I didn't say "a specific page". I said "the middle". And tons of programs don't display page numbers -- web browsers, for one.
Well, you said the middle of a several hundred page document. Either way, I can hold page down until the scroll bar hits the middle far faster than you can move your mouse over, click, drag down, and release. If the document were closer to tens of thousands of pages, you may win out using your mouse, but that is a bit of an edge case.
Whoop-dee doo. That wasn't the issue.
Actually it is. For those of us who know what we are doing, we are better served with a keyboard.
Wow. The discussion was about what's faster on average for a variety of people. I sure hope your keyboarding skills are better than you're reading comprehension skills. But judging by how spectacularly you screwed up the HTML in your previous post, I wouldn't bet on it.
That's some big talk about reading comprehension. I will try to soak it in, but I am afraid I replied to a post that said, "Try timing yourself on some web browsing/text editing/file managing tasks." It's not surprising you find keyboard shortcuts too confusing. If you are arguing about the average person, then the mistake is mine. I generally assume people on Slashdot are above average in most categories, but if your IQ is hovering right around that 100 mark, I have little doubt that you will be faster using a mouse.
The point I was making in response to #26540019 is that there are many of us in technology, who used computers for a long time before the mouse was ubiquitous, that find the keyboard to be far more efficient in terms of speed and accuracy. It would be unfortunate if keyboard shortcuts were phased out in order to ease the learning curve for people like you. It's bad enough that web sites are becoming less keyboard friendly (Flash, onmousedown/up events, forms that submit with JavaScript, etc.)
[BTW, I tried harder with my HTML skillz on this post. I hope it lives up to your standards.]
I can't remember the last time I had to jump to specific page w/o knowing how many pages were in a document. I am guessing it was circa WordStar era.
I can jump around a page using up/dn, pg up/dn, home, end, and text searches faster than anyone I've ever seen (bearing in mind I've worked in software for 12 years) do it with a mouse. I doubt you are any exception to that.
I also know what application I want just about 999 out of 1000 times. The rare exception happened recently where I was trying to use Poseidon for UML on a Mac, which installs into ~/Applications/Poseidon For UML CE 6.0.2/bin/poseidonMac.sh.command. But even in the UML designer, I still found myself using keyboard shortcuts for over half of what I did.
Anyway, don't get confused. Just because I am faster with a keyboard than a mouse doesn't mean I am slow with a mouse compared to others, including you. I am not even arguing with you; I'm sure you are faster with your mouse than hunt and peck.
Open a new browser tab (winner: keybd) Close a browser tab (winner: keybd) Navigate forward/back in the history (winner: keybd)
Those are all arguably faster with gestures.
Ctrl+w versus mouse click while moving down, then right. Not sure who can possibly do that faster and with more accuracy than the most novice computer user.
Go to a history/bookmarked URL (winner: keybd)
With most browsers, I'd say this is true. With Opera's Speed Dial, it becomes a matter of whether you've memorized the name of the site (or bookmark). Just open a new tab, and you see a (fairly large) picture of each of your bookmarked sites. Click on the one you want to visit (or Ctrl+Number). This method makes both the keyboard and the mouse faster (and near-equivalent, IMO) by removing the dependence on the user's memory for speed.
This only advantageous for users who do not remember the names or URLs of the sites they want to visit, but recognize them by thumbnails. The mouse beating the keyboard suggests a certain increased level of stupidity on the part of the user.
Run an application (winner: keybd)
Only if you've memorized the name of the command. What you're really saying here is that searching for a program is slower than already having it memorized. I guarantee you that clicking on a desktop shortcut (and you have your dekstop set for single-click mode, right?) is faster than executing the key combo, then typing a word, then hitting enter.
Well, in Vista I can hit the window button, then start typing the name of the appliation (ie, word instead of winword.exe). Ditto for OS X using Spotlight (command+space). I would like to see anyone navigate through the start menu or finder to start Word faster (or even the Quick launch/Dock).
Cut,copy,paste is a process, not just a key combo. I've found that the process usually works best when you use both the keyboard and the mouse. The mouse is better for selecting large blocks of text and getting the cursor to the general area where you want it. The keyboard is better for precision movements.
Scrolling via arrow, pgup/dn, home/end vs. wheel (winner: keybd)
Let's have a race. We each have an identical several-hundred-page document. You use the page keys, I'll click on the scroll bar. First to the middle wins. Also, your mention of the scroll wheel belies your inexpertise with the mouse. The correct tool is the "middle-click drag" auto-scroll feature.
Of course I will win. With a 500-page documet, Ctrl+G, 250, enter. [Btw, I will ignore your pot shot at my inexpertise with the middle-click-drag only known to super 31337 users such as yourself.]
Switching between applications/windows (winner: keybd)
The advantage of the keyboard over the mouse is its parallel nature. Alt-tab is an inherently serial process, so it eliminates the advantage completely. (If you happen to know that the window you want is the previously-active window, then sure, alt-tab is inherently faster. But that's an incredibly special-case scenario.)
Switching to the previous application is incredibly special case? I generally have about 6 or 7 applications open at a time. I can easily cycle to the one I want to use far faster than anyone can locate what they want to use on a taskbar, most their mouse down and click it.
Click a link (Tie. I generally hit / and start typing the link text, hit escape, then enter to visit the link. Sometimes moving the mouse over the link is faster.)
That method is incredibly limited. You can't click on buttons or images. You lose context as you type since the screen's jumping around thanks to search-as-you-type. It fails miserably is the li
Let's see... Open a new browser tab (winner: keybd) Close a browser tab (winner: keybd) Go to a history/bookmarked URL (winner: keybd) Navigate forward/back in the history (winner: keybd) Click a link (Tie. I generally hit / and start typing the link text, hit escape, then enter to visit the link. Sometimes moving the mouse over the link is faster.) Run an application (winner: keybd) Cut/copy/paste/save/print/quit/etc (winner: keybd) Scrolling via arrow, pgup/dn, home/end vs. wheel (winner: keybd) Switching between applications/windows (winner: keybd) Change a font (I will give this one to mouse)
Sorry, but between tab to move between elements (a must have for any application I use) and standard keyboard shortcuts (control/alt/command/shift modifiers), I have zero desire to use a mouse and rarely do. I don't get how taking tme to move one's hand over to the mouse, moving the cursor over a button and clicking could possibly take less time than two simple key presses (my fingers remember where ctrl and w are, but my hand does not remember how to navigate over the little "x" on the tab).
While mouse gestures are certainly nice, they are, in my experience, far more prone to inaccuracy compared to a key presses. Mistakenly closing a browser tab happens far more often with gestures than the keyboard.
The only time I find myself consistently using a mouse is in OS X Finder, which just doesn't play well with the keyboard. In such situations where the mouse is generally faster, I will usually opt for a keyboard solution (eg, using mv, cp, mkdir, etc from a shell).
Much of this may have to do with my late switch to Windows from DOS and work generally keeping me in a terminal window, but I still maintain I can use a keyboard faster for most common tasks than anyone with a mouse.
He is not delusional. He is just an ignorant ideologue, who has probably contributed less to OSS than MS, and is shameless enough to submit his own story to slashdot.
A little homophobic, huh? Cute play on words though. I don't mind in the least if you call me a Republican, but I do think you are embarrassing yourself by sharing McCarthy's habit for labeling what you don't like with unpopular political words, regardless of the partisan polarity.
You backed up your assertion that Comcast should have been fined with a rant about fairness, competition, and a dimwitted attempt to blame Republicans for your woes. Opinions are no substitute for facts. Although I have no doubt you can balance your checkbook and make reasonable purchasing decisions, you seem to be completely ignorant of some pretty basic Economic principles.
Your business will have better luck attracting investors and acquiring financing if you take just a few hours to learn a little bit about how markets work. There is a lot more to it than the brainwashed, watered down garbage thrown around in the news. Or just pick up a copy of the WSJ, ignore the editorial section, and give it a good read. Pulling your politics into your business is just bad business.
So, you are saying you have evidence of a price-fixing agreement between major telcos that has gone unpunished? Me and the SEC would love to see it.
I am not being ideological at all -- purely pragmatic. Never mind we are talking about high speed home internet, a luxury, this is a pure case where people get what they pay for: Use more means paying more, if the consumer doesn't want to pay more, they can have their access restricted. What the hell is wrong with that? Your stance is piss-poor from the economic point of view and ignores historical evidence to the contrary. Who is the ideologue here?
As the owner of a small telco, I can imagine that government regulation forcing the market to artificially lower your barrier to entry would be good for you, but try to keep in mind that good for you is not the same as fair. Think Pampers vs. Huggies -- I know diapers are not home telecommunications, but it is a classic example of how unregulated commodities benefit the consumer. If you are looking for small business success, you would probably be better served by a more capitalistic attitude than waiting around for a government regulation to propel you into the market.
And stop using the words "Bush," "Republican," and "crony" as if it were a bodily function. You sound like McCarthy.
[Tip: Fining Comcast would have no impact on competition and would, if anything, be passed on to the consumer.]
Well, what you said was that the telecommunications industry is a cartel in the US -- which is patently false -- and implied that you would prefer to have seen the FCC levy fines against Comcast for throttling the types of traffic that consume a disproportionate volume of its cable IP network.
Frankly, that is just stupid, poorly thought out, and has relatively little to do with catering to corporate interests or negative impact on customers. If Comcast is to realize a normal rate of return on their investment in internet services, they must either throttle all or some (naturally, most would prefer some, ie bittorrent) network traffic or charge for excess bandwidth usage.
The alternative to what Comcast did is what Time Warner Cable is likely to begin doing with its new customers (I belive at some point in 2009), where they will start to charge per MB for traffic in excess of a monthly cap.
This really is a case where the services being provided must be controlled and priced accordingly. Does it really make sense if one grocery store in an area is forced to charge lower prices? That will just result in the other stores going out of business and the quality of the regulated store suffering.
If all telecommunications companies providing home internet service are forced to allow limitless use of their service for a flat fee, again, the consumer will suffer. Think about a gas station that has to charge the same to fill a tank regardless of how much gas is actually pumped.
No one ever has or ever will win with government-enforced price fixing. If what you want to see happen to the telcoms is the alternative to a Republican administration, you are in fact giving the GOP a ringing endorsement.
[Side note: What you are proposing is much closer to a cartel than what we have now.]
Our society materialistic? Oh, you mean like people keeping money mistakenly given to them? I would call it a combination of greed and self-righteousness.
You are comparing theft to turning a blind eye, cherry-picking the most and least extreme examples of each, and making a half witted inference. Good job.
That aside, many people in various professions are legally obligated to report crimes of different natures. Banks have compliance officers, children have doctors, etc.
You should care. In fact, you should be thankful for Windows' success; it is what you owe your Mac's safety to. The more people who switch to Apple computers, the more dangerous they are to use.
The Constitution provides specific provisions that one could view as forms of protections of one's privacy. These do not mean that any time we do not want people or government agencies to know about something we did or possess, we have constitutional protection.
Think of privacy like the notion of the separation of church and state. It is a broad concept we learned in school exists. But many think that because we are told of a separation of church and state, religious concepts must never enter the law or politics. This is patently false. The Constitution only states that Congress can not interfere with the practice of religion, not the other way around.
To interpret open-ended legislation like those two amendments as being guarantees to protection of things as specific as specific wiretaps without warrants half-baked wishful thinking and a perfect example of the after-the-fact justification of personal preference you make reference to. Interpreting the laws with such an extreme level of subjectivity may be an appealing way to affect change, but it is extraordinarily dangerous.
Actually I've been reading idiotic Slashdot comments regarding the Ninth and Tenth Amendments for a few years. No one with a serious education in or knowledge of the law makes those arguments, except someone like Ron Kuby (a true loon).
The Ninth Amendment's interpretations have varied widely from court-to-court. The one thing that remains consistent though is that the Ninth Amendment does not create federally mandated ad-hoc rights. By this, I mean that if a group of people hold the view that bestiality is a right, albeit not one enumerated by the Bill of Rights, does not certify it as a right entitled to judicial protection. The flipside being that lawmakers are not permitted to create any law whatsoever regulating the people, so long as it does not violate a specific right in the Bill of Rights. Subjectivity and perhaps natural rights are to be applied.
The Tenth Amendment on the other hand requires that the Federal government not overstep its bounds as defined in the Constitution. Powers delegated to the states or not expressly stated in the Constitution must be retained by the states.
Neither of these amendments indicate that a privacy label can be slapped on something you want to do and have a government agency not know about.
Now, back to the original point of contention that there is no constitutional right to privacy, that is of course open to debate. In some senses, the Fourth Amendment is a guarantee of privacy of one's home, personal affects, and property. When the constitution declares a specific right to privacy, it does not simultaneously declare any and all possibly tangential rights. A right to own a firearm does not give me the right to own a nuclear bomb. A right protecting ones home from being searched without reason does not forbid warrant-less wiretaps, disclosure of book-borrowing records from libraries, blanket anonymity, or any similar things frequently referred to as Constitutional Rights.
As for my snide remark on the OP being a constructionist, it was a joke. Lighten up.
What side-stepping? As this is Slashdot, blame the GOP seems to be the name of the game. I never criticized FDR for his excesses, which (again) make Bush's look like nothing. Both seem proportionally equal considering the problems faced.
Come on now. The box cutters were used to acquire the large jet airplanes that we were attacked with. Skyscrapers weren't razed with box cutters. Anyway, I get your point, but lousy analogy.
We are protecting our interests pure and simple. This relates to domestic terrorism, foreign terrorism, and of course our energy supply. We are reliant on oil and natural gas. For us not to protect our access to energy, the chaos in this country would be unparalleled.
Whether it is our fault Chavez and many in the Middle East don't like us makes for a nice argument in a political science classroom, it is impractical and a tad suicidal to drive our foreign policy by it. Likewise, it is great to talk about alternative energy sources, but until they can actually replace fossil fuel, such sources are irrelevant. And of course we should all be more conscious of our personal resource consumption, but after years of saving nearly every "disposable" thing given to me by a store or food service establishment (I wonder how many thousands of napkins or gallons of catsup came with my food deliveries in the past year) I somehow doubt it will have a serious impact.
We need oil to survive, we have the means by which to protect our access to oil, and have a responsibility to exercise this ability.
Since Bush took office, there have been no efforts to stifle dissent. The PATRIOT Act has principally been used to ease investigation of traditional crimes. It is like many other tools in law enforcement -- dangerous to society if not used properly. And frankly, there are enough laws that limit my freedom on a daily basis in the name of protecting me from myself, that I am just not too concerned about whether or not Uncle Sam will know if I check-out a book on Communism from a public library.
The point is that you and the bulk of the general population, as laymen, are playing Jr. Intelligence Office/Military Strategist/Hopeful Diplomat. You seem to share the same basic beliefs with the Republican platform that regulating and restricting freedoms is necessary and alright if it protects the country from military threats and instability.
The significant difference between you and a typical Bush-supporting Republican in this scope is that your interpretation of documents and information made public relating to Islamic terrorism lead you to believe it is not a threat worth of limitation of various freedoms.
Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act increased tariffs on agriculture and originated by progressives who were members of the Republican party. Similar initiatives today come from the left side of the aisle. If the current Republican party is somehow responsible for this, I hope you will think of Jim Crow the next time you vote.
As for inflexible bullion standards, I have no idea what you are referring to specifically. Failures to regulate banking and capital markets is hardly something where Republicans are more (or less) responsible for than Democrats.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, you said the middle of a several hundred page document. Either way, I can hold page down until the scroll bar hits the middle far faster than you can move your mouse over, click, drag down, and release. If the document were closer to tens of thousands of pages, you may win out using your mouse, but that is a bit of an edge case.
Actually it is. For those of us who know what we are doing, we are better served with a keyboard.
That's some big talk about reading comprehension. I will try to soak it in, but I am afraid I replied to a post that said, "Try timing yourself on some web browsing/text editing/file managing tasks." It's not surprising you find keyboard shortcuts too confusing. If you are arguing about the average person, then the mistake is mine. I generally assume people on Slashdot are above average in most categories, but if your IQ is hovering right around that 100 mark, I have little doubt that you will be faster using a mouse.
The point I was making in response to #26540019 is that there are many of us in technology, who used computers for a long time before the mouse was ubiquitous, that find the keyboard to be far more efficient in terms of speed and accuracy. It would be unfortunate if keyboard shortcuts were phased out in order to ease the learning curve for people like you. It's bad enough that web sites are becoming less keyboard friendly (Flash, onmousedown/up events, forms that submit with JavaScript, etc.)
[BTW, I tried harder with my HTML skillz on this post. I hope it lives up to your standards.]
I can't remember the last time I had to jump to specific page w/o knowing how many pages were in a document. I am guessing it was circa WordStar era.
I can jump around a page using up/dn, pg up/dn, home, end, and text searches faster than anyone I've ever seen (bearing in mind I've worked in software for 12 years) do it with a mouse. I doubt you are any exception to that.
I also know what application I want just about 999 out of 1000 times. The rare exception happened recently where I was trying to use Poseidon for UML on a Mac, which installs into ~/Applications/Poseidon For UML CE 6.0.2/bin/poseidonMac.sh.command. But even in the UML designer, I still found myself using keyboard shortcuts for over half of what I did.
Anyway, don't get confused. Just because I am faster with a keyboard than a mouse doesn't mean I am slow with a mouse compared to others, including you. I am not even arguing with you; I'm sure you are faster with your mouse than hunt and peck.
Those are all arguably faster with gestures.
Ctrl+w versus mouse click while moving down, then right. Not sure who can possibly do that faster and with more accuracy than the most novice computer user.
With most browsers, I'd say this is true. With Opera's Speed Dial, it becomes a matter of whether you've memorized the name of the site (or bookmark). Just open a new tab, and you see a (fairly large) picture of each of your bookmarked sites. Click on the one you want to visit (or Ctrl+Number). This method makes both the keyboard and the mouse faster (and near-equivalent, IMO) by removing the dependence on the user's memory for speed.
Only if you've memorized the name of the command. What you're really saying here is that searching for a program is slower than already having it memorized. I guarantee you that clicking on a desktop shortcut (and you have your dekstop set for single-click mode, right?) is faster than executing the key combo, then typing a word, then hitting enter.
Cut,copy,paste is a process, not just a key combo. I've found that the process usually works best when you use both the keyboard and the mouse. The mouse is better for selecting large blocks of text and getting the cursor to the general area where you want it. The keyboard is better for precision movements.
Let's have a race. We each have an identical several-hundred-page document. You use the page keys, I'll click on the scroll bar. First to the middle wins. Also, your mention of the scroll wheel belies your inexpertise with the mouse. The correct tool is the "middle-click drag" auto-scroll feature.
The advantage of the keyboard over the mouse is its parallel nature. Alt-tab is an inherently serial process, so it eliminates the advantage completely. (If you happen to know that the window you want is the previously-active window, then sure, alt-tab is inherently faster. But that's an incredibly special-case scenario.)
That method is incredibly limited. You can't click on buttons or images. You lose context as you type since the screen's jumping around thanks to search-as-you-type. It fails miserably is the li
Let's see...
Open a new browser tab (winner: keybd)
Close a browser tab (winner: keybd)
Go to a history/bookmarked URL (winner: keybd)
Navigate forward/back in the history (winner: keybd)
Click a link (Tie. I generally hit / and start typing the link text, hit escape, then enter to visit the link. Sometimes moving the mouse over the link is faster.)
Run an application (winner: keybd)
Cut/copy/paste/save/print/quit/etc (winner: keybd)
Scrolling via arrow, pgup/dn, home/end vs. wheel (winner: keybd)
Switching between applications/windows (winner: keybd)
Change a font (I will give this one to mouse)
Sorry, but between tab to move between elements (a must have for any application I use) and standard keyboard shortcuts (control/alt/command/shift modifiers), I have zero desire to use a mouse and rarely do. I don't get how taking tme to move one's hand over to the mouse, moving the cursor over a button and clicking could possibly take less time than two simple key presses (my fingers remember where ctrl and w are, but my hand does not remember how to navigate over the little "x" on the tab).
While mouse gestures are certainly nice, they are, in my experience, far more prone to inaccuracy compared to a key presses. Mistakenly closing a browser tab happens far more often with gestures than the keyboard.
The only time I find myself consistently using a mouse is in OS X Finder, which just doesn't play well with the keyboard. In such situations where the mouse is generally faster, I will usually opt for a keyboard solution (eg, using mv, cp, mkdir, etc from a shell).
Much of this may have to do with my late switch to Windows from DOS and work generally keeping me in a terminal window, but I still maintain I can use a keyboard faster for most common tasks than anyone with a mouse.
He is not delusional. He is just an ignorant ideologue, who has probably contributed less to OSS than MS, and is shameless enough to submit his own story to slashdot.
I think his point is that the DOJ has always been quite partisan. Gonzales just sounds like a bit of a halfwit.
Wow, you even seem unbalanced for Slashdot. Anger and ignorance are a dangerous combination.
A little homophobic, huh? Cute play on words though. I don't mind in the least if you call me a Republican, but I do think you are embarrassing yourself by sharing McCarthy's habit for labeling what you don't like with unpopular political words, regardless of the partisan polarity.
You backed up your assertion that Comcast should have been fined with a rant about fairness, competition, and a dimwitted attempt to blame Republicans for your woes. Opinions are no substitute for facts. Although I have no doubt you can balance your checkbook and make reasonable purchasing decisions, you seem to be completely ignorant of some pretty basic Economic principles.
Your business will have better luck attracting investors and acquiring financing if you take just a few hours to learn a little bit about how markets work. There is a lot more to it than the brainwashed, watered down garbage thrown around in the news. Or just pick up a copy of the WSJ, ignore the editorial section, and give it a good read. Pulling your politics into your business is just bad business.
Best of luck with your telco though.
So, you are saying you have evidence of a price-fixing agreement between major telcos that has gone unpunished? Me and the SEC would love to see it.
I am not being ideological at all -- purely pragmatic. Never mind we are talking about high speed home internet, a luxury, this is a pure case where people get what they pay for: Use more means paying more, if the consumer doesn't want to pay more, they can have their access restricted. What the hell is wrong with that? Your stance is piss-poor from the economic point of view and ignores historical evidence to the contrary. Who is the ideologue here?
As the owner of a small telco, I can imagine that government regulation forcing the market to artificially lower your barrier to entry would be good for you, but try to keep in mind that good for you is not the same as fair. Think Pampers vs. Huggies -- I know diapers are not home telecommunications, but it is a classic example of how unregulated commodities benefit the consumer. If you are looking for small business success, you would probably be better served by a more capitalistic attitude than waiting around for a government regulation to propel you into the market.
And stop using the words "Bush," "Republican," and "crony" as if it were a bodily function. You sound like McCarthy.
[Tip: Fining Comcast would have no impact on competition and would, if anything, be passed on to the consumer.]
Well, what you said was that the telecommunications industry is a cartel in the US -- which is patently false -- and implied that you would prefer to have seen the FCC levy fines against Comcast for throttling the types of traffic that consume a disproportionate volume of its cable IP network.
Frankly, that is just stupid, poorly thought out, and has relatively little to do with catering to corporate interests or negative impact on customers. If Comcast is to realize a normal rate of return on their investment in internet services, they must either throttle all or some (naturally, most would prefer some, ie bittorrent) network traffic or charge for excess bandwidth usage.
The alternative to what Comcast did is what Time Warner Cable is likely to begin doing with its new customers (I belive at some point in 2009), where they will start to charge per MB for traffic in excess of a monthly cap.
This really is a case where the services being provided must be controlled and priced accordingly. Does it really make sense if one grocery store in an area is forced to charge lower prices? That will just result in the other stores going out of business and the quality of the regulated store suffering.
If all telecommunications companies providing home internet service are forced to allow limitless use of their service for a flat fee, again, the consumer will suffer. Think about a gas station that has to charge the same to fill a tank regardless of how much gas is actually pumped.
No one ever has or ever will win with government-enforced price fixing. If what you want to see happen to the telcoms is the alternative to a Republican administration, you are in fact giving the GOP a ringing endorsement.
[Side note: What you are proposing is much closer to a cartel than what we have now.]
So you are saying you would prefer President Bush's administration regulated these privately owned networks?
If you're planning on running a Linux OS on your machine, don't use Foxconn. If they don't want customers, that's their business.
Yes, their business is that they do not want customers. Wow, what insight!
But, just maybe their business is as an OEM for vendors that exclusively sell computers with Windows preinstalled.
No, that couldn't be. Their business is they don't want customers!
Our society materialistic? Oh, you mean like people keeping money mistakenly given to them? I would call it a combination of greed and self-righteousness.
You are comparing theft to turning a blind eye, cherry-picking the most and least extreme examples of each, and making a half witted inference. Good job.
That aside, many people in various professions are legally obligated to report crimes of different natures. Banks have compliance officers, children have doctors, etc.
So it's Microsoft's fault for being popular?
Fair enough. It isn't a direct correlation. But once that scale tips, it would be.
You should care. In fact, you should be thankful for Windows' success; it is what you owe your Mac's safety to. The more people who switch to Apple computers, the more dangerous they are to use.
The Constitution provides specific provisions that one could view as forms of protections of one's privacy. These do not mean that any time we do not want people or government agencies to know about something we did or possess, we have constitutional protection.
Think of privacy like the notion of the separation of church and state. It is a broad concept we learned in school exists. But many think that because we are told of a separation of church and state, religious concepts must never enter the law or politics. This is patently false. The Constitution only states that Congress can not interfere with the practice of religion, not the other way around.
To interpret open-ended legislation like those two amendments as being guarantees to protection of things as specific as specific wiretaps without warrants half-baked wishful thinking and a perfect example of the after-the-fact justification of personal preference you make reference to. Interpreting the laws with such an extreme level of subjectivity may be an appealing way to affect change, but it is extraordinarily dangerous.
Actually I've been reading idiotic Slashdot comments regarding the Ninth and Tenth Amendments for a few years. No one with a serious education in or knowledge of the law makes those arguments, except someone like Ron Kuby (a true loon).
The Ninth Amendment's interpretations have varied widely from court-to-court. The one thing that remains consistent though is that the Ninth Amendment does not create federally mandated ad-hoc rights. By this, I mean that if a group of people hold the view that bestiality is a right, albeit not one enumerated by the Bill of Rights, does not certify it as a right entitled to judicial protection. The flipside being that lawmakers are not permitted to create any law whatsoever regulating the people, so long as it does not violate a specific right in the Bill of Rights. Subjectivity and perhaps natural rights are to be applied.
The Tenth Amendment on the other hand requires that the Federal government not overstep its bounds as defined in the Constitution. Powers delegated to the states or not expressly stated in the Constitution must be retained by the states.
Neither of these amendments indicate that a privacy label can be slapped on something you want to do and have a government agency not know about.
Now, back to the original point of contention that there is no constitutional right to privacy, that is of course open to debate. In some senses, the Fourth Amendment is a guarantee of privacy of one's home, personal affects, and property. When the constitution declares a specific right to privacy, it does not simultaneously declare any and all possibly tangential rights. A right to own a firearm does not give me the right to own a nuclear bomb. A right protecting ones home from being searched without reason does not forbid warrant-less wiretaps, disclosure of book-borrowing records from libraries, blanket anonymity, or any similar things frequently referred to as Constitutional Rights.
As for my snide remark on the OP being a constructionist, it was a joke. Lighten up.
What side-stepping? As this is Slashdot, blame the GOP seems to be the name of the game. I never criticized FDR for his excesses, which (again) make Bush's look like nothing. Both seem proportionally equal considering the problems faced.
Come on now. The box cutters were used to acquire the large jet airplanes that we were attacked with. Skyscrapers weren't razed with box cutters. Anyway, I get your point, but lousy analogy.
We are protecting our interests pure and simple. This relates to domestic terrorism, foreign terrorism, and of course our energy supply. We are reliant on oil and natural gas. For us not to protect our access to energy, the chaos in this country would be unparalleled.
Whether it is our fault Chavez and many in the Middle East don't like us makes for a nice argument in a political science classroom, it is impractical and a tad suicidal to drive our foreign policy by it. Likewise, it is great to talk about alternative energy sources, but until they can actually replace fossil fuel, such sources are irrelevant. And of course we should all be more conscious of our personal resource consumption, but after years of saving nearly every "disposable" thing given to me by a store or food service establishment (I wonder how many thousands of napkins or gallons of catsup came with my food deliveries in the past year) I somehow doubt it will have a serious impact.
We need oil to survive, we have the means by which to protect our access to oil, and have a responsibility to exercise this ability.
Since Bush took office, there have been no efforts to stifle dissent. The PATRIOT Act has principally been used to ease investigation of traditional crimes. It is like many other tools in law enforcement -- dangerous to society if not used properly. And frankly, there are enough laws that limit my freedom on a daily basis in the name of protecting me from myself, that I am just not too concerned about whether or not Uncle Sam will know if I check-out a book on Communism from a public library.
The point is that you and the bulk of the general population, as laymen, are playing Jr. Intelligence Office/Military Strategist/Hopeful Diplomat. You seem to share the same basic beliefs with the Republican platform that regulating and restricting freedoms is necessary and alright if it protects the country from military threats and instability.
The significant difference between you and a typical Bush-supporting Republican in this scope is that your interpretation of documents and information made public relating to Islamic terrorism lead you to believe it is not a threat worth of limitation of various freedoms.
Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act increased tariffs on agriculture and originated by progressives who were members of the Republican party. Similar initiatives today come from the left side of the aisle. If the current Republican party is somehow responsible for this, I hope you will think of Jim Crow the next time you vote.
As for inflexible bullion standards, I have no idea what you are referring to specifically. Failures to regulate banking and capital markets is hardly something where Republicans are more (or less) responsible for than Democrats.
So your problem is not with what's being done, but the reason that is given for it being done?
And what were those mercantilist policies that destroyed private industry?
(here, I'll save you some time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_G._Harding, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_Coolidge, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Hoover)
Glad to see such a constructionist on Slashdot.