You would have to basically create an endowment to fund ongoing documentation development.

Agreed that continued funding would be necessary to the extent that renewed documentation is needed. Whether an endowment or repeat crowdfunding is the best mechanism for doing so would probably vary from project to project. Perhaps you make the endowment approach a big stretch goal; like "$18,000 base funding for a one-time project, $250,000 or more creates an endowment with three annual $20,000 update projects until the endowment (invested in broad-based low risk equity funds, 50% domestic, 25% foreign first world, 25% foreign developing nations) is depleted" -- but I digress, you get the idea.

A) the interfaces are bad enough that documentation is even necessary in the first place

As you imply, I find that good documentation often exposes opportunities for improvement in the interface. That could become a channel for providing recommendations to the core development team, or could become the seed for a third-party development effort. Things which have value can get built, either because the developers and their sponsors want them, or through crowdfunding, or through some other motivating mechanism.

In short; you've raised an opportunity to create additional value, not a threat to succeeding in the base objective.

B) documentation is boring, unrewarding and time consuming to do well so nobody wants to bother.

That is a restatement of the original premise for which we are attempting to find potential solutions. I think I am missing your intent in raising it anew as a bullet point.

MOTHERFUCKER, IT DOESN'T WORK LIKE THAT. Fuck you in your goddamn asshole you fucking arrogant fucking pricks...The fact of the matter is the majority of programmers are assholes that have no business operating in normal society. Lock them in the fucking closet and let them read the fucking source until they jizz all over their crusty beards while fantasizing about Stallman's brown pucker.

Just a wild guess here, but hear me out: Is there any chance that your interpersonal skills could have contributed to the lack of communication?

How about crowdfunding some documentation efforts by real technical writers?

The reality, for better or worse, is that writing FLOSS code has sufficient apparent benefits for the software engineers and their sponsors to get the job done. The technical writing of good documentation does not. Whatever the reasons, it is the case; that has been the reality for decades.

But how much would it cost for a first pass at documentation? Take "Installing and Configuring MyCloud" as the example. Contact a few people who have written articles or put up YouTube videos on the subject. Let's get a high estimate; call it $100/hr, one month, three documenters, 10 hours per week each, 50% overhead = $100 * 1 * 3 * (4 * 10) * 1.5 = $18,000.

That seems do-able, and a good opportunity to develop a crowdfunded brand; a team that grows a reputation for getting projects done. Then you could offer a follow-on project to do a deeper dive on the same subject, or put together another team to do Asterisk & Secure VoIP, or whatever is next. Maybe start with the counter-NSA stuff, where there's a sudden broad interest and complex software that, until now, has been run mostly by experts.

A few thousands of people willing to kick in a small amount of money each toward a common goal; crowdfunding documentation seems like a natural fit.

Really that's just assembling but fewer of the parts came preassembled. Until you've smelted your own metal for wires and designed your own processor, you're just plugging in a few more parts

Real engineers initialize a new universe with the appropriate laws of physics to ensure that a life form will evolve that eventually builds the desired computer. Everything else is just building on the big bang.

I really liked my last snarky response, but I just thought of another one:

Those in-app purchases require an account password - that's a parental responsibility. Allowing the kids to know the password is no different than sending them to the toy store with a blank check. Not only are the parents not teaching their children to take responsibility for their actions, the parents themselves aren't being responsible.

I've long been thinking the same thing about crosswalk signals. Children whose parents fail to teach them to look at the vehicular traffic signals to know when it is safe to cross are not giving their children an important life skill. Spending taxpayer money on crosswalk signals, just to protect the children of a few incompetent parents, is grossly wasteful nanny-stateism. If we don't allow natural car-versus-pedestrian fatalities to punish stupid parents by killing their children, how will they ever learn?

If they can do that, those children have much larger issues than a $4 charge - they have stupid and irresponsible parents, who are not only providing inadequate supervision, but are incompetent at teaching their children life skills.

Your observation, whether true or not, does not make the transactions efficient. Inefficient transactions are bad for the economy, regardless of their cause. Do you want American companies to lose money? Do you hate America?

>> Because its their job to hate people who take advantage of others in matters of trade?

> Very true. A wholly free market is actually quite toxic, as a certain Adam Smith noted. Especially when it's dishonest.

Yes. Yes, yes, yes! Exactly this.

the FTC "simply substituted its own judgment for a private firm's decision as to how to design a product to satisfy as many users as possible."

Because that is what we pay them to do. And there is a very good reason; because private firms measure customer satisfaction through the lens of maximization of profit (fairly short run profit in the case of apps), and the FTC measures it through imperfect objective analysis of the rational self-interest and informedness of the transaction participants. Gee, here's a surprise: Those two measures don't always agree, and sometimes, when they are far enough out of whack, it actually increases GDP in the long run if you limit the freedom of people to engage in inefficienty transactions.

A really good example of such potentially inefficient transactions is children, who do not understand how much time and effort it costs to acquire money, are in the throes of video game passion and a screen pops up saying, "Win More, Only $3.99! Buy Now!"

Joshua Wright, an FTC commissioner who dissented...

A market filled with efficient transactions increases GDP in the long run relative to a market with less efficient transactions. So, tell me, Joshua Wright; do you hate the economy? Do you want a lower GDP? Do you want our corporations to lose money? Do want our wealthiest stockholders to have to buy slightly smaller Gulfstreams? Answer me, Mr. Wright: Do you hate America?

So Cabinet-level officials such as the Attorney General and Director of National Intelligence have committed perjury during Congressional testimony or been held in Contempt of Congress before?

No, they haven't - every other time officials of that level have been about to be held in Contempt of Congress, the official caved and supplied Congress with what was being asked.

Have you heard of Ollie North?

Neither side wants this to go to court, and both sides know it. The AARC wants a settlement they can point to for high pressure settlement letters to other defendants, and the car companies want a non-revokable license for these devices. I'd give it a 90%+ confidence that this will result in an undisclosed settlement within a year, and while we won't know the number they settle for, I'm guessing it won't be enough to make a blip on the car companies' quarterly reports.

Isn't self-hosting a violation of most ISP EULAs?

I think so, if you have user-grade service, but I pay for a commercial-grade Internet connection that comes with a static IP for running services, and I run three hosted servers. Freedom isn't free (but it is a lot of fun). :)

Ever wonder if maybe that rule has less to do with bandwidth and more to do with preventing the creation of a peer-to-peer, decentralized internet?

I think there's some truth to that, if for no other reason than that the ISP probably would rather not have the headache associated with average idiots running servers. They're run by guys with MBAs who genuinely believe that centralized is inherently better -- like to the level that they don't even grasp what you're saying at first, if you try to explain the benefits of decentralized.

Anyone have other theories why this number is so much higher than the 5% of people who are just "late"?

The first window lasts from 0.08 years to 0.5 years, while the second window lasts from 0.5 years to 7.0 years. The relative window width is (7.0 - 0.5) / (0.5 - 0.08) = 6.5 / 0.42 = 15.47. So if each person only had zero or one debts, and no debt was ever paid off, you'd expect there to be 15.47 times as many debt holders in the second window as in the first. 15.47 * 5% = 77%. So the fact that it is at 35% means that there is some combination of people being in both categories and people paying off their debt while it is "In Collections." If it was 5%, or 77%, you'd be able to make a pretty solid guess that something was hinky, but 35% is in the "could be perfectly reasonable" range.

I'll also echo the sentiment that some creditors do a horrible job of billing. I had a large outstanding debt for years before finding it on my credit report. The company had a typo in my address from the original signup, but had been getting copies of my credit report which had my correct address. They sent all the bills to the incorrect address they had on file, never once contacted me at the address on file with the credit reporting company they had been contacting.

I can't find words for how much I hate Congress and the President for this.

I can. But I'm afraid that if I use them in public, I could be put on the secret watch list and have to face extra scrutiny in every LEO encounter when "possible terrorist, report to FBI" pops up on their computer.

Of course, that chilling effect means that the peaceful feedback mechanism that is supposed to moderate government overreach is being attenuated. When that moderation system is weakened, excesses grow. Fortunately, as The Declaration of Independence notes, "accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed." So we have time.

But time grows short; The Declaration does not end with that phrase.

Decentralized Internet is badly needed

Very true, that is the only real solution to this problem. Whether corporations, governments, or criminals, the value in surveillance is too great to be resisted. The only solution is increasing the cost and detecting it when it happens. Decentralization will both make it more expensive to do generalized surveillance, and make it harder to do it without getting caught.

and nothing seems to be in works...

Not as true.

OwnCloud lets you host your own dropbox, mobile-to-desktop sync, etc.
MediaGoblin lets you host your own replacement for YouTube.
Asterisk lets you host an end-to-end encrypted replacement for Skype.
Tor and I2P let you slip past your ISP's surveillance net.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. Learn more at Stop-Prism.org.

Not to mention if chemical weapons were a casus belli, just about every country in the world would be a legitimate target.

Exactly. Like marijuana and copyright infringement for foreign policy.

Your government (I assume you are American) does provide foreign aid to Israel. It also supplies money and/or arms to a lot more unsavory countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Sure, feel free to criticize Israel, but don't be hypocritical about it.

Can you quote me the part where I was being hypocritical? Can you show me where I said that I supported our funding of Egypt or Saudi Arabia? Or are you just trying to falsely discredit me because you don't like my opinion?