping in", they are fully in the room with you until you pay them off.
... and prevent you from getting that job because you owe another third party money.
All those "parties" that you invited to the party when you asked for the money. If you don't want them to be involved, then don't ask them to be involved, or at least meet the terms of the contract that you signed with them when you asked them for money. You broke the terms of the contract by not paying, so you get the consequences. That's real life.
This is not only detrimental to you,
It is intended to be. You agreed to pay them back. You broke that agreement. You didn't even bother to negotiate new terms with them so you wouldn't be in default.
but also to the employers missing out on potentially productive employees,
If there wasn't more than one applicant for the job, then there is a very real possibility that the transcript wouldn't be a sticking point. Any company that has just one qualified applicant for a highly paid job, and that applicant presents himself as a well educated, skilled, productive person during the interview will most likely bend the requirements to get who they need. At worst, if you explain the situation to them, they'll work with you. Maybe make getting the transcript to them after six months a requirement, so you'll have six months of pay to deal with the default status. After all, you're the only qualified applicant. The company isn't a loser here, unless they choose to be.
In fact, there were many many times when I was interviewing for my first job out of college that the company was quite willing to wait for proof of graduation, since even those who have already performed their final graduate presentations are still required to edit their dissertations and present a final copy. Those companies I talked to had no problem hiring me prior to the final degree being granted, as long as would agree to get it finished. The place I eventually worked had a carrot with the stick -- when I got the degree finished I'd get a healthy raise.
and in the long run the loan issuers who aren't going to get paid back when the students can't find a decent job.
If the graduate isn't paying back the loan already, t
Perhaps a school has a vested interest in not having high loan default rates?
You missed the part of the summary that said that the transcripts were being withheld from graduates who were already in default. Or behind in payments, which means in default. Withholding the transcript is a way of trying to convince those who are in default to become current -- which would reduce the overall average default rate.
If I don't keep my BMW clean and cosmetically maintained, it arguably reflects poorly on the BMW brand.
No, it reflects only on you. Most people understand that BMW isn't responsible for washing your car every week, even if it is a BMW. And just why are you driving a BMW if you cannot afford to stay current with your student loan payments? Misadjusted priorities, which will be recalibrated when you need a transcript for something and can't get it.
It could prevent you from getting a job that pays anything, in which case you are in a kind of debtors' prison.
Anyone who has been in prison might take offence at your characterization of not getting the ideal job as being in a prison of any kind, much less a "debtor's prison". I haven't been, so I'm not offended, I just scoff at the comparison.
Would you accuse the company that won't hire you because they have no openings in your ideal job of keeping you in a debtor's prison because they won't give you the job you want?
In any case, if the only job skills you have after four or more years of college depend on the existance of a transcript showing what classes you took, then you overpaid for your college education by a very large amount. Yes, that transcript might help you get that ideal job in your degree area, but many people are quite successful working in areas completely outside their college degrees. They remember what they learned, and the process of learning, and can present themselves as valuable assets for a company without having paper to prove they took specific classes.
It would more sense for the bank to get part of your paycheck withheld.
Well, that might be true. Or not. If you're trying to get your first job and need the transcript to make the resume you don't have a paycheck to garnishee, so it makes no sense to rely on that method for repayment, does it? Many companies would look askew at any job applicant who comes in with an order of garnishment on their first paycheck. What kind of deadbeat are they hiring? On the other hand, if you are trying for a job so you can start paying off your loans again and a transcript isn't necessary, the company will never know you are a student loan deadbeat because your paycheck is unencumbered.
The question wasn't what makes the MOST sense, and clearly your solution isn't a universal one. The question is if the solution being used makes sense, and yes, it does. It matches standard operating methods for many other kinds of loans, and it probably was included in the fine print of the contract that the student who is in default on his loan signed to get the money.
That brings us back to the common sense part of the problem. Why does anyone think that they should get to keep what they paid for with other people's money when they aren't paying the person who gave them the money back? You don't get to keep your fancy car if you don't pay the loan, you don't get to keep your house if you don't pay the mortgage. Why is a student loan used to get a college degree that much different? Don't pay the loan, lose the right to use that degree. Kind of a reasonable stick, I think.
Come now, the alternative to an 100W incandescent lamp costing a dollar is NOT a bulb costing $29. It is a CFL costing around $8.
Context is everything, now isn't it? He wasn't talking about an alternative to an incandescant bulb, he was talking about an alternative to a $30 LED "bulb". His comment was that the poster was free to come up with a $29 dollar alternative. I pointed out that a buck incandescant is the alternative to the $29 LED, in a free market.
"A is a cheaper alternative to B" doesn't mean "B is a cheaper alternative to A". Quite the opposite, it would appear.
The US law didn't ban incandescents -- it set minimum efficiency standards for them which good halogen incandescents meet.
Which had the effect of banning the good old incandescant light bulb that most people use. Yes, in some applications the large amount of heat that a halogen bulb puts out is acceptable, but I have only one place in my house where they are used.
The points stands, proven by your comment, that the market is not free. When there are efficiency standards, the freedom of the market has gone POOF.
HOWEVER as long as the emissions of the coal burning plants are allowed to foul the air upwind of me for the electricity used to power those POS's then I am partly paying for them, too -- that's not right either.
At some point, most people recognize that this kind of argument is more hyperbole than valuable. After all, your existance creates CO2 that is polluting the air I breathe, and that's not right either. Your use of electricity is causing those coal plants to make even more CO2. Would you accept limits on how often you can exhale and a ban on your use of electricity based on this argument? I think not.
If a friend lends me money to buy a car, he cant go too the dealership and demand they hold the title until I pay him back
If your friend loans you money to buy a car and doesn't get his name on the title as a leinholder, then he's stupid or else a really really good friend that really really trusts you not to fuck him over by selling the car and keeping all the money. If he's on the title as a leinholder, he can, indeed, prevent the transfer of that title to any other person, and is first in line for any insurance payments when you break it.
The government isn't your friend and doesn't really really trust you. They are a leinholder on the stuff you bought with the loan until you pay it off. They have a vested interest in being paid off and have arranged with the provider to cut you off when you don't pay.
Whether that is a 'dick move' or smart business is a different argument. Why it happens is quite logical, and not that different from many other large-ticket loan agreements. Why would your degree at $30k in outstanding loans be much different than a $20k car or $100k house?
by that logic if I am using the same bank that you are using, I should be able to put a lein on your house if you owe the bank I affiliate with any money.
No, by the logic being used, the BANK should be able to "put a lein on" (and has, the day he signed the mortgage) the house if he owes them any money. And they should be able to (and will) reposess (foreclose) if he stops paying them back what he owes.
In this case, the government has put a lein on the product that you purchased using the money you borrowed from them, and are foreclosing only because you aren't paying them back like you promised you would. The fact is the limitation on getting a transcript only occurs if the debtor is BEHIND in payments, not just because the loan exists.
Is this different than getting a loan to buy a car? You get a third party loan, you pay the car dealer, you drive off the lot. You have the car. In this case, you got a third party loan, you used it to get a degree.
You aren't prevented from getting those transcripts to provide to a potential employer unless you are behind in payments. Kinda like a repo man coming for the car you aren't making payments on.
What happened to the concept that if you borrow money from someone to buy something and then don't pay them back, you don't get to keep what it is you bought with their money?
The summary is, of course, deliberately inflammatory, in that not getting your transcripts does not prevent you from working, only from using those transcripts to get a specific job. There is no involuntary servitude involved. You can still get a job and pay your loans, and when you do, you get your transcripts. That the school is involved is natural, since they are providing the thing that you have used someone else's money to buy.
If the CFLs don't throw themselves into those landfills, doesn't that imply that it's not the CFLs but the people who are the idiots here?
Yes. The people who are claiming to be environmentalists and leading the charge to use CFLs but who ignore the two facts that 1) they contain hazardous materials and 2) people who use them aren't all going to be as rabidly environmentalist as they themselves are and are more likely to just throw a burned out CFL into the same trash they used to throw their other "light bulbs" into.
If you ignore human nature and rely on universal altruism and environmental activism for a policy intended to save the planet but which requires special actions on the part of everyone involved not to wind up destroying the environment, then yes, you are an idiot.
Feel free to make & sell your own designs for $29 a piece -
He isn't free to make and sell his own design. If he was, he'd be making incandescant lamps for a buck each and you'd be saving $29 per bulb by buying from him. It takes a LONG time to get to $29 in electricity from a light bulb.
Light bulbs are no longer a free market item. Once the govmint got involved in banning certain kinds, the freedom kinda went POOF!
X10 modules generally use a relay for power switching,...
I forgot to add, the POWER modules use a relay. There are also LAMP modules that have TRIACs just like wall dimmer switches use. Unless you have a dimmable CFL, your LAMP module isn't going to dim your CFL. And both modules have the local-on feature so they both leak current to the controlled device.
That's odd. AFAIK, X10 modules generally use a relay for power switching, so there should be no leakage whatsoever. Maybe it has a bad relay.
X10 modules have a local-on feature so that you don't need to use a controller to turn the device on. If you have a lamp connected to one, then turning the lamp off and then back on will trigger the X10 module to power on. It's a safety feature so a lost controller won't result in not being able to turn something on, like a light you need in the middle of the night.
That feature requires a continuous low level current through the controlled device to detect the actual switching at the device. This current is sufficient to keep a CFL blinking even after you turn the X10 power module (with the relay) off. Eventually the CFL cools down and the current isn't enough to flash the lamp and it stops. I'd guess it is also enough to keep an LED lit partially.
It is a statistical fact that 99.9% of all airplane accidents, fatal or non-fatal, involve a pilot. So, yes. We'd save lots of lives is we banned pilots from airplaines.
You need to see a doctor since it seems your elbow keeps leaving the rest of your body and wreaking havoc on your electronics bench. Mine stays right where it belongs, and I don't let it run free to cause problems for innocent bystanders. Unlike that fellow "World Peace" of the NBA who coldcocked an opposing player "by accident" with his.
They shed a lot of light on how most of forensic evidence does not hold to the scientific method and that many so called expert court witnesses are anything but, even with the fancy sounding diploma mill accreditation.
You need to keep in mind, as should judges and juries, that psychology/psychiatry are two of the least scientific of the "hard" sciences. (Social "sciences" are even less.) For god's sake, they still hook people's heads up to electric current to force them into siezures in the name of curing them, without a clue why it works. They dope people up to keep them from being too distracted from anything, and the drugs that don't outright turn your brain off have side effects that are completely opposite the intended goal. Who hasn't seen the ads for anti-depressants that have the wonderful side effect of making people suicidal? "Why yes, my depression is gone, but I keep thinking about slitting my wrists..."
Without any real science behind them, you can buy any opinion you want, and if you let one of them interview someone with the goal of getting the desired answer, they will. McMartin pre-school, anyone?
Slashdot Mirror
If Canadian law enforcement accessed your data, you could legally know about it.
After it happened. If you disclose to your target that you are seeking a search warrant, especially for a computer that can be accessed remotely, they'll just delete anything they don't want you to see. Much better to be charged with obstruction than posessing CP, isn't it?
But in neither country is there any guarantee that law enforcement will not have access to your data. Your only point is that in the US they won't tell you that they have gotten access, but that doesn't change the fact that they've accessed it.
I don't think the OP's issue was that he wouldn't be told about law enforcement access to his company's data, but that there could be access in the first place. The Patriot Act doesn't have anything to do with it, since in neither country is there any guarantee.
Car analogy? Well, if you are going to accuse Ford of being untrustworthy because they won't guarantee the tires on your new Ford car for 100,000 miles, then you should realize that this lack of trust should apply to Chevy, Fiat, Mercedes Benz, and every other car company. There is no guarantee.
I'll just err on the side of caution -- not trusting the US government is just a bonus at this point.
And you trust the Canadian government? What guarantee do you have that law enforcement will not get your data in Canada? Is your only real concern that they must tell you've they've copied your entire disk after they do it? Does that make it better?
Worse, if you try talking to one of the more nefarious companies - think broadcasters, news websites, etc. - don't be entirely surprised if they suggest that you should be thankful that your image was used, and that the added exposure to you is nothing but free advertising that you should attempt to monetize.
Many years ago I came across a broadcaster in a distant city that was hosting a web page that included an img tag (not just a link, it loaded the image) to one of my images. Not only did they not attribute it to me or the research group that produced it, they attributed it to someone else altogether. Email reporting the issue went unanswered.
It wasn't long before I learned how to use the Referer header data in Apache to selectively send that one referrer an image advertizing an ABC television show. Oh, did I mention, the broadcaster was affiliated with NBC.
As a long term solution, I started watermaking all the publicly available images with the organization logo in a prominent place. "Monetizing" the product wasn't a viable option, so their free "advertising", which actually advertised a different outfit, was useless.
Peer review is often unpaid under the current system
Peer review is often paid in a quid-pro-quo manner. I.e., if you publish you are expected to review in return.
If every scientist can publish without having peer reviews, why would they volunteer to peer review other people's work? It's not a fun job.
You do not need a journal to organize peer review when researchers can communicate with each other rapidly on the Internet
The ability of folks to communicate quickly amongst their own group has nothing to do with peer review and does nothing to reduce the need for it. One scientist publishing a paper cannot be expected to deal with potentially thousands of other scientists in his field sending him questions or comments about a paper he's already published. You can't unring the bell. You can't unpublish a bogus paper. Peer review can keep the bell from being rung initially.
Peer review happens constantly - you're reading papers from your field, you're publishing papers others are reading.
That's not "peer review". Peer review means changes are made to correct errors prior to publication, or entire papers are withdrawn because they are bogus. It's not a "peer review" when someone arbitrary reads your paper. Google won't help you figure out if a paper is crap or not, it will only tell you that it contains a high percentage of the right keywords.
And peer review doesn't mean the paper is sent to your friends to review, it is sent to people who sometimes are your harshest critics. If a paper can withstand that kind of review, then it probably has some merit. Reviews, in most cases, improve the paper by suggesting better methods of presenting data or more easily understood language. Peer Review is a Good Thing.
Publishers don't just formalize the process a bit. They are the reason the process exists.
Open access without peer review is a bad thing. Relying on "reputation" is a bad thing, since even the most highly regarded scientists can publish nonsense. (Just last week, one such highly regarded scientist was approached by a grad student who referred to an old paper of his, to which he said "that was crap, ignore it." Names witheld to protect the honest.)
Open access will be to science what Pons and Flieschman's press conference was -- a way for more people to publish less correct work. Unless there is some mechanism added to enforce peer review, and that doesn't look likely. The scientific literature will become like wikipedia -- often wrong but ubiquitously referred to.
By the way, Oregon State did this in 2009.
... because under the Patriot Act, we have no guarantee that this data wouldn't become visible to American law enforcement.
Ummm. Asking a question here. What does the Patriot Act have to do with anything? Does a US citizen using a Canadian server have any guarantee that his data won't become visible to Canadian law enforcement? Do you not have search warrants in Canada? Can Canadian law enforcement not walk into a Canadian court and say "we have evidence of illegal activities on this server, we need a search warrant so we can look at everything..." and get access to whatever data I have on that server, whether or not it is illegal?
If you cannot guarantee that Canadian law enforcement won't get access to my data there, and you have a similar lack of guarantee for your data here, then just how does the Patriot Act (which you don't have there) play any part? A lack of guarantee is a lack of guarantee.
Now, I understand that your laws regarding search may (or may not) take into consideration your data privacy laws while our laws on search would, naturally, ignore them. But it would be all of our laws, not just the Patriot Act, that would ignore Canadian data privacy laws for data that is located on US-based servers. Again, if the Patriot Act is irrelevant to this, how is it relevant?
What can possibly go wrong? I hang my balls everyday in front of a CRT monitor connected to a megavolt power supply, in fact its a pretty good contraceptive :P
And it works even better on the days you forget to retrieve them and take them home with you, right? I can hear it now, in the car on the way home, "Damn, I've got an itch and no place to scratch."
I would seriously like to see the TSA removed and each airport and airline worry about their own security.
If it wasn't trivial to move about after passing the security screening, I might agree. Since someone who flys airline X can freely mingle with someone who flies on Y, if X has lax security then so do, effectively, Y. Same for the issue of mixing people between airports. If airport X has no security and Y does, the first plane to land at Y that came from X means Y also has no security.
Much worse was the kind of issue created when England temporarily enacted really draconian security policy. If you weren't aware of the nutiness, you could get on an airplane going there and then not be able to carry your stuff back out. My boss was stuck like that. He carried his laptop in but couldn't leave with it. If airlines were each responsible for their own, you could start a trip with a really nice laptop and expensive electronic gadgets, only to have them confiscated when you were trying to make your connection on a different airline. Trying to make a 45 minute connection at a distant airport is the worst time to find out that you can neither carry on that electronic device nor check it.
Not saying that TSA is not a problem, just that the solution is not a mishmash of mix and match systems. There needs to be national standards and a national implementation.
Also, if inhaled at room temperature it is fatal.
If you don't inhale some of it at room temperature your mucous membranes will dry out and you'll die from unending nosebleeds.
because there is no proper analogy between a service provided by an educational institution and a physical good, and it's not possible in any meaningful sense to take a college degree from somebody.
There is no way to take the information and education from someone, but in a very real sense, if you are applying for a job where they want you to prove you have a college degree and you cannot get the college to send a transcript, the college has taken the degree away from you. Thus, the reposession of a vehicle for failure to pay the loan is a very real and applicable analogy. The only failure is in who the contractual parties are, and those are set by the loan agreement signed originally.
Further, the continued service of proving to potential employers your degree status is what is being withheld, and that certified transcript is very much a good, physical or not. Let's use the car analogy of leasing a car from the dealer. Even if the dealer decides not to reposess, he certainly isn't going to keep servicing the vehicle for you to drive about town. Likely he'll simply keep the car when you next try to get free service.
In effect, what this means is that even though you've completed the educational requirements to hold a position and you're perfectly qualified, an arbitrary third party is allowed to step in...
Not an arbitrary third party, a third party that YOU invited to the party by asking for money to pay for something you wanted but could not afford yourself, from them. There are no arbitrary parties in this arrangement. You picked them ahead of time, and they aren't "stepping in", they are fully in the room with you until you pay them off.
... and prevent you from getting that job because you owe another third party money.
All those "parties" that you invited to the party when you asked for the money. If you don't want them to be involved, then don't ask them to be involved, or at least meet the terms of the contract that you signed with them when you asked them for money. You broke the terms of the contract by not paying, so you get the consequences. That's real life.
This is not only detrimental to you,
It is intended to be. You agreed to pay them back. You broke that agreement. You didn't even bother to negotiate new terms with them so you wouldn't be in default.
but also to the employers missing out on potentially productive employees,
If there wasn't more than one applicant for the job, then there is a very real possibility that the transcript wouldn't be a sticking point. Any company that has just one qualified applicant for a highly paid job, and that applicant presents himself as a well educated, skilled, productive person during the interview will most likely bend the requirements to get who they need. At worst, if you explain the situation to them, they'll work with you. Maybe make getting the transcript to them after six months a requirement, so you'll have six months of pay to deal with the default status. After all, you're the only qualified applicant. The company isn't a loser here, unless they choose to be.
In fact, there were many many times when I was interviewing for my first job out of college that the company was quite willing to wait for proof of graduation, since even those who have already performed their final graduate presentations are still required to edit their dissertations and present a final copy. Those companies I talked to had no problem hiring me prior to the final degree being granted, as long as would agree to get it finished. The place I eventually worked had a carrot with the stick -- when I got the degree finished I'd get a healthy raise.
and in the long run the loan issuers who aren't going to get paid back when the students can't find a decent job.
If the graduate isn't paying back the loan already, t
Perhaps a school has a vested interest in not having high loan default rates?
You missed the part of the summary that said that the transcripts were being withheld from graduates who were already in default. Or behind in payments, which means in default. Withholding the transcript is a way of trying to convince those who are in default to become current -- which would reduce the overall average default rate.
If I don't keep my BMW clean and cosmetically maintained, it arguably reflects poorly on the BMW brand.
No, it reflects only on you. Most people understand that BMW isn't responsible for washing your car every week, even if it is a BMW. And just why are you driving a BMW if you cannot afford to stay current with your student loan payments? Misadjusted priorities, which will be recalibrated when you need a transcript for something and can't get it.
It could prevent you from getting a job that pays anything, in which case you are in a kind of debtors' prison.
Anyone who has been in prison might take offence at your characterization of not getting the ideal job as being in a prison of any kind, much less a "debtor's prison". I haven't been, so I'm not offended, I just scoff at the comparison.
Would you accuse the company that won't hire you because they have no openings in your ideal job of keeping you in a debtor's prison because they won't give you the job you want?
In any case, if the only job skills you have after four or more years of college depend on the existance of a transcript showing what classes you took, then you overpaid for your college education by a very large amount. Yes, that transcript might help you get that ideal job in your degree area, but many people are quite successful working in areas completely outside their college degrees. They remember what they learned, and the process of learning, and can present themselves as valuable assets for a company without having paper to prove they took specific classes.
It would more sense for the bank to get part of your paycheck withheld.
Well, that might be true. Or not. If you're trying to get your first job and need the transcript to make the resume you don't have a paycheck to garnishee, so it makes no sense to rely on that method for repayment, does it? Many companies would look askew at any job applicant who comes in with an order of garnishment on their first paycheck. What kind of deadbeat are they hiring? On the other hand, if you are trying for a job so you can start paying off your loans again and a transcript isn't necessary, the company will never know you are a student loan deadbeat because your paycheck is unencumbered.
The question wasn't what makes the MOST sense, and clearly your solution isn't a universal one. The question is if the solution being used makes sense, and yes, it does. It matches standard operating methods for many other kinds of loans, and it probably was included in the fine print of the contract that the student who is in default on his loan signed to get the money.
That brings us back to the common sense part of the problem. Why does anyone think that they should get to keep what they paid for with other people's money when they aren't paying the person who gave them the money back? You don't get to keep your fancy car if you don't pay the loan, you don't get to keep your house if you don't pay the mortgage. Why is a student loan used to get a college degree that much different? Don't pay the loan, lose the right to use that degree. Kind of a reasonable stick, I think.
Come now, the alternative to an 100W incandescent lamp costing a dollar is NOT a bulb costing $29. It is a CFL costing around $8.
Context is everything, now isn't it? He wasn't talking about an alternative to an incandescant bulb, he was talking about an alternative to a $30 LED "bulb". His comment was that the poster was free to come up with a $29 dollar alternative. I pointed out that a buck incandescant is the alternative to the $29 LED, in a free market.
"A is a cheaper alternative to B" doesn't mean "B is a cheaper alternative to A". Quite the opposite, it would appear.
The US law didn't ban incandescents -- it set minimum efficiency standards for them which good halogen incandescents meet.
Which had the effect of banning the good old incandescant light bulb that most people use. Yes, in some applications the large amount of heat that a halogen bulb puts out is acceptable, but I have only one place in my house where they are used.
The points stands, proven by your comment, that the market is not free. When there are efficiency standards, the freedom of the market has gone POOF.
HOWEVER as long as the emissions of the coal burning plants are allowed to foul the air upwind of me for the electricity used to power those POS's then I am partly paying for them, too -- that's not right either.
At some point, most people recognize that this kind of argument is more hyperbole than valuable. After all, your existance creates CO2 that is polluting the air I breathe, and that's not right either. Your use of electricity is causing those coal plants to make even more CO2. Would you accept limits on how often you can exhale and a ban on your use of electricity based on this argument? I think not.
If a friend lends me money to buy a car, he cant go too the dealership and demand they hold the title until I pay him back
If your friend loans you money to buy a car and doesn't get his name on the title as a leinholder, then he's stupid or else a really really good friend that really really trusts you not to fuck him over by selling the car and keeping all the money. If he's on the title as a leinholder, he can, indeed, prevent the transfer of that title to any other person, and is first in line for any insurance payments when you break it.
The government isn't your friend and doesn't really really trust you. They are a leinholder on the stuff you bought with the loan until you pay it off. They have a vested interest in being paid off and have arranged with the provider to cut you off when you don't pay.
Whether that is a 'dick move' or smart business is a different argument. Why it happens is quite logical, and not that different from many other large-ticket loan agreements. Why would your degree at $30k in outstanding loans be much different than a $20k car or $100k house?
by that logic if I am using the same bank that you are using, I should be able to put a lein on your house if you owe the bank I affiliate with any money.
No, by the logic being used, the BANK should be able to "put a lein on" (and has, the day he signed the mortgage) the house if he owes them any money. And they should be able to (and will) reposess (foreclose) if he stops paying them back what he owes.
In this case, the government has put a lein on the product that you purchased using the money you borrowed from them, and are foreclosing only because you aren't paying them back like you promised you would. The fact is the limitation on getting a transcript only occurs if the debtor is BEHIND in payments, not just because the loan exists.
You aren't prevented from getting those transcripts to provide to a potential employer unless you are behind in payments. Kinda like a repo man coming for the car you aren't making payments on. What happened to the concept that if you borrow money from someone to buy something and then don't pay them back, you don't get to keep what it is you bought with their money?
The summary is, of course, deliberately inflammatory, in that not getting your transcripts does not prevent you from working, only from using those transcripts to get a specific job. There is no involuntary servitude involved. You can still get a job and pay your loans, and when you do, you get your transcripts. That the school is involved is natural, since they are providing the thing that you have used someone else's money to buy.
If the CFLs don't throw themselves into those landfills, doesn't that imply that it's not the CFLs but the people who are the idiots here?
Yes. The people who are claiming to be environmentalists and leading the charge to use CFLs but who ignore the two facts that 1) they contain hazardous materials and 2) people who use them aren't all going to be as rabidly environmentalist as they themselves are and are more likely to just throw a burned out CFL into the same trash they used to throw their other "light bulbs" into.
If you ignore human nature and rely on universal altruism and environmental activism for a policy intended to save the planet but which requires special actions on the part of everyone involved not to wind up destroying the environment, then yes, you are an idiot.
Feel free to make & sell your own designs for $29 a piece -
He isn't free to make and sell his own design. If he was, he'd be making incandescant lamps for a buck each and you'd be saving $29 per bulb by buying from him. It takes a LONG time to get to $29 in electricity from a light bulb.
Light bulbs are no longer a free market item. Once the govmint got involved in banning certain kinds, the freedom kinda went POOF!
X10 modules generally use a relay for power switching,...
I forgot to add, the POWER modules use a relay. There are also LAMP modules that have TRIACs just like wall dimmer switches use. Unless you have a dimmable CFL, your LAMP module isn't going to dim your CFL. And both modules have the local-on feature so they both leak current to the controlled device.
That's odd. AFAIK, X10 modules generally use a relay for power switching, so there should be no leakage whatsoever. Maybe it has a bad relay.
X10 modules have a local-on feature so that you don't need to use a controller to turn the device on. If you have a lamp connected to one, then turning the lamp off and then back on will trigger the X10 module to power on. It's a safety feature so a lost controller won't result in not being able to turn something on, like a light you need in the middle of the night.
That feature requires a continuous low level current through the controlled device to detect the actual switching at the device. This current is sufficient to keep a CFL blinking even after you turn the X10 power module (with the relay) off. Eventually the CFL cools down and the current isn't enough to flash the lamp and it stops. I'd guess it is also enough to keep an LED lit partially.
Standard 9-volt (nominal) batteries contain six AAAA batteries in series.
Some of them do, some of them don't. Depends on the brand. If they do, they aren't standard AAAA, they don't have the identical packaging.
Should they ban pilots using airplanes?
It is a statistical fact that 99.9% of all airplane accidents, fatal or non-fatal, involve a pilot. So, yes. We'd save lots of lives is we banned pilots from airplaines.
You need to see a doctor since it seems your elbow keeps leaving the rest of your body and wreaking havoc on your electronics bench. Mine stays right where it belongs, and I don't let it run free to cause problems for innocent bystanders. Unlike that fellow "World Peace" of the NBA who coldcocked an opposing player "by accident" with his.
In my day we used an egg carton.
A piece of masking tape on the benchtop, sticky side up.
They shed a lot of light on how most of forensic evidence does not hold to the scientific method and that many so called expert court witnesses are anything but, even with the fancy sounding diploma mill accreditation.
You need to keep in mind, as should judges and juries, that psychology/psychiatry are two of the least scientific of the "hard" sciences. (Social "sciences" are even less.) For god's sake, they still hook people's heads up to electric current to force them into siezures in the name of curing them, without a clue why it works. They dope people up to keep them from being too distracted from anything, and the drugs that don't outright turn your brain off have side effects that are completely opposite the intended goal. Who hasn't seen the ads for anti-depressants that have the wonderful side effect of making people suicidal? "Why yes, my depression is gone, but I keep thinking about slitting my wrists ..."
Without any real science behind them, you can buy any opinion you want, and if you let one of them interview someone with the goal of getting the desired answer, they will. McMartin pre-school, anyone?