The average cost is irrelevant, because these trolls can select what businesses the extort. It's not going to do them any good to extort a business that could make the changes for a thousand bucks. They're going to look for businesses whose would be as high as possible. The first example in TFA says the changes would cost $20,000, and the trolls are trying to extort $5,500.

So you might say, "the ADA is there for a reason, why should these businesses get away with not complying?" Except that these extortions are in direct contradiction to that. They're not forcing businesses to comply with ADA, they're allowing business to give them a bribe in order to avoid complying! Now, if they weren't collecting "settlements" then all the PR they're spouting might actually make sense - whether you agree or disagree that they should force ADA compliance is another issue altogether, but that's simply not what they're doing.

Common, nobody expects you to read TFA but at least read the 2nd paragraph of the summary. The Facebook post was only one part of it. And like the previous commenter pointed it had nothing to do with the fact that it was a Facebook post, it was because it was under duress, it would have been the same thing in the olden days if it were a letter to the editor or statement to the media.

And anyway, you probably only read the title, because if you had read the summary at all you would have seen that the Facebook post was only one part of it. The lawsuit was for wrongful arrest, and he should have got more than $20k. APD will just look at that as a cost of doing business. At least the officer "quit," but the lieutenant should have been fired too instead of a whopping 5 day suspension. There is documentation that he willfully tried to cover up the incident when he should have been throwing the book at the officer. I would suspect that the officer was given only 1 day suspension under the agreement that he would quit, but when it comes to violating people's constitutional rights so egregiously that shit shouldn't be done behind closed doors. He should have been fired and make it very public why to deter other officers from doing the same bullshit and give confidence to the public that such behavior from officers is not tolerated. Instead it sends the message "whatever, go ahead and violate people's right and arrest them just because you find them annoying, all you'll get is a 1 day suspension and your boss will help cover it up."

Except that the word "Arab" does not refer to the UAE. The proper term is "Emirati," the word "Arab" means something else. The point the OP was making is that many people in the US are ignorant and seem to lump everything "Arab" together as if there were only one "Arab" country (or that there is no difference between Arab countries), and I think your ignorance helped prove his point.

WHAT THE FUCK? So pretty much they do something illegal, and only have to give part of the proceeds back?
Found the question mark:
1. Commit fraud
2. Get caught
3. Bribe^H^H^H Lobby politicians
4. PROFIT!

That's because anybody who presents evidence that contradicts my fear-driven preconceptions is clearly a paid shill!

Stop it! Logic has no place in politics!

You make it sound as if you have to spend big bucks. That is not the case. Those 5 gallon plastic jugs at the grocery store are just tap water run through a reverse osmosis water filter. You can get a good 5-stage RO filter from Amazon for around $200. Not exactly a huge "investment" and it's the same end product as the grocery store water you're referring to. Sure, I guess you could get a water filter that costs thousands, but if you're just filtering tap water you're not going to notice a difference between an iSpring $200 filter and something more expensive.

I sure hope it's not microwave popcorn since microwaves create radiation! Also popcorn is made from GMOs aka Monsanto Death Kernels!

Oh hell, I just noticed this in the article: Keurig plans to bring back the My K-cup accessory to allow customers to brew other brands of coffee. Okay, but what about "unofficial" k-cups? I like to use k-cups that don't have the DRM, and I rarely use my own coffee grounds in the My K-cup accessory. Noticeably absent is them saying you can use non-DRM k-cups. Then again, reporters are idiots so they may not have bothered learning the difference between the My k-cup which allows you to use grounds vs non-DRM k-cups. But if they still don't accept non-DRM k-cups, then fuck 'em!

Exactly why I didn't buy one of these machines. I thought they were totally a-holes for making this move, but I gotta hand it to them, it's a rare thing for a business to admit that they were wrong. Good on them!

Exactly, "exaggerating security problems" - yeah, how about fraud?

In the USA, they would be given an award and probably sue Apple based on a patent titled "METHOD OF ALERTING USERS TO SECURITY PROBLEMS ON A COMPUTER."

...

Um......

Most people don't care about the Russians anymore. Now, if a Muslim-dominated country started developing a program to send a human to Mars, NASA's budget would skyrocket.

I think the point is - they're not moving the programs over to NOAA, or even redirecting the funding to NOAA, they are cutting it from NASA. Their rationale that it's because it's NOAA's mission and not NASA's would only make sense if they were moving the programs & funding, not cutting them.

While there would certainly be women decrying such a male-only authored paper, most people (women and men) would have the intelligence to leave those biases out of their peer review. If they can find the actual bias in the paper, fine, and internally they may be more skeptical, but a proper peer review would not the cause (male only) without citing the effect (the actual part of the methods/results/conclusions that demonstrate a bias). This suggests that either PLoS One has inadequate standards for peer reviews, or that this douchebag is an outlier.

Now, what is this peer-reviewer's area of expertise? Because he should know that's bullshit. Competitive male runners, on average, will be able to run a faster mile because of increased testosterone, plus an average longer leg length. These are physical attributes. I'm pretty sure there is no physiological reason to suggest a difference in intelligence between men and women. Additionally, ignoring the first part and just focusing on his claim that male doctoral students will be able to, on average, run a faster mile...well, male doctoral students vs female doctoral students will be all over the place. Some of them don't exercise, some do. Some of them are overweight, some aren't. The sample set is too stratified to draw such a broad conclusion, a stratified sampling would be required, e.g. a sample set with doctoral students who exercise as least X hrs/week, another sample set with students who exercise Y-Z hrs/wk, and another set with students who don't exercise at all. Not recognizing such demonstrates this peer reviewer's lack of competency to be a peer reviewer.