KlearGear is a terrible, horrible, no-good bunch of a$$holes. They used to have a clause in their customer agreement "allowing" them to bill customers $3,500 if they left a bad review. They billed some customers that wrote a nastygram on ripoffreport. When the customers (understandably) ignored the bogus bill (the bogus clause didn't even exist when the customers made their purchase), it was sent to collections and dutifully reported on the customer's credit report.

When the customers sued, KlearGear ignored the lawsuit, had a default judgement entered, and then tried to have the judgement vacated because the parent company is French and they argue they didn't receive proper service. (This is quite bogus because they most certainly have a substantial US presence, and can be served here.)

I work in DR Architecture, and diverse routes are a pretty common customer request, and for us that just means diverse routes from the customer's IT facility to our DR data canters. Industrial firms, banks, health insurance companies, whatever.

With entirely fabricated coupons, the manufacturer knows which offer codes are legit, and what amounts they should map to. They'll simply reject all counterfeits, and the retailer takes it in the proverbial shorts for the discount. Manufacturers could fix this by sharing all legit coupon codes with retailers (similar to the UPC system), but this would be cumbersome and since there's little benefit to the manufacturers, they don't.

For the second type of counterfeit where it's a fake copy of a legit coupon (you see this a lot with "free item" and deep-discount coupons that are sold by consumer product companies to say, appliance manufacturers or retailers. (i.e. "Buy this overpriced washer and get a six-month supply of Tide Detergent") it all depends on if the manufacturer spots the fake or not... If they do, the retailer eats it; if they don't the manufacturer does. Most of this type of coupons increasingly have security measures like holograms, thermo-sensitive colored ink, etc. to make the job easier on the manufacturer; doesn't help the retailer much though... they'll be able to know that, for instance all P&G coupons have certain security measures, but this won't work for smaller brands.

The SAT/GRE/etc. are terrible ways of selecting students; they can be specifically prepped for, students can cheat, they exclude otherwise-worthy students who don't "test" well, etc. But for better or worse, they are about the best available.

An "ideal" admissions method could somehow magically select the "best" students, but as any person who interviews and hires people can tell you, is rather difficult to do well. And impossible to do well on a mass scale. Employers, who have a huge vested interest in hiring only employees who will "work out" (given the utterly ridiculous costs of bringing somebody up to speed in a new workplace) haven't been able to figure this out yet. Colleges, who have a much smaller cost for admitting mediocre students, certainly aren't going to perfect this skill.

Given the cost/time/scale constraints of a better process, heavily weighting admissions decisions on SAT scores is not the worst compromise that could be made.

For many years, I didn't block ads, viewing them as a necessary part of all the free content on the internet. But starting with pages of animated ads that really slowed down browsers of old, and progressing to ads that play audio by default, ads that play video (with audio!) on even a momentary mouseover, etc.,, not to mention ads containing or linking to malicious content, I have no choice but to block them.

Gee, it's a good thing Anthropogenic Global Warming is just a Big Leftist Conspiracy, or imagine how bad things would be!

How much evidence is required before denialist clowns will be convinced that Global Warming is a thing, and it is almost certainly Our Fault? It's kind of amusing that the same people that will shovel 100's of $B and sacrifice thousands of lives to counter theoretical threats posed by countries all over the world somehow require absolute irrefutable "I must personally get burnt before I'll ever admit fire exists" proof when it comes to climate change?

And then you have the small subset of people that believe it makes sense to protest emissions regulations by having a switch that makes their diesel run super-rich and throw plumes of thick smoke out the tailpipe.

Refusing to tell somebody what the codes on the bill mean as a "security" measure is silly... that's "security by obscurity" at it's best/worst. Nobody is going to rely on that as an actual security measure, but it IS a good way to get people off the phone when they want to question their bill.

While HIPPA has good parts and bad parts, one of the things it is routinely used for is to provide "privacy" as an excuse for anything a healthcare organization doesn't feel like talking about, in the same way that "privileged" or "classified" is used by governments.

But this article could have done a LITTLE research. ICD codes are for diagnoses, CPT are codes for treatment. CPT is a subset of the HPCPS codes; colloquially, "CPT" is used to refer to all HPCPS codes, even if technically Level II and III HPCPS codes are not CPT codes.

So, a lab would bill for CPT codes, and a physician will record an ICD code in the patient's chart.

I don't necessarily think it's unreasonable that it's going to be hard to find plain-english explanations of the codes... there is inevitably going to be a lot of specialized jargon for such a complex field. But certainly the error rate is shameful. And all patients should receive an itemized bill, or have it easily available (like on the hospital's billing website.)

About my "Moms" crack... that was not meant to diminish the contribution of Mothers everywhere to science, procreation, or common sense. I was just making fun of the idea that "Moms" have some sort of special superpower that gives them powers of intuition that can ignore science.

"Notably absent, however, were any scientists"

Sounds like the GOP's ideal version of "science" these days... the climate, abortion, you name it, they'll substitute Moms, Businessmen, and the Clearly Insane for actual scientists in any science discussion.

Here's to hoping they don't find any oil there, given the earthquakes it's caused in OK.

I wonder what is coming next, hiring good 'ol Carly Fiorina as "Chief Vision Officer" or something like that? I'm sure that'd improve morale greatly. That worked out so well for HP. (Not that their subsequent two CEO's were much of an improvement...)

Where do CEO's learn to talk like this? Weren't they ever front-line employees who rolled their eyes at the exec-speak? (Judging from the breathless and sycophantic comments I see posted on my company's intranet to every word from our Fearless Leaders, I'd say no.)

This deal is good for some people, not good for others. If you think it'll work for you, sign up, if you don't, then don't. It seems more than a bit of a stretch to proclaim that the plan is a colossal failure because it does not meet your particular needs.

For somebody regularly near Wi-Fi (and therefore a low user of data), it's a pretty good plan, with only $20/mo for the unlimited T&T, and data that is reasonably priced if you don't use that much of it.

Firstly, nobody is prosecuted for discrimination. Discrimination is not enforced by criminal law; it's enforced by civil ones. You are sued, not prosecuted, for violating them.

Please go back in time, and ask black Americans their view on the matter before such practices were outlawed. Ask some women how harmless it is to get paid less than men for the same job.

By no means are things hunky-dory today, but they are indisputably much better than they used to be. You certainly can't change attitudes through laws, but when attitudes keep people from wanting to do the right thing, laws certainly nudge them to do it anyway.

If you are an immigrant, you are going to choose a place because it's less-bad than the one you came from. That doesn't mean that they deserve to be taken advantage of simply because it's possible. I'm pretty sure that if those Indians in Dubai could find a job in say, Europe, doing the same work for the same pay, they'd certainly choose to go there.