That's simply not true. It's not state sponsored loans. By your logic no one would ever by CDs (not the music kind) because they pay below market rates. Everyone would buy "above market rates" investments. But there's something CDs have going for them that makes them a nice investment in some cases. Can you guess what it is? It's pretty much guaranteed... it may be less... but it's guaranteed.

Student loans from the government are the same thing only it's the government doing the investing. It's only below market rates that they demand because there is no risk about being paid back. They are giving you money that you will pay back... even if you can't pay anything else you will pay these loans back. Banks have to charge more because there is risk involved for them. For the government, giving student loans is a GOOD investment just about every single time, because no matter what you are on the hook if you take the loan. A guaranteed investment almost always pays a lower return... that's just how the world works.

And tuition just keeps going up. I wonder why. It's not 10% more expensive to educate the same number of people every year is it? No, it's partly so people will take bigger loans... because THEY (both government and schools) know that idiots like me (I cannot fully separate myself from my past stupidity) will see it as a requirement and will do whatever I have to do to make it happen.

I think it's fairly obvious that medicine or dentistry is completely different than hairdressing. There might even still be hairdressers that are also dentists or hygienists, but really, who cares? Somewhere along the way we learned that there's enough to know about the medical field that it makes sense to require people to actually be SPECIFICALLY EDUCATED before they can practice medicine.

Electricians don't have to go to trade school. If you know an electrician (there are plenty) that will take you on then you can become their apprentice and work with them. I talk to electricians a few times a year that all wish they could find good help, but nobody wants to "work" anymore. The mere suggestion that you can't do on the job training for professional careers any more is crazy because no amount of education will make you a master electrician (a designation required to get many electrician jobs). It's work experience that does it... that's right... on the job training. Same goes for plumbers, locksmiths, machinists, and more.

I worked in a tire factory and and a medical device manufacturing factory. At the tire place no one needed a degree. It was all on the job training... Watch out for that big ass tire coming down the aisle on a hook and make sure you do what's needed to it without getting yourself killed. I didn't need a degree to do that. It paid pretty good too.

At the medical manufacturing place it was extremely low tolerance medical tools (think 'screws for putting your pelvis back together after you're in a motorcycle crash' and you'll have an idea of the types of things made there). Much of the work was still done on a regular lathe. Learned it on the job. Eventually, if you could show that you knew what the hell you were doing on the lathe you might get to move up to helping work on the CNC lathes and debugging / programming. On the job training is very much alive in places that it makes sense.

The truth that many in IT are not interested in sharing is that most IT work could be learned on the job. But the truth that some people who loathe the world as it is today and think that the world owes them a living seem to be unable to admit that many things are better to be "part of the foundation" of a career and could therefore be relegated to a professional training program.

So, for IT, for anything hardware related on the job is almost the only way to go. But the same is true for software. It CAN be learned on the job, but for any on the job training to work you need to have a "master" or an expert who will actually show people good processes (however you define that) and keep them from doing stupid shit that makes a simple algorithm take On^2 rather than O log n. It's truth that it could be done in an "on the job" fashion, but it's a shitload cheaper and more efficient to mass produce people who have a general understanding of what's involved and then use them as needed rather than spend hundreds of thousands of dollars training an expert on the job only to have them leave and then you have to start over.

It's not BAD that there are expert degrees to be attained so that employers know that you at least have some kind of clue before they start signing your checks. On the job training can be done for everything, but just because someone specifies that before you show up to apply for a job you need to be able to do simple math doesn't make them some kind of jerk for "offloading their hiring requirements to the taxpayer". I am the taxpayer and I don't feel like google wanting decent programmers to apply for jobs is somehow creating an undue burden on me if the student paid for their education with a loan or with their own private funds. Now if they got some horseshit grant FROM THE GOVT then that's another thing.

You do realize didn't answer the question, right? But, then again you're not the one the question was directed to so I suppose that's reasonable.

In reading your response you imply that loans create some kind of "sponsorship" or something. I don't think that's right at all. Government loans should actually be looked at as an additional tax of whatever the interest rate is on the loan - not a sponsoring of your educational desires. For example, if some unsuspecting young person borrows 10,000 USD to go to a state school one semester what they don't see is that statistically they'll get to pay between $200 and $400 bucks a year (interest) for next 10 - 20 years for the privilege. That interest is a cost the student is paying and is pure, guaranteed profit for the government since student loans can't be bankrupted. Those same loans also make the borrower beholden to the government during their entire college experience because they have to be renewed each year (if not each semester).

I'm still waiting to hear how master/apprentice programs have been offloaded as well as on-the-job training. I just haven't seen that to be the case and I'd really like to hear the Uberbah's rationalization behind that statement so I can understand it.

I'm interested in hearing more about this so I can understand it. How is anything you mentioned offloaded to the tax payer via "higher education"? My question is serious... I'd like to understand the thinking behind the theory.

I do understand the physical key argument. When it comes to a physical key and there is proof that you did in fact have control of the key then an explanation will probably be in order for why your can't provide it. Heck, if they're filming the safe 24/7 and see the parolee open it up then maybe that would be grounds for forcing them to provide a combination. They've already proved access so now it's just down to what's in it - and if the have a warrant then they get to know.

In that case the contents are the the primary goal and serve as evidence of wrong doing because they already know you have access to them.

My example, as you saw, the police didn't not know that the parolee had access. It was a case where merely being ABLE to open the safe is what constituted breaking the law and proving that he could do so would be testifying against themself. What was in the safe was not necessarily proof of crime, but being able to open the safe was... crazy huh?... that's our world.

Reminds me of one of my favorite Die Hard (40 stories up) lines. McClain sneaks up on one of terrorists, puts a gun to the guy's head, and tells him to "drop it... it's th e police".

Terrorist: You won't hurt me.

McClain: Oh yeah? Why's that?

Terrorist: Because you're a policeman. There are rules for policeman.

McClain: (Snidely) Yeah. That's what my captain keeps telling me. (Whack)

There are rules. But if they're not enforceable, then they're only there to make you feel good. And people being asked to do the job won't give a damn about the rules when it comes right down to it because at most it will result in some time off (paid or unpaid).

IANAL - this is just my understanding and what I've been told by friendly lawyers and friendly police over time -

No, you don't have to say anything. EVER. You don't have to talk to them at all before you are arrested because they're just some other person. Yes they're police officers, but unless you've been detained you don't have to say anything. Once you've been detained then you still don't have to say anything. If you like you can confirm that you've been detained and then ask to contact your lawyer or to be released / arrested. Then once you've been arrested you have the right to remain silent. At no point do you ever really have to say anything. It will escalate or deescalate itself on it's own. You might exchange niceties and be polite to move things along, but even that is a risk and you don't have to do it.

If you've been arrested (and even before so) then anything you say can and will be used against you. That means it's testimony and the fifth amendment says that you don't have to say anything at all if it means you're providing testimony against yourself. You do not have to testify in your own defense period - unless you waive that right. And then you're bound to answer all questions. You either testify or you don't... you don't pick and choose the questions you will answer...

Consider the way this is actually being applied. Think about it in the context of a parolee who is not allowed to possess a firearm. If the police SUSPECT or even KNOW there is a firearm in the safe then that's all fine and dandy, but asking the parolee to hand over the combination would essentially be asking them to show that they have control (ie. possession) over what is in said safe. So, in essence, asking them to tell you what may (or may not) be in their head would be asking them to incriminate themselves via their testimony.

By not providing a combination the parolee can show (or argue later) that they are NOT in control of the safe's contents (maybe their roommate controls the key, maybe the safe was left in the house when they bought it, maybe they just rent out the space and don't maintain access themselves) or that they don't know the combination. In those cases the prosecution would have a hard time proving that the person did have "possession" of the contents of the safe.

If the person provides the combination then they'll be presumed to have had access and likely knowledge of what was in it.

Let's try another example. Let's say you know the combination. Your spouse is a drug dealer and you do not know it, but you know the safe combination because it's the same as your shared ATM card or some other crap like that. You, with all good intentions, tell the government the combination and earn yourself a trip to jail - Just for knowing and telling the police the combination!

Let the police do their job and let your lawyers to their job. When you start doing the police's job for them you make it harder on your lawyer... even when you're innocent - perhaps moreso.

It's worse than that. Let's say you admit to banging his wife to keep out of the original legal trouble. But you were too drunk the previous night (and possibly still the next day when answering his questions) to remember clearly. It was actually his mom, not his wife... or maybe it was his sister and his wife.... oh well. Either way, now you've lied to a cop (on accident) - so you've NOW committed a crime just by explaining why you hadn't committed the other crime. Better to just STFU.

We don't live in a popular democracy... so your last question is moot. And the very observation that "fact-based reasoning" appears to be "too much of a stretch" should cause you to take comfort that we don't live in said popular democracy.

But I do agree that it would be nice if the actual facts were considered in this and other issues.

I don't think denzacar was talking about it linearly. Especially since he was talking about it being spread out. And also because the discussion is about air... no one talks about air using linear measurements.

The way I understood it was that there was all this volume of atmosphere that the these items would be going up against. That's why the more spread out it is the better. The more you spread it out the more volume of atmosphere there is to absorb the impact.

As far as the 1000s comment I would say that if you've got a barrier at least 11km deep (containing 75% of the atmosphere as you say) and you can spread out the impact over 100km of surface area then there's your 1000km of atmosphere that is absorbing the impact.... as opposed to it hitting in one much smaller area that puts up far less of a hindering force.

That's just my understanding of what denzacar said... but my interpretation may not necessarily be correct and I'm not intending to put words in their mouth.

So at some point that guy in the mall's brain will filter out the noise and see that damn boat... and then he'll be declared a genius. Rats.

Well, presumably, when he filed for that patent he knew what he was patenting. He and his lawyers came up with the a set of "claims" that are the actual meat of the IP. And if some actor later comes and inserts a product into the market that could not have been created without stepping on one or more of the claims in the patent then he knows one of two things:

(1) he has a valid complaint that the person is stepping on his IP
or
(2) whoever wrote the claims in his patent did so in such that there was a work around that these other actors are utilizing

[Random note: The possibility of (2) is why you should hire an actual patent attorney to write your patent rather than trying to do it yourself. I have experience with this and the value of a decent attorney, if you can afford them, is not to be minimized.]

In any case, that's what a patent lawsuit is about. I say "you can't do that without violating my patent". Now you must prove that you found a way to do it without violating my patent or you must prove that the patent should never have been granted. If you can't do either one of those then you pay for using my IP.

Numerous voters treat the current president as a hero who only poops sunshine and rainbows and is constantly fighting the good fight. And numerous voters treat the previous one as such also. It doesn't make either one of those an "American hero" - not even close.

If it's an adult and there is no indication of a crime AGAINST the missing person, then the correct solution is a Private Investigator. Not the police. The police should be focusing their efforts on stopping actual crimes and responding to actual events... not highly improbable events with no evidence to back up that the event even occurred.

Also, if the issue is debt / other obligations then that's yet another case that you should use a Private Investigator to find them. The fact that someone owes YOU money doesn't mean EVERYONE ELSE should pay for the search. There's a pretty good chance that in most cases more resources will be spent to find the person that what than they even owed to start with - especially if it's the police doing the searching.

If the cops can find "missing person" because they're just hiding out (rather than foul play) then so can a private investigator. If the PI cant, then its unlikely the police officer will.

Now, if they're skipping bond or breaking some other existing judgement that is a criminal offense (rather than a civil one) then there's at least a case of asking the police to get involved. They'd be investigating and stopping an actual criminal offense.

Other than that... if you wanna know where a missing adult is then spend your own dime to find 'em. It'll be done more efficiently and more thoroughly with the added benefit of letting the cops worry about what they're actually supposed to be doing.

All of this assumes there's not circumstances that indicate foul play. If there are, then the search should be underway. Also, while one person being missing is relatively unlikely it becomes much more unlikely to be "no big deal" when several people have been reported missing (becoming even more unlikely with each additional one). Obviously that should be looked into as a likely criminal event simply because of how unlikely the events are as a collection.

Maybe. But it doesn't really matter.

Wrong. Why? Because what described in your first and second paragraphs doesn't resemble the unions of which you speak of in the last. (B) has nothing to do with (A). Therefore, you SHOULD be happy that what you described is not only possible, but quite preferable for many professions. For some reason I doubt you will be happy though.

And just so you know, electricians already do this. And plumbers. You know, those middle class, hard working professionals. Even independent contractors go through the same process for these professions. The practice isn't gone. Again, you should be happy with me pointing this out, but I doubt you will be.

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