Considering the fucking lawyers will get most of that settlement, kindly STFU. Settlement amounts are offset for the legal teams. Any moron knows that.
If their lawyers were to take 100% of the cash, or even if it all got incinerated in a firestorm near a water faucet, that family would still have gotten some revenge on a stupid drilling company that still deserves to have a few million dollars carved out of its ass.
Aruba Petroleum has about 15 employees and reports earnings of $50 million of revenue per year. This settlement sets them back by just three weeks of fracking. Someone needs to be waterboarded in fracking fluid.
So heaven is available to anyone whether or not they follow your God's law?
That's completely correct, sir. The heavens can no longer discriminate against people who have preexisting sins. See heaven.gov to see whether you qualify for a plan that has a maximum deductible of 5000 years in purgatory before you are 100% guaranteed entrance into heaven.
In Heaven you will sit around passing a bong back and forth with God until the end of time, with occasional teeth cleanings. Gold and Platinum plans are available that include options for 72 virgins, or for your own planet to rule over, or for the next in a series of afterlives as an elephant, then as a tapeworm, then as Ted Nugent, then as a cricket, and on and on until you achieve Enlightenment with an endless supply of meth and the memory of your life as Ted Nugent to serve as a guide.
Say, for instance, that I preach that your particular God sucks donkey balls, would he/she hold that against me?
If you like your particular religion, you can keep it. (Of course that's assuming that people wouldn't tolerate a religion where their God sucks donkey balls anyway- which it turns out, is false.)
We all know a human would, but what about a God?
Well that's the whole point- we obviously can't rely on God to fix the situation on his own behalf. He has his own interests, and would obviously like to discriminate against atheists and heretics, and keep them from entering heaven. After all hey arrive confused and with awkward questions for Him- especially assholes like Stephen Hawking who will instantly start quizzing Him about quantum gravity. He sees it as a waste of His endless time. That's why we needed to make it a law, with a mandate on God to allow all individuals into heaven. Even guys with more money than God now have to face the fact that this is working. So folks, just remember to check out heaven.gov or go to Hell.
publishers pay the people who fronted money for the study
If only they did.
Funds paid to scientific publishers pay for editing, not for the original studies. Moreover, peer review -- the most important part of the process -- is almost universally done for free by other scientists in the field; the publishers are just mediators in that process, adding minimal value.
Someone's got to pay to fund the research.
I may be wrong on this, but in the US, HIPAA would rule the day on such a case, no? That would mean that 200k Pounds Sterling would be a wee drop in the bucket compared to the fine such an organization would face here should it face a data leak of that magnitude.
You're making substantial assumptions about what kind of teeth HIPAA has. When I worked at a medical software company -- wherein I was directly responsible for systems handling patient data, went through HIPAA training, and worked directly with our HIPAA compliance officer to determine technical measures -- it was damned near toothless; what we spent hiring said officer and taking said measures was much more than we would have been fined for a single breach. (We wouldn't have been able to sell the system or satisfy investors unless we could pass an audit, so it was the right business decision to make, but much of what our compliance officer told us was how much work we didn't have to do; the actual compliance requirements often fell far short of what I considered best practices).
which viewpoint prevailed (if any)?
Nobody won -- the developer is holding the property, which remains zoned industrial, until market conditions (financing availability) and political considerations give them more leeway in its use.
"I am, therefore I am." -- Akira