Exactly. A PE license is basically a surrogate for reviewing and understanding the engineering. The PE is intended to get everyone off the hook, except the licensed engineer (or his professional liability insurance company).
A licensed (and therefore personally liable) engineer is able to include the work of another licensed engineer into their own work without incurring liability for that portion.
I don't think that is necessarily true. Engineering consultants hire sub-consultants all the time. That does not let them off the hook for liability of the sub-consultant's work, though it would allow them to sue the sub-consultant where reasonable.
IANAL, YMMV
You do need to be a PE to design something that is going to be used to construct public works.
Wrong. You need a professional engineer to stamp and sign off on the design. Anyone working under the PE's "direct supervision and responsibility" can do the actual engineering perfectly legally. Sometimes it seems that a PE is not a license to do engineering, it's a license to hire people to do engineering for you.
IANAL, YMMV
Did you know that if a PE creates a detailed report like that, even if they don't seal it, that they can (and will) be held personally liable for the results if anything goes wrong? Not their employer, not the board, not the state, themselves, personally
If you're talking getting your license revoked for gross professional negligence or jail time for fraud, you'd be right. But if you you mean liable for costs, that's what professional liability insurance is for. All professional engineering companies have it, and many clients require proof of a couple of million $ or so in insurance (or more for potentially expensive work) along with a clause indemnifying the client. In my experience, employees are indemnified from paying for simple mistakes or negligence by their employers.
Besides that, the dirty little secret in the consulting engineering business is that non-licensed engineers often do most of the engineering work. This is perfectly legal as long as they do it "under the direct supervision and responsibility of a licensed professional engineer. A lot of times, this "supervision and responsibility' involves little more than writing the proposal, stamping and signing the documents after they're done, and maybe reviewing them if something goes wrong.
* The above is written from the perspective of someone who has worked for consulting engineering firms in the construction industry for over 30 years, other fields may be different.
IANAL, YMMV
I've wondered what a 100K BTU industrial propane heater would do.
The water equivalent of the recent snow in Chicago was reported to be 1.5"+/-, that's about 7.8 lbs / sq ft.
It takes about 144 btus to melt a pound of snow, if you assume 32F ice and 32F water.(the current temprature is about 20F and you need more than 32F water to keep it melted, but I'll ignore that.)
So, if I did my math correctly, you would clear only about 90 sq ft per hour with a 100,000 buth heater. (It's btu/hr, not btu. Sorry for the pedantry, but it bugs me when people drop the "h")
That's not very effective, yet Mayor Daley did say that they will be using snow melting machines to supplement the dumping of snow in piles in parks, school yards, and empty lots.
And O'Hare airport melts snow all the time. They have a snow melt system built into the runways, which helps, but can't keep up with a big storm. But that's minor compared to all the parking lots, roads, and other surfaces from which they regularly haul snow and feed it to snow melting machines. If O'Hare tried to pile the snow up all in one place, instead, they could almost open up a ski resort on it.
Copyright would be an issue if you copied the results page verbatim and published it, but using the data from search results to make your own page doesn't fall under copyright.
IANAL, YMMV
So you're suggesting using a quantity (1 atmosphere) that is known to a precision of about 3 or 4 decimal places (but only assuming temperature and other changing atmospheric conditions are somehow fixed to amounts that also need definition) in order to fix the definition of a quantity (the mass of one cubic centimeter of water) that depends on the pressure noted above and that depends even more so on a temperature defined by some unstated definition, all in order to fix a metric that is already known within 170 parts per billion using two different measurements based on first principles?
Neither the trial court nor the appellate court considered First Amendment issues relating to potential abuse of the DMCA's anti-dissemination provision to suppress academic research in cryptography.
YMMV, but today I have UVerse, which uses MS software. The user interface is a peice of crap, slow and cumbersome. It's not unusual to hit a menu selection and have nothing happen for several seconds, so you hit it again, only to have it flick on and off, as it finally catches up to your two clicks. Also, it lacks features my DirecTV interface had, e.g. the "previous" button has no effect when you're in the guide; the "back" button sometimes goes back to the last screen, sometimes kicks you out of the menu system altogether; etc.
Only skimmed through two of those patents, but damn the PTO, those gotta be some of the most obvious ideas in the world. Lining up channels in one axis, time on another, and displaying the TV show info in a "tile" at the intersection of time and channel number? I believe I've seen that layout in most TV guides since at least the 70s. The fact it highlights the "focus" position makes it patentable? I don't think so
I have ATT Uverse, and MS did a lousy job in implementing their system compared to my old DirecTV user interface. That it could be patentable, is ridiculous.
IANAL, YMMV
I like gnumeric better than OO.o calc, but I need custom functions, and I personally find it easy to write them in OO.o macros , so I'm sticking to OO.o / LO.
Asbestos is one substance that's a known carcinogen and is strictly controlled or outlawed in most countries, but it's not particularly dangerous unless one is constantly exposed to it in a workplace.
Asbestos includes several forms of fibrous mineral. Some are not particularly dangerous, some are very dangerous. It may take a long time for cancer and asbestos-related lung diseases to show up, but that doesn't mean no harm was done.
Asbestos fibers occur naturally in the air and water, a normal adult has millions of asbestos fibers in the lungs.
I'm willing to bet that the amount of asbestos in air, water, and especially the lungs of a normal adult from natural sources is an order of magnitude lower than the amount from mankind's activities.
Who could afford THEIR OWN COMPUTER 50 years ago? Who does not have a computer in their phone or PDA or TV today?
Was this done by poor people?
Well, many of the people involved were not very wealthy at the time.
Was this done by governments
Yes. at least in part. Many of the first computers were government sponsored or owned, like ENIAC. Also, NASA was instrumental in the push for miniaturization.
and monopolies?
Back when we still had the Ma Bell monopoly, they did a lot of research into electronics and computers, for one
Or was this done by people who became also insanely rich in the process
Well, a lot of people got rich, but the riches do not correlate as well with how much someone contributed to advancement of the computer arts and sciences, but more with how sharp they were in their bisiness practices.
In Illinois, you can call yourself an engineer if you do engineering for a registered engineering firm, even if you're not a PE yourself. Also, it's hard to become a PE without a four year engineering degree, but it's possible. It used to be pretty easy to get a PE only based on enough experience, you could be grandfathered in from that. Also, you don't need a four year engineering degree if you have a combination of enough experience with a non-engineering 4-year undergraduate degree or a graduate degree.
IANAL YMMV
Yes and if you look at the temperature, which you "know" from the same sources, you will see very clearly that today's temperature is cold compared to the historical average.
No, today's temperature is warmer than average (though not totally out of range) whether in recent history, for the last hundred's of thousands of years or for millions of years
A few degrees of temperature plus or minus probably doesn't matter on the average, though, but the potential rate of change can be very disruptive for life.
It's just like a farmer who raises chickens, and never sells to anyone outside PA . . . The farmer is not subject to federal/congressional legislation because HE, personally, never crossed the border.
It might be good if that were true, but the courts have ruled in the past in similar situations that the farmer is subject to federal / congressional legislation whether or not he personally ever crossed the border.
Then why did the FCC not list those acts when the judge in the Comcast case asked them where they got the authority for that action?
They did, but previously the FCC had classified ISPs as information services rather than telecommunication services, which let them off the hook. The court even suggested (though without explicitly admitting the FCC could reclassify ISPs) that if the FCC reclassified them, they would be able to regulate them.
What runs on my computer (at work) 95% of the time:
1) e-mail
2) web browser
3) spreadsheet
4) pdf viewer / editor
5) CAD
6) word processor
7) miscellaneous specialized engineering / product selection software
What runs on my personal laptop 95% of the time:
1) misc small games (hearts, backgammon, etc.
2) web browser
3) spreadsheet
4) pdf viewer / editor
5) CAD
6) text editor
7) word processor
I might not be an average computer user at home, but my use at work is typical for everyone in the office.
A tablet just won't cut it.
That wouldn't be an issue if the manufacturers wanted to spend the money for programmers working on the drivers. But that won't happen until the open source systems are no longer seen as niche markets. But that won't happen until after good graphics drivers are available for the masses to use. So I guess it won't happen until the understaffed unpaid open source programmers make it happen. At some point (soon), graphics will reach the good-enough commodity phase, to which open source will quickly catch up.
The problem is real for the manufacturers. But there may still be a significant question remaining whether programming provides a service or creates a product. The liability differences between the two are great.
Most software licenses have waivers of liability, and have a limit on the monetary damages.
Liability clauses can work both ways.
If a robot company produces and sells robots that cause harm, then they can be sued under product liability laws, which apply strict liability standards (in the US, anyway), which means that absent post-sale changes to the product, the producer/seller is liable, period. (If the harm is caused by a hacker, that's a different story.)
However, if a software company provides a service to a robot company, then the software may fall under a different liability doctrine in which the robot company would need to prove that the software company failed to use a reasonable standard of care in order to collect from them. Reasonable care is determined largely by comparing to the typical standard of care in the industry. In that case, any decent programmer would be safe from liability.
However, any competent legal advisor for the robot company would add clauses to the contract requiring the software company to indemnify the robot manufacturer from software failure. This is what insurance companies are for.
The profit motive is very good at making incremental improvements to aircraft and move towards a locally optimal solution. The problem is that capital will never be invested in big changes to aircraft concepts because that is entirely too costly and risky. (If you don't believe me, try to get a simple change to airframe design or materials certified by the FAA and try to estimate the resulting risk of failure with the amortized costs of potentially crashed airplanes full of dead and injured people). So the only way to get beyond a local optimum and try to find a better solution is to fund it from a source that is not tied to medium and long term stockholder value. Of course, it might not be worth it to search for better solutions, but, really, that is unknowable before doing the work.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. A PE license is basically a surrogate for reviewing and understanding the engineering. The PE is intended to get everyone off the hook, except the licensed engineer (or his professional liability insurance company).
"sic" is the preferred spelling of "sic a dog on him". "sick" is the spelling for "I feel sick".
I don't think that is necessarily true. Engineering consultants hire sub-consultants all the time. That does not let them off the hook for liability of the sub-consultant's work, though it would allow them to sue the sub-consultant where reasonable.
IANAL, YMMV
I wish I had mod points. The parent describes the situation succinctly.
Wrong. You need a professional engineer to stamp and sign off on the design. Anyone working under the PE's "direct supervision and responsibility" can do the actual engineering perfectly legally. Sometimes it seems that a PE is not a license to do engineering, it's a license to hire people to do engineering for you.
IANAL, YMMV
If you're talking getting your license revoked for gross professional negligence or jail time for fraud, you'd be right. But if you you mean liable for costs, that's what professional liability insurance is for. All professional engineering companies have it, and many clients require proof of a couple of million $ or so in insurance (or more for potentially expensive work) along with a clause indemnifying the client. In my experience, employees are indemnified from paying for simple mistakes or negligence by their employers.
Besides that, the dirty little secret in the consulting engineering business is that non-licensed engineers often do most of the engineering work. This is perfectly legal as long as they do it "under the direct supervision and responsibility of a licensed professional engineer. A lot of times, this "supervision and responsibility' involves little more than writing the proposal, stamping and signing the documents after they're done, and maybe reviewing them if something goes wrong.
* The above is written from the perspective of someone who has worked for consulting engineering firms in the construction industry for over 30 years, other fields may be different.
IANAL, YMMV
I've wondered what a 100K BTU industrial propane heater would do.
The water equivalent of the recent snow in Chicago was reported to be 1.5"+/-, that's about 7.8 lbs / sq ft.
It takes about 144 btus to melt a pound of snow, if you assume 32F ice and 32F water.(the current temprature is about 20F and you need more than 32F water to keep it melted, but I'll ignore that.)
So, if I did my math correctly, you would clear only about 90 sq ft per hour with a 100,000 buth heater. (It's btu/hr, not btu. Sorry for the pedantry, but it bugs me when people drop the "h")
That's not very effective, yet Mayor Daley did say that they will be using snow melting machines to supplement the dumping of snow in piles in parks, school yards, and empty lots.
And O'Hare airport melts snow all the time. They have a snow melt system built into the runways, which helps, but can't keep up with a big storm. But that's minor compared to all the parking lots, roads, and other surfaces from which they regularly haul snow and feed it to snow melting machines. If O'Hare tried to pile the snow up all in one place, instead, they could almost open up a ski resort on it.
Copyright would be an issue if you copied the results page verbatim and published it, but using the data from search results to make your own page doesn't fall under copyright.
IANAL, YMMV
So you're suggesting using a quantity (1 atmosphere) that is known to a precision of about 3 or 4 decimal places (but only assuming temperature and other changing atmospheric conditions are somehow fixed to amounts that also need definition) in order to fix the definition of a quantity (the mass of one cubic centimeter of water) that depends on the pressure noted above and that depends even more so on a temperature defined by some unstated definition, all in order to fix a metric that is already known within 170 parts per billion using two different measurements based on first principles?
Neither the trial court nor the appellate court considered First Amendment issues relating to potential abuse of the DMCA's anti-dissemination provision to suppress academic research in cryptography.
YMMV, but today I have UVerse, which uses MS software. The user interface is a peice of crap, slow and cumbersome. It's not unusual to hit a menu selection and have nothing happen for several seconds, so you hit it again, only to have it flick on and off, as it finally catches up to your two clicks. Also, it lacks features my DirecTV interface had, e.g. the "previous" button has no effect when you're in the guide; the "back" button sometimes goes back to the last screen, sometimes kicks you out of the menu system altogether; etc.
Only skimmed through two of those patents, but damn the PTO, those gotta be some of the most obvious ideas in the world. Lining up channels in one axis, time on another, and displaying the TV show info in a "tile" at the intersection of time and channel number? I believe I've seen that layout in most TV guides since at least the 70s. The fact it highlights the "focus" position makes it patentable? I don't think so
I have ATT Uverse, and MS did a lousy job in implementing their system compared to my old DirecTV user interface. That it could be patentable, is ridiculous.
IANAL, YMMV
I like gnumeric better than OO.o calc, but I need custom functions, and I personally find it easy to write them in OO.o macros , so I'm sticking to OO.o / LO.
Asbestos is one substance that's a known carcinogen and is strictly controlled or outlawed in most countries, but it's not particularly dangerous unless one is constantly exposed to it in a workplace.
Asbestos includes several forms of fibrous mineral. Some are not particularly dangerous, some are very dangerous. It may take a long time for cancer and asbestos-related lung diseases to show up, but that doesn't mean no harm was done.
Asbestos fibers occur naturally in the air and water, a normal adult has millions of asbestos fibers in the lungs.
I'm willing to bet that the amount of asbestos in air, water, and especially the lungs of a normal adult from natural sources is an order of magnitude lower than the amount from mankind's activities.
Who could afford THEIR OWN COMPUTER 50 years ago? Who does not have a computer in their phone or PDA or TV today?
Was this done by poor people?
Well, many of the people involved were not very wealthy at the time.
Was this done by governments
Yes. at least in part. Many of the first computers were government sponsored or owned, like ENIAC. Also, NASA was instrumental in the push for miniaturization.
and monopolies?
Back when we still had the Ma Bell monopoly, they did a lot of research into electronics and computers, for one
Or was this done by people who became also insanely rich in the process
Well, a lot of people got rich, but the riches do not correlate as well with how much someone contributed to advancement of the computer arts and sciences, but more with how sharp they were in their bisiness practices.
In Illinois, you can call yourself an engineer if you do engineering for a registered engineering firm, even if you're not a PE yourself. Also, it's hard to become a PE without a four year engineering degree, but it's possible. It used to be pretty easy to get a PE only based on enough experience, you could be grandfathered in from that. Also, you don't need a four year engineering degree if you have a combination of enough experience with a non-engineering 4-year undergraduate degree or a graduate degree.
IANAL
YMMV
Yes and if you look at the temperature, which you "know" from the same sources, you will see very clearly that today's temperature is cold compared to the historical average.
No, today's temperature is warmer than average (though not totally out of range) whether ,
in recent history
for the last
hundred's of thousands of years
or for
millions of years
A few degrees of temperature plus or minus probably doesn't matter on the average, though, but the potential rate of change can be very disruptive for life.
It's just like a farmer who raises chickens, and never sells to anyone outside PA . . . The farmer is not subject to federal/congressional legislation because HE, personally, never crossed the border.
It might be good if that were true, but the courts have ruled in the past in similar situations that the farmer is subject to federal / congressional legislation whether or not he personally ever crossed the border.
Then why did the FCC not list those acts when the judge in the Comcast case asked them where they got the authority for that action?
They did, but previously the FCC had classified ISPs as information services rather than telecommunication services, which let them off the hook. The court even suggested (though without explicitly admitting the FCC could reclassify ISPs) that if the FCC reclassified them, they would be able to regulate them.
What runs on my computer (at work) 95% of the time:
1) e-mail
2) web browser
3) spreadsheet
4) pdf viewer / editor
5) CAD
6) word processor
7) miscellaneous specialized engineering / product selection software
What runs on my personal laptop 95% of the time:
1) misc small games (hearts, backgammon, etc.
2) web browser
3) spreadsheet
4) pdf viewer / editor
5) CAD
6) text editor 7) word processor
I might not be an average computer user at home, but my use at work is typical for everyone in the office.
A tablet just won't cut it.
That wouldn't be an issue if the manufacturers wanted to spend the money for programmers working on the drivers. But that won't happen until the open source systems are no longer seen as niche markets. But that won't happen until after good graphics drivers are available for the masses to use. So I guess it won't happen until the understaffed unpaid open source programmers make it happen. At some point (soon), graphics will reach the good-enough commodity phase, to which open source will quickly catch up.
The problem is real for the manufacturers. But there may still be a significant question remaining whether programming provides a service or creates a product. The liability differences between the two are great.
If this was really a problem, then Microsoft would have been sued into oblivion before this century started.
Because Microsoft sold so many defective robots in the '90s?
Most software licenses have waivers of liability, and have a limit on the monetary damages.
Liability clauses can work both ways.
If a robot company produces and sells robots that cause harm, then they can be sued under product liability laws, which apply strict liability standards (in the US, anyway), which means that absent post-sale changes to the product, the producer/seller is liable, period. (If the harm is caused by a hacker, that's a different story.)
However, if a software company provides a service to a robot company, then the software may fall under a different liability doctrine in which the robot company would need to prove that the software company failed to use a reasonable standard of care in order to collect from them. Reasonable care is determined largely by comparing to the typical standard of care in the industry. In that case, any decent programmer would be safe from liability.
However, any competent legal advisor for the robot company would add clauses to the contract requiring the software company to indemnify the robot manufacturer from software failure. This is what insurance companies are for.
IANAL
YMMV
The profit motive is very good at making incremental improvements to aircraft and move towards a locally optimal solution. The problem is that capital will never be invested in big changes to aircraft concepts because that is entirely too costly and risky. (If you don't believe me, try to get a simple change to airframe design or materials certified by the FAA and try to estimate the resulting risk of failure with the amortized costs of potentially crashed airplanes full of dead and injured people). So the only way to get beyond a local optimum and try to find a better solution is to fund it from a source that is not tied to medium and long term stockholder value. Of course, it might not be worth it to search for better solutions, but, really, that is unknowable before doing the work.