I don't think high speed rail and stealth fighters are in the same category....sure, both take some serious tech, but one requires fly-by-wire, and the other doesn't need any way to maneuver. Yes, the materials science aspect of both requires some impressive technology. But there's a ton more to stealth planes than just the materials.

I've got a sweet credit union in the midwest. Apparently you don't live in the same place as another poster here who told me nobody in the US uses checks and all transfers are free....it was news to me also.

So, what country do you live in?

I've lived in rural areas on the East Coast and a city in the Midwest, and what I said was true in both places.

I'm fairly impressed with the "Magic Mouse" - in the things I use daily, I often need a side-to-side scroll. It's pretty darn slick for stuff like that.

Of course it did! It's a major infrastructure change! It's not like we were "upgrading the internet" to make it run faster. The entire issue was that our current addressing infrastructure was inadequate. It's like saying, "this road doesn't go to the housing development that they're building up the road - we should make it longer", then complaining that the existing drivers didn't see any benefit. Everyone on the internet right now is fine - it's everyone who's not that this will benefit. So of course it's work without benefit for those of us here now!

You apparently don't know the difference between "some" and "all"...

I don't ever look at my mouse, unless it's hung up on something or otherwise not working. I'm not even sure how I'd break 20 years of training on that front, much let alone why I would want to.

Apple has made some nice mice - this just seems ridiculous.

You seem to think that here in the US we have capitalism. Unfortunately, we don't. The US lacks the political will to ensure that there is true competition in most areas. We give out quasi-monopolies to corporations, and our politicians are well rewarded for keeping those in place.

I'm in a decent sized city, and I have 2 options for broadband internet access - both pretty much the same price. I get decent cellular reception on 3 networks, all pretty much the same price. While my bank doesn't charge an ATM fee, any other bank who's ATM I use does. If I bank at one place that's head and shoulders above the others in the area, how do the others stay in business? Different government agencies use them, thus circling it all back to politics.

The issue is that we're pretty much run by corporations now. All political decisions are weighed on whether or not they will hurt a corporate bottom line somewhere. That affects everything, including banking.

While a percentage of us vote against the politicians that continue this madness, the vast majority are swayed by the hundreds of millions/billions of dollars the corporations pour into elections to keep them as profitable as possible. Why are corporations able to pour millions to billions of dollars into elections? Damn good question. The issue is that it will take people voting in politicians who want to fix that, and that's not likely. Due to the billions corporations will pour into elections to prevent those people from getting elected.

Bank transfers for consumers in the US will generally run in the region of $2 or 2%, whichever is more. Not sure about companies.

In the US, the 30-40 and under crowd does a lot of electronic banking. The 40+ crowd still relies on che(ck/que)s and cash. And by that I mean for both pay and to purchase things like groceries and gasoline.

The last place I worked for, probably 50% or more of the employees got a piece of paper every 2 weeks that they'd take to the bank and have turned into numbers in their account and bills in their hands. The other 50% of us took our direct deposit, got it a day earlier, and didn't spend every other friday waiting in line at the bank.

The US banking system for consumers is probably a solid 10 years behind the EU's system. It's pretty shocking. We don't have a good way to transfer money to each other - going to an ATM and getting cash, or paper cheque are the only real options.

I've got one of the better banks in the US to do business with, (large credit union) and it takes me about 8 clicks and 5 days to transfer money from my bank account to another bank. And $2 or 2%.

I stopped even thinking about my wallpaper about 6 years ago when I realized that I never saw it, because I always have multiple things opened full screen. For the same reason I quickly found out that KDE 4 desktop widgets were worthless for me.

Hell, on login I have Thunderbird and a couple of folders open up. I don't even see my desktop then. I'm guessing I'm closer to a majority with this than a minority. Still, glad to hear you're rediscovering your past.

Well, since you have local copies on all your computers, I'm not sure how "vulnerable to business failure" it really is. At the worst, you just don't have the service. You still have all your files.

But in another couple of years, how much will you remember what you lost? How much will you miss it?

I posted up above about a recent article about us becoming digital pack-rats. Personally, I haven't looked at anything I created 4 years ago in about...4 years. Stuff I created a decade ago? Probably 8 years ago was the last time I looked at any of it.

While I have mirrored TB drives now, and a static backup from about 4 months ago in a crate, the really essential stuff that I have backed up off-site is pretty minimal. Because very little of my data is really essential.

Compared to what? Film? Or not taking pictures at all?

Really, for that much data, you really want to mirror a couple of TB drives, and then share with your neighbor/friend/family member far away/ like you're doing. On a similar setup.

I think the original question really boils down to, "In this day and age of hundreds of GB of personal data, how do you store it and back it up?"

I read a nice article some time ago about us becoming too attached to our data. That we were really keeping too much, and that we should gracefully let it die. Because really, when we pass away, who's going to want to dig through 1100 pictures of Mexico that we took? Nobody. They'll want the two pictures of us on our honeymoon. The picture a year that shows some kid growing up. They're not going to want to read every email we ever received - they want to see the dozen of when we fell in love.

Personally, I've got a pair of mirrored TB drives, and a chock-full 250gb drive in a box in the other room that has a copy of everything essential from about 3 months ago. My home and work computer each have copies of important work stuff, roughly up to date. If my house burns down? I'm going to lose a ton of shit, including a lot of data. But you know what? I probably don't need 99% of it. I don't need all the music and movies, D&D campaigns, papers I wrote in college, etc. When I set up these TB drives, I made a dir in my home directory that was called "old home dir". I didn't move anything out of it that I didn't need. And you know what? 95% of the stuff in it is still there after 4 months. When I did that a couple years ago, the percentage was about the same.

When it comes right down to it, our electronic data is going to be pretty much the same as our physical data from a century ago. Water leaks, mold, and sunlight destroyed most of our photos and documents. Failed HDs will destroy most of them now. But the world will go on.

Getting back onto topic, look into DropBox. Distributed copies on multiple computers, drag and drop interface, history and version control. Damn handy.