There isn't any good local solution (all of them are buggy or too complicated) but there are plenty of cloud based solution. The Vanilla Dropbox in Android automatically sync photo and videos from phone (you just need to enable the option). Same as SkyDrive (a little buggy). These options are easy to setup and needs no attention from users. If you want to sync some none video/photo folders, you need to buy an app call DropSync Pro ($5), it sync your Android folders just like your Dropbox on PC. The added advantage is you don't need to be at home to sync all these stuffs. I was fixated on using a LAN solution for a long time but finally gave up. The world had moved on and we might as well... Security wise I don't see any particular issues. Most of the cloud storage have no high profile security breach so far. If you have very slow Internet at home it may be an issue, but DropBox is very efficient, it update the files incrementally instead of uploading everything new.

Good analyse, too bad I run out of mod points.

I spent a greater part of my life reading Internet comments, here's what I found...
Hopelessly dumb:
Yahoo News, Newswine, Foxnews, CNN, MSNBC (pretty much any news site), Youtube (depends)
- By reading comments from these sites, you will lose all hope for mankind

Dumb but not hopeless:
Cnet, Endgadget, Verge, Facebook...
- It does not speak well for mankind but we still have hope...

OK:
Wired, Washington Post, Huffington Post

Best quality comments:
Slashdot, New York Time
- There is intelligent human out there!

The easiest thing to do to make studying Human Biases (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases) a mandatory course in high school. It should be mandatory like Geometry or Algebra. All it takes is for someone to convert that Wikipedia article to a one-week course. Well we won't extinct stupidity but the next generation would be much less stupid.

The religious extremists did believe in their religion, so much so that they paid for it with their lives and lives of the others (e.g. suicide-bombers and those 9-11 terrorists). As for the moderates, they had a double reality. For example, there was a drought in Idaho, the farmers went to Church to pray for rain... but at the same time, they also employ the scientific method of seeding the rain. Kind of like Star Trek fans, they knew their fantasy was only fantasy.

That's not entirely true. Einstein spent his later part of his life trying to disproved Quantum Physics, in doing so he inadvertently helped to confirm it. In other words, his disbelieve in Quantum Physics was a great contribution in proving Quantum Physics. "God does not play dice." has often been misquoted. Einstein is not religious (not in the traditional sense). In his private letter to Eric Gutkind, he called the Bible "childish". Publicly, he also published an essay in New York time regarding his religious belief (he was neither Christian nor Judaic). When Einstein said "God does not play dice" he meant the uncertainty principle of Heisenberg. Later by his own experiments, Einstein proved that "God did play dice." Einstein use of the word "God" is as religious as the "God" in "God damn it!", a phrase commonly used by many atheists. You can't blame Einstein in doubting the uncertain principle, any good scientist will be upset. The only people who don't doubt it are those who don't understand it (the majority) or those who completely understand it (minority).

The solution is to consolidate all the data your care under one drive, one folder, so whatever you look for you only have one place to look under, one place to backup.

If you are using Windows, consolidate everything under c:\[some_folder]. Even if you run out of space on C Drive, it does not matter. The trick is to use "MkLink" (windows 7 and Vista only, for XP use linkd.exe from resource kit). It is like "link" in Unix, you can create a symbolic link or hard-link to anywhere else on your system, it can be located in an internal/external hard drive, or even network drives. And later if you move some data from d: to e:, your data will still be located in the same location under c:. You don't have to ever reconfigure any app to point to different folders. They will remain at the same location for the next decade or so.... And also, put the command to setup the symbolic links in one batch file, so you can easily recreate all the links when you setup a new computer.

If you are using unix, then you already know link, so no need to say more.

• The low level folder name should be tied to your backup strategy. For example....
• c:\usr\doc (for all the documents e.g. words, excels, programming files...)
• c:\usr\pic (for all your photos...)
• c:\usr\mov (for all your movies....)

• ...

• And the backup strategy should be divided into...
• CID (Critically Important Data) - Backup daily, create at least 3 copies on 3 different physical media, preferably with one offsite, e.g. the c:\usr\doc in the above example.
• KID (Kind of Important Data) - Backup weekly, create at last 2 copies on 2 different physical media. e.g. c:\usr\pic in the above example
• IDC (I Don't Care) - No need to backup, I may cry if I lose the copy, but I will get over it....

To answer your questions:

For us (i.e. /. people), no, . But for the other 90% of population, it would be a resounding yes. I have seen many non-IT people using computers and I have never seen them doing any task that exceed the capability of an ipad.

For years those 90% have been scammed into buying overpowering computers and thus brought down the average price of computing equipment so people like us would benefit. But that may not happen in the future...

A CALL OF ACTION: we should talk down the tablets so those non-IT people would continue to over buy their computing equipment so we can continue to enjoy the lower price of computers in the future...

For your second question regarding the difference between tablet and smart phone OS... they are pretty much the same other than scaling and positioning issues (smart phone is mostly one hand and tablet is mostly used by two hands...)

I don't think the tea party are nuts, I just think they are normal irrational people like the rest of us... OK... maybe a little be more irrational than the rest of us...

I just returned from my backpacking trip. So here are my tips... If you are using your own laptop, an effective firewall, a patched system, and the use of SSL is all you need. Since you are posting on Slashdot, I assume you are capable of keeping your own laptop clean and secured. In reality the risk of someone stealing your laptop is much higher than the risk of anyone breaking into your laptop, so... 1) Some sort of chains/locks on your backpack is much more important than a VPN. 2) Do not store any password, sensitive documents on your laptop. In case it will be stolen later.. 3) Keep backup of important documents (e.g. scan copy of your travel insurance) in a gmail account... 4) Do not keep all your vacation photos in one laptop, copy it to CD/DVD/cheap USB devices and send it home every few months. 5) Bring a USB drive and backup everything on your harddrive (including your vacation photos), store the USB drive in a different location (e.g. inside your main backpack) If you are really desperate and have to access your bank in an internet cafe, here's what you can do... 1) To make it harder for key loggers to steal your password, scramble your url/password using your mouse. e.g. if your password is ILovePizza, you can type IHatePizza, highlight the word "Hate" with your mouse, click delete and type "Love" instead. It's not 100% secured, but it's better than nothing. 2) As soon as you reach a safe location, change your password.

Some historical facts... 1721 China Invaded Tibet 1848 US Invaded California & New Mexico.... So China occupied Tibet a bit longer than US occupied California, in fact, longer than the whole history of US. (Tibet was kind of independent from 1911 to 1950, but was reinvaded by China again on 1950) Even minus the 40 years of independence, China still occupied Tibet more than the US occupied California & New Mexico... I'm not saying such occupation is a good thing though. And it certainly doesn't mean Tibetans don't have the right to ask for independence. I'm just saying that if you really care about the Tibetans, you may want to read their history and your own history...