Phony degrees for sale

Discussion in 'Off-Topic Discussions' started by Abner, Jul 6, 2005.

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  1. Abner

    Abner Well-Known Member

  2. Bruce

    Bruce Moderator

    Interesting article, but I wish they wouldn't give these companies free advertising by listing their web addresses. :mad:
     
  3. PhD2B

    PhD2B Dazed and Confused

    "I have run into scenarios where companies hired chief engineers that have problems with design issues, where they find out they don't have a diploma,"...

    YIKES!! :(

    I don't want to drive over a bridge designed by someone from this category!
     
  4. DesElms

    DesElms New Member

    Exactly. The problem is as plain as the nose on one's face! Yet diploma mill operators and those who hold their "credentials" continue to question the need for degrees to be accredited and legitimate. It boggles the mind.
     
  5. little fauss

    little fauss New Member

    By the way, Gregg. Just wanted to toot my horn and let you know I'm standing up for you and Janko and Galanga over on another rather vile and hateful forum regarding this very subject of mills and shills.
     
  6. Abner

    Abner Well-Known Member

    Go get em!

    Go get em Little Fauss!



    Abner :)
     
  7. Abner

    Abner Well-Known Member

    Very True!

    Very true Mr. DesElms! I just don't get it. The funny thing is, with so many distance learning course availabe now, there is no excuse for someone to say they can't go to school. The Big three is a perfect example. A person can take CLEP and DANTES tests at their leisure, and pay as they go. Whenever someone tells me they don't have time, I point them to www.bain4weeks.com

    Oh well!


    Take care,

    Abner
     
  8. DesElms

    DesElms New Member

    I can only speak for me: While I appreciate your efforts, it's pointless. I'm not sure which forum you're talking about, by the way (since more than one of them out there are "vile and hateful"), but if it's one of the vile and hateful ones that I know of, there's nothing you can say or do that will make one whit of difference. They're not rational or fair-minded (or fair-fighting) people. Most of them are of a criminal (or at least criminal-like) mindset. They're either diploma mill operators, or holders of diploma mill "credentials," or sympathetic thereto somehow; and they have much to lose from not defending-to-the-death their bogus degrees. They have nothing of value to contribute, so they spend all their time tearing down the contributions of those who do. No amount of reason, passion (or compassion), logic, provable points, shaming, defending, or whatever else it is you're doing in places like that will accomplish anything other than to fan their flames. They're anti-social -- many of them, in a clinical sense -- and from what I know of you, you've got far better things to do with your time than argue with them.


    Don't get me wrong: That doesn't mean I don't appreciate your efforts. I just hate to see you wasting your time.

    :)

    "I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig," George Bernard Shaw once wrote, continuing, "you get dirty; and besides, the pig likes it."
     
  9. little fauss

    little fauss New Member

    Thanks, Gregg, I was starting to get that impression myself.

    I get the feeling that those people, who like to claim that all their adversaries are slanderers and clinically insane and perverse are projecting in a major way. I've come across at least a couple forums that get real ugly with DI and with some of its more prominent members, such as yourself, but this one in particular--www.militaryforums.com--was almost unbelievable. And I doubt that many of the posters are military, they just likely hijacked what was once a perfectly useful forum for soldiers.

    I told them, in so many words, to emerge from their parent's basements and join polite society. Judging by the invective, which is so over-the-top as to be laughable, I judge that a fair number over there could be dangerous. And you're right, they don't like to reason, they just like to hate.

    I've had conversations with you and others where I was so incensed my fingers were shaking as I typed a response. And yet, it's never lasted 5 seconds after I pressed "submit"--it's always in good fun and good repartee. I've never held a grudge towards anyone here and I doubt many have been held grudges towards me. Like my group of friends in high school: we might have fought occasionally--even with a fist or two--but there was never anything that couldn't be forgiven, because we weren't about really hurting one another, just blowing off steam.
     
  10. DesElms

    DesElms New Member

    There was once a forum called Online-College dot somethingoranother that was very much like what you see on that military forums thing. It got shut down for violation of the TOS of the hosting company that owned the servers on which the site was hosted. I guess that military forum thing must have taken its place.

    I haven't looked, but having made these posts here, I'll bet dollars to donuts that you're the subject of a thread there now. If so, welcome to the club! Wear it like the badge of honor that it truly is. Nothing tells you you're on the right track faster and more effectively than having the right kind of enemies!

    They're children... if not physically, then mentally. They hide behind unregistered usernames and think they're unreachable, so they figure they can say and do anything they want. They're about as dangerous as mice, actually. All talk, and no action. If any of them should ever happen to meet the likes of me, for example, in the real world -- with them knowing that I know who they really were -- they'd wet themselves. Don't give them a second thought. Don't read their crap or even let it bother you that it's out there. They're not worth the time and mental energy it takes to give them so much as a momentary thought. If there's one thing I've learned from my few, brief brushes with fame in this life, it's that there are way more crazies out there than most people realize or can even imagine. Nothing taught me that like my time running the Laci Peterson web site. I heard from so many of them that I wondered if some big mental institution had closed or something. And nothing empowers them to act out in ways not possible in the real world than does the Internet... where anyone with $9.95/month can get a dial-up connection; or anyone with a library card can sit down at a library computer and act as big a fool as s/he chooses, with impunity. Don't sweat it. It's not worth the electrolytes.

    Understood... and agreed. Indeed, we might sometimes disagree. But so what. People of good faith are supposed to disagree sometimes... and learn from it. I've come to respect you more than you might realize. You're a person of deep conviction and morality; of reasoned and reasonable thinking and expression; and of honor and fair-mindedness. I have no way of knowing other than from what I've read of your words here, but I have a feeling you're a fine lawyer as well... a calling for which I have the utmost respect, and even more so when it's done well. That's, in large measure, why I like Nos, too.

    Anyway, don't worry about knuckleheads in other fora -- especially the unmoderated, wide-open, vile and hateful ones. They're just background noise, as far as I'm concerned. You should relegate them to that place -- or worse -- in your life, as well.
     
  11. Ted Heiks

    Ted Heiks Moderator and Distinguished Senior Member

    Online-College.info?
     
  12. little fauss

    little fauss New Member

    Gregg:

    Thanks, dude, appreciate everything. Yes, I am the subject of a little thread over there--quite an honor! In fact, this little exchange will probably make it over there. So to all concerned on military forums, this will be my farewell, I've taken wise advice here and decided to sign off for good. You have my permission, those of you who've hijacked the DL military board from our soldiers, to say what you want about me, my family, what-have-you. Go to it!

    Mike aka Little Fauss
     
  13. DesElms

    DesElms New Member

    Of records, and their straightsetting

    [sigh]

    :rolleyes:

    Okay... I've gone against my own advice... which I'm sure I'll regret. At the urging of several who emailed me and said that this time there really was something I should go see in the military forum thingy, I finally did so... against my better judgement.

    It seems that, besides little fauss, there's someone -- seemingly from here -- who is jumping to my defense over there. In fact, it looks like there might even be two of them besides little fauss. Of course it's difficult to tell because they're all using the unregistered "Guest" moniker.

    [sigh... yet again]

    I want to take a moment to do some setting straight of the record: I have not -- at least not recently -- authorized anyone to speak for, write for, or otherwise defend me or tell my story... in the military forum thingy... or anywhere else, for that matter. Oh, don't get me wrong, I don't mind someone jumping to my defense now and then as little fauss did over there, or as someone else (the identity of whom I can't quite figure out yet) seems to have also chimed-in and done there. In fact, I'm often quite grateful for it. But I haven't authorized anyone to go as far as trying to tell my story and/or to set the record straight for me.

    Indeed, about a year ago -- in a weak moment during which I had forgotten how truly pointless it was to even worry about it -- I authorized someone from here to summarize, in my defense, in a forum which no longer exists (and which I would never have sullied myself to post in... not even anonymously), the truth about how my anti-prostitution activism began; and the whole "$40K hooker" thing that my detractors were using to both bait and, they hoped, embarrass me. To my knowledge, however, that person (here) never actually did that, for whatever reason... and so the whole thing was forgotten.

    Now, someone (and I'm pretty sure I know who it is, though s/he hasn't, at this writing, replied to my email to confirm or deny) has taken it upon himself/herself to try to set the record straight on my behalf over in the aforementioned military forum thingy regarding the approximately year-old, ongoing "$40K hooker" jibe (or family of jibes) that Dennis Ruhl and others of his nefarious ilk started in other fora in the mistaken belief that it would actually bother me. It does not. Long ago (and by that I mean really long ago... like back in my early teens) I embraced the old maxim: "Never trouble yourself trying to change anyone's mind about you or anything bad that you're alleged to have done. Your friends won't give a damn, and your enemies would never believe you anyway."

    The summary in the military forum of that chapter in my life -- which, until I finish my book, is not really over yet -- contains several glaring inaccuracies. And it misses several salient parts and points that would have helped the reader a bit more with the story's motivational and philosophical aspects. That said, I'm not going to exacerbate the problem by correcting too many errors or filling-in too many blanks. The summary posted there, notwithstanding its inaccuracies and its incompleteness, is, as my ol' man used to say, "close enough for government work."

    But to be clear: It's not posted there with my permission or blessing. But it's there... and I no more care about that than I do the original "$40K hooker" remarks, or the inaccuracy of understanding about me there which wrongly assumed that I'm some kind of former customer of prostitutes who turned his life around, which prompted it.

    For the record: I have never been a customer of prostituted women... or men, or children, or dogs, or any other creature, living or dead, which the Dennis Ruhls of the world seem to be titilated by envisioning, or weirdly entertained by alleging. I have never been a "john," and I defy any person on this planet to prove -- or even to produce evidence which only suggests -- that I ever have been. Ever. Johns (not people named "John;" but "johns," as slang for those who patronize prostitutes) are abominable. Even as a youth I understood that. It is empowered johns, in fact, and their objectification of women, generally, that is the problem with prostitution. It's not prostitutes themselves.

    When I have counseled municipalities regarding how to rid themselves of their prostitution problems, the very first thing I have advised them to do -- seemingly counter-intuitively, I realize -- is to stop arresting the prostitutes, and to focus, instead, on busting the johns; to learn to see the prostituted women (and men), despite their smart mouths and awful acting-out whenever they're busted, as the victims that they truly are. But I'm digressing. This subject is complex, and rife with surprises that will effectively turn around almost anyone's idea of what it's all about once it's truly understood; and it's far too large a subject for me to try to do it adequate justice here.

    The article that appeared in the weekly newspaper that has now been Google-bombed by my detractors into the first search result that someone sees if they Google my name, was written in 1996 by a young reporter who believed that prostitution is a victimless crime -- as I'm sure many who are reading this right now mistakenly believe as well. She was directed, I have since learned, by her editor to make me look as pathetic in that article as possible. The reason, simply, is that said weekly newspaper was the citadel of advertising for the adult businesses that would be regulated by the three licensing ordinances that my police officer partner and I had written, and which we had pending before the Minneapolis City Council; and the potent change to Minnesota state law that I authored which beeffed-up a minicipality's ability to enforce such ordinances by a more effective use of that state's public nuisance statute... a law which I got passed, by the way. That popular weekly newspaper believed -- as it turned-out, wrongly -- that our proposed ordinances and state statute (which had been written about by all the newspapers, and had gotten us interviewed by all the local TV stations) would have cost it thousands of dollars worth of adult business advertising revenues. The result was an article that made me look... well... as my phantom defender in the military forums called it, "a love-sick [sic] jerk who got dissed by a hooker and was exacting his revenge."

    Nothing, of course, could have been further from the truth. My motivation wasn't anything even remotely like that. In fact, it wasn't even moral or religious in nature. Rather, it was, simply, a quality-of-life issue. I had seen, as no one I believed had ever seen, the horrible affects of prostitution on the friends, family members and loved ones of those prostituted. I knew something that others didn't. I had learned, while researching my book, prostitution-related things about which others out there were neither talking or writing. I had learned things about how prostitution and the activities which attend it can blight neighborhoods and, moreover, had interviewed the very people whose street corner activities were causing it. I had (and continue to have, I believe) a talent for writing and a gift for public speaking; I've always been an activist and a person who refuses to go through life asleep at the switch; and I felt I could make a difference. As it turns out, I was probably wrong. But since I consider myself not finished yet -- despite my several years of needed hiatus from the endeavor -- that doesn't really bother me much. I believe I'll somehow make that difference before I die.

    I have made many enemies in this life. Diploma mill operators and their customers are only the most recent. When I was running the Laci Peterson web site, literally thousands of bona fide nutjobs crawled-out from under rocks and contacted me with all kinds of wacky notions, suggestions and even demands. When they didn't get the response or action from me that they expected or demanded, they demonstrated how desperately in need of pscyhological help they were by going out into forums and web sites and writing the most evil, vile things about me that the twisted human mind could possibly conjure up. One of the most vocal of them (whom police later told me was a nutjob well-known to them) was angry with me because I demanded that she take down her Laci Peterson web site which not only competed with ours for visitors (any one of whom might have had a tip or lead that could have helped us learn what happened to Laci), but which also solicited her site visitors to contact her with their leads and tips intended for police. The official, registered cease-and-desist letter I wrote her (and which, gratefully, worked) was just one of many such letters that went out to all manner of nutjobs back then... any one of whom will tell you today that I'm the devil incarnate.

    It didn't bother me then. It doesn't bother me now. The Internet is a great equalizer. Its upside in the world of education, for example, is that children in schools too poor to purchase new text books can still get at the very same high quality web content that can the kids in the rich schools. And the downside is that anyone with an old computer, the cost-per-month of a dial-up connection, a free Yahoo email address, and a free Angelfire web site account can pretty much say or do anything they want... no matter whom it hurts or misleads.

    I don't know about you, but though it is both a blessing and a curse, I wouldn't have it any other way.
     
  14. mlslcan

    mlslcan New Member

    re:the military forums

    Just an FYI, those military forums are just a web front end for usenet, for instance the Military Distance Education forum is a.e.d. With that being stated it should be less of a surprise that the regulars here are treated unfairly there.


    Mike
     

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