the larger point is that there's no reason to think that the free market necessarily arrives at the most cost-effective solution in situations like this. Companies compete on cost-effectiveness in arenas that are highly visible to the consumer and likely to factor into their purchasing decisions

That is an important point; one that is worthwhile to highlight regularly. There are many who believe that the theoretical ideal free market can be closely approximated by a laissez-faire real world market. It cannot, and until we deeply internalize that reality as a society, it is good to continue repeating the lesson.

As such, we're lucky that the insurance provider sends out the replacement phone by overnight mail at all, when they could presumably mail it out by 3- or 4-day mail instead, and no free market forces or government truth-in-labeling enforcers would probably penalize them for that.

While I tend to agree with your previous point that lack of perfect information about insurance coverage implementation at time of purchase leads to a distortion favoring poor insurance service, I think your 3- or 4-day hypothesis proves that the free market is, in fact, having a regulatory effect on cell phone coverage. And it doesn't really surprise me, either -- every time I've had a bad cell phone replacement experience, I have told everyone I know that boned me. That kind of negative publicity does have an effect, as evidenced by the overnight service.

But an in-store-replacement rule (or a replacement-from-some-store-within-a-20-minute-drive rule) would benefit customers more and, with the savings on the mailing speed for the replacements, possibly cost the carrier less. (Even if it did cost the carrier more to carry a small box of in-store replacements in the back room

You may be right, but you may be underestimating the inventory size involved and the cost of keeping so many phones in stock. If it is common for phones to remain under coverage for two years (probably an underestimate), then each store or region would have to stock every phone that is currently for sale and all those that have been out of distribution for up to two years. I live in Phoenix, figure it takes 15 regions to cover the Valley of The Sun, four providers, 20 current models and another 20 out-of-distribution. That's 2400 cell phones, or something like a quarter million dollars. Multiply that by something like 100 to cover the US (rough population multiplier), and we're up to $25m, or an annual cost of $2.5m at 10% cost of capital.

Now, how about the other side of the equation: What we'd be saving is 24 hours of cell-phone-lessness, maybe once every couple years per cell-reliant person. Call that 50m people (140m taxpayers, 3/4ths have little cost to being without a phone for a day, and some non-taxpayers have a significant cost). At once every two years, that's 25m days of high-value cell-phone-lessness per year. $2.5m annual cost over 25m saved high-value days equals $0.10 per saved day of high value cell-phone-lessness.

(obviously the math is more complicated, but there are additional factors in both directions)

Hmm, not what I was expecting. The back-of-the-envelope numbers actually make your proposal look like it is within the limits of credibility, and worthy of further investigation.

I was expecting to find your idea to be impractically expensive, but that's the great thing about science; casting doubt on my preconception is just as good as confirming it.

Outstanding post. Thank you for your time and effort!

All we need to solve the problem of the Comcasts and the Time-warners of the world is to expose them to competition.

If that were true, we wouldn't need common carrier regulation for shipping companies. That's where common carrier started (hence the term "carrier"). It was put in place to keep carriage networks, which are naturally limited in the efficient number of competitors, from exploiting their natural n-opolies by making preferred carrier deals with incumbent manufacturers.

In the case of wired data carriage networks, once there is one set of cables in the ground, the cost of putting each subseqent set in the ground faces an barrier-to-entry that rises more quickly than the natural barriers on, for example, retail stores. In the case of wireless, the limits on frequency band interference do the same thing.

Practical reality does not match the idealistic theories we wish were true, whether those be socialism, anarchy, or anything in between. Give up the -isms and consider observable reality. Learn from history, not religion-peddling pundits.

Since the earliest days of USENET and IRC Chat, the geek has a flawless record of making one-on-one communication over the Internet as painful a process as possible for the non-technical user.

Don't be facetious. One-on-one communication could be much more painful. In the specific case of secure (ie: end-to-end encrypted) communication, Tox is approaching the theoretical limit of simplicity. Key exchange has a mathematically bound minimum complexity in order to be secure. The reason Skype is not secure is precisely because it is easier to use than Tox.

Or, slightly differently: Tox is an example of geeks making one-to-one comm as easy as it possibly can be, for the given requirements.

And how do you exchange key? Do they plan a web of trust à la GPG?

That was one of my first questions. The answer is; however you want. They provide an "easy" (hence vulnerable) method for doing so, but you can check the public key hash against your securely transferred value before approving a key if you want.

Or, slightly differently; this is not a key exchange system, just a comm system you can use once you have authenticated a key to your level of security requirement.

There needs to be a way to disable the cameras for a short period of time. I don't think we need to see police officers using the restroom. Then there are times when officers have private conversations that are not work related. Do you really think it is valid to have anyone monitored every second from start of shift to end of shift? Would you work under those conditions?

It is a good question; how about this: The officer can click the "this is private" button any time they want. That segment of the video is still recorded, but is not included in routine reviews. If there is reasonable cause, IA can look at the protected video. If an officer is putting too much time in private mode, their superior or IA can ask what's going on. If an IA officer is abusing their privilege to look at private mode video, they get canned (pursuant to an IIAA investigation, presumably).

Censorship is the suppression of speech. For example: "You can't talk about Oranges, they are evil!"
Moderation is the regulation of speech: "You can talk about Oranges, just not here. Go over there to talk about Oranges."

A related problem is the "Free Speech Zones" outside political party rallies. They do not censor speech, but they do prevent you from speaking in some portion of the public square. To the extent that Facebook has become the public square, the cost to society of speech prohibition in that forum is the same. To the extent that "Free Speech Zones" are an infringement of free speech, and Facebook has become the public square, Facebook presents the same risks to society.

This is not merely a question of how you dice the legal technicalities, it is a question of the purpose and means of free speech. Free speech is more important to our society in the long run than any other right; it is the basis of having a strong GDP upon which Facebook can build its business. If Facebook becomes destructive of the system, it is our rationally self-interested duty as a society to stop it, even if the particular existing legal terms can be parsed in a way that says it is legal.

Getting on the road for Burning Man. Probably won't get another chance to check in. I didn't want you to think I was ignoring you if you want to continue the dialogue, but I probably won't be able to respond for two weeks.

Now go look at the down-modded ones as well. As I said - anything not toeing the line is at 1 or 2.

I did. I spent about half an hour looking at the downmodded ones, and trying to see something that I could easily point to, and I didn't find it. But let me remind you of your original reply and my original assertion:

>> 2. The majority of such comments get upmodded and misogyny is the dominant sentiment in this community.
>>
>> If you're saying 2, we should take action. But first, citation needed, because I think you are mistaken.
>
> http://apple.slashdot.org/stor...
>
> I await your action and apology. Very clear pattern of up-mods for misogynistic crap and down-mods for anything not toeing the line.

You claim you were confirming my item 2, which makes an assertion about upmods and and misogyny being the dominant sentiment. It seems you cannot show that using the +5 rated comments. Therefore, I believe that we have already shown that your contradiction of my post, and demand that I apologize, was unjustified.

Now you are backing off to the less stringent, and harder to quantify, claim that comments which don't "toe the party line" were more likely to be downmodded. I suspect that misogynistic comments are relatively easy to categorize. Posts which don't "toe the party line" is a fuzzier issue, since I am not sure I know what you are saying "the party line" is. I'm not sure if you mean misogynistic comments are the party line, or if you are saying that the party line is a lack of support for affirmative action programs to balance the unequal treatment of women in STEM. Which is to say I think that the "party line" issue will be harder to show empirically.

But if you want to classify all the posts into misogynist versus not misogynist, or party-line-toeing versus party-line-anti-toeing, and upmodded versus downmodded, and present the data, I'd love to see it. It just seems like it would take a lot of work to get an objective answer. You presented a single example in your post. Individual anecdotes are extremely susceptible to confirmation bias.

While we're on the subject of confirmation bias, and your accusation that I have fallen victim; I think you are off base.

First, my assertion was that this forum does not have a dominant theme of misogyny demonstrated by the majority of misogynistic comments being upmodded. I think that looking at the +5 comments and trying to find a significant number which are misogynistic is an eminently fair test for that hypothesis.

Second, it would be rather hard for me to be a victim of it, since I do not have a strongly held belief of what the outcome will be. I haven't seen a strong pattern of misogyny here, but I've said, earlier in this thread, that I may simply be missing it, and I want to understand if that is the case. That is why I have been asking these questions in an unbiased and respectful manner. (though admittedly, you are testing my patience with your shifting of the specific facts in question and your impugning of my integrity)

Finally, it would also be difficult for me to be a victim of confirmation bias on the affirmative action question, because I am in favor of affirmative action programs to balance the unequal representation of women in STEM. I think that, much like the addition of women to the industrial labor force in the wake of WWII, increasing equality of women in STEM would be good for our nation both at the pragmatic economic level and in terms of the substantial ethical issue that is at stake.

But I do not see the objectively quantified empirical evidence of a pattern of misogynistic rhetoric on this site. Worse yet, I think that spurious suspicion of misogyny, particularly of people like me who want to see these kinds of programs move forward, is harmful to their advancement.

If that is because I do not understand what misogyny is, I am hoping you can enlighten me. But if I am not seeing it because upmodded misogynistic comments are actually not very common, perhaps that is an equally significant observation.

>> 2. The majority of such comments get upmodded and misogyny is the dominant sentiment in this community.

> http://apple.slashdot.org/stor...
>
> I await your action and apology. Very clear pattern of up-mods for misogynistic crap and down-mods for anything not toeing the line.

I read through the top rated comments, and it was not as clear to me as you suggest it is. It is possible that I do not understand what constitutes misogyny. I read this entry in Wikipedia, and am still not sure I see the cases that match that definition. There are 21 comments modded +5. To show that the dominant sentiment is misogyny, could you please link the 10 that you feel are most misogynistic?

Pick any random story about equality and it will be full of people accusing the women involved of attacking them personally and of being whiney bitches.

Clarify this for me: Are you saying:
1. Such posts exist, and some get upmodded.
- or -
2. The majority of such comments get upmodded and misogyny is the dominant sentiment in this community.

If you're saying 2, we should take action. But first, citation needed, because I think you are mistaken. If you're saying 1, it is better to allow a few fools to express their opinion -- and better yet for us to discuss it without rancor and help them get a clue -- than to become a community that does not speak freely.

Back when the whole Mozilla controversy was going on there were endless posts about how "just not liking gays" was somehow a perfectly okay position to take, and blaming them for daring to demand equality and human rights.

Clarify this for me; are you saying:

1. That the dominant meme in the Mozilla conversation was that it is perfectly okay to not like gays?
- or -
2. That a dominant meme was that he has a right to be a bigot, even though bigotry is wrong.

The latter is what I saw in the Mozilla issue, and it is an important distinction.

I am a hard-core equal rights advocate. Nothing good comes from hate. I argued in that thread for him to be dismissed, and believe it was right for him to "choose to resign".

But here's the thing about "nothing good comes from hate" -- it cuts both ways. Nothing good comes from hate, even when the target of the hate is a bigot. While I may find a person's opinion repugnant, and I do not hesitate to tell such people their view is flawed, I will defend to the death their right to express it.

Therein lies the behavior modification. Good and bad aside, you damn sure learn not to place your stingables in harm's way of another scorpion.

Seems reasonable. What's the next step; how do you recommend we do it? In this case, the stingable is the market economy, and the scorpion is collusive trade. How do we move our economic system out of the way of Bezos' actions?

Bezos is dealing with the challenge of ushering the decaying giant into the new World, and in some fashion, that includes monetizing the operation. A button for Amazon purchases? Were you expecting a Rakuten link?

Identifying and understanding the reason that an inefficient trade agreement occurs does not make it efficient. I know why a scorpion stings me, but I do not consider it a good thing.

It seems to me no more intrusive than a banner ad, and I'm much more annoyed at large rectangular ads that break up article paragraphs. So what am I missing here?

IMO, the apparent conflict of interest. In an ideal free market, ad placements are competitive. Exclusive deals between entities which enjoy very large market-shares in their respective markets have a high probability of inhibiting GDP growth in the long run, according to both empirical and theoretical economics.

In my state all the calls are recorded anonymously for my safety as well as the safety of my country. Freedom isn't free after all.

Hmm, let's see...

In my state all the calls are recorded anonymously for my safety as well as the safety of my country. Freedom isn't freedom, after all.

There, FTFY. :(