Do you have any evidence of this that you can cite? And when I say "evidence", I don't mean random blog posts and tweets.

Your basic logic is almost correct. But you missed a few important details:

They will lose a few customers who quit when their bill goes up/see a cheaper plan advertised and lose a lot more customers who never switch to them because they are now more expensive than the competition.

This WILL affect their bottom line. That is how capitalism works and in their industry their is a lot of competition.

In reality this fine is not large enough to matter to the company, but the blow to their reputation is worse. It makes them look stupid and their competition can take advantage of that.

Of course they will. It's either that or they own a money printing press, right? I see this all the time: "they'll just pass the cost on to consumers". I'm at a loss to determine what you think the alternative would be. Every business technically passes all their costs to their customers as the customers are how they make money. When you pay your TW bill (if you have TW) then part of that bill is covering legal expenses when they screw up. Same as when you buy a can of pop at Walmart, Kroger, etc.

It surprised me to find that they can deduct this. The IRS code doesn't allow deduction of penalties paid to governmental agencies, but apparently civil non-governmental judgements are deductable.

I think the scripts could be improved immensely with the money they now pay voice actors. The writing is the important part of that show, not the voices.

His show doesn't bother me so much for his views, which are common (though I agree not very thoughtful - he just parrots tired old arguments). But his delivery is just awful. Long, awkward pauses followed by mouth-smacking into the microphone when he thinks he's said something profound. Nothing even remotely entertaining happens. I switch over to regular radio and listen to mattress commercials.

Chinese themselves know better than to rely on domestic suppliers given their "supply" problems, i.e., delivering a good that isn't some cheap knockoff or laced with chemicals you'd rather not come in contact with.

Oh come on, the iPhone's not that bad. Yes, it's a cheap knockoff and yes it's laced with toxic chemicals, but it's still a pretty good value for the money.

Like all tools, the military can be used for good and bad things. If you don't like what the military has done over the last few years, take it up with the guys in charge - but it doesn't necessarily follow that we need shittier tools.

Buddy, as an Indian-American I am drowning in a sea of doctors. Insurance companies have an invoice rate and they they actually pay something like 20cents on the dollar of the invoice amount. From that amount they pay the medical assistants, nurses, and database services to log into billing networks, liability insurance. I don't see doctors driving nicer cars than other people with Masters level education. (Not PhDs though. They end up in academics and drive Accords and Camrys. )

Don't worry on that count, right now the children of Indian-American immigrants are filling up the vacuum. When they realize the con job they got suckered into we will find another demographic.

China, you invented paper. (I mean real paper from plant-cellulose back in the 7th century). Became the factory of the world. Worked your poor people to their bones to get on the good side of the multinational corporations. Foreign direct investment is what you coveted and sought and pursued with great vigor.

Now it is time for us to return the favor.

Please accept with our compliments the following:

Pointy haried bosses, MBAs, "make the numbers for the next quarter" mentality, "The stock market must be propped up at the expense of tax payers" arguments, "Abysmal interest rates that plays havoc on the retirees depending on interest income is acceptable" policy, "income from the capital must be taxed at a lower rate than income earned by working" justification, "too big to fail, too big to jail" etc etc

No, I'm pointing out that it exposes the GGers. For anyone who hasn't seen it yet, there is a good summary here: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/...

The full log is here: http://puu.sh/boAEC/f072f259b6...

You can search it easily for keywords. I'm still kind of amazed that with all the planning and effort they put into GG they made the obvious mistake of using a public IRC room to organize it all, speaking quite openly about their real motives and how they were astroturfing the hell out of social media with sock puppet accounts.

If you have a genuine complaint then make it. Include some actual evidence, not just insinuations and innuendo, and not just links to blogs and imgur. The kind of stuff a respectable journalist might accept, or even better that the FBI might be interested in (since there are claims of fraud and harassment, and active investigations that would accept such material).

The only people making these claims are the ones who are butthurt over the GGAutoblocker and the fact that the GG IRC logs were published.

PS. -1 offtopic and -1 troll are not your personal censorship tools. Don't be cowards with your moderation, post your responses instead.

I don't think people quite understand the issue. It's not sick time. I'm one of only 2-3 neurosurgeons in a the hospital at a given time and there is so much critical work that we're all needed there at once. To have someone cover me would be problematic since they are already working 80-100 hours per week already, so they would go over the policy limits for work hours, or at the very least be very very unhappy about it.

This is why God invented labor unions, doctor.

Fine. And, since chances are good that that surgeon will be the only one available in many parts of the world, you will die for lack of a life saving procedure.

This is from the article:

At the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Julia E. Szymczak and colleagues analyzed survey responses collected last year from 536 doctors and advanced practice clinicians at their institution.

See that? Philadelphia. I'm pretty sure there is more than one surgeon available in Philadelphia. This is not some field hospital in Kenya and I'm not getting this surgery for free.

Does my bill for the surgery get pro-rated downward if the surgeon is impaired due to being tired?

It would certainly save a lot of money. No need for a rocket, an old oil barrel and some TNT should do the trick. Maybe put a rabid ferret in there too, to see how they do in zero gravity. For science.