Theoretically, it would mean easier Linux porting. Not so much because they're both Unix-likes, but because OpenGL is supported on both, rather than needing to port from DirectX to OpenGL like is currently needed to port from Windows to Linux.
Basically. IBM, for all their faults, by and large had pretty decent products. A few blemishes on the record in that regard, but for the most part you could rely on IBM kit being good.
But Microsoft... for the most part, they make crap. DOS, which basically got them the dominant position they have by being bundled with the IBM PC and also happily sold to everyone cloning it, they bought from someone else to begin with. Everything else, Windows, Office, etc was crap, and everyone I knew thought so through the whole history of it all. Even DOS, when it got more and more features and became more and more Microsoft's work, became more and more crap. We all just continued to use it because there was basically no other choice if you were using an IBM-compatible. Slightly less so with Word and Office, but Word.doc was the de facto standard, which other office suites weren't always guaranteed to be fully compatible with.
And today... it's basically the same situation. Windows and Office are crap, but people stick to it because they need this software or to work with others on these documents, if they're even aware that it's possible to use something else. The only difference is that there is another option with its own software ecosystem and partial Windows compatibility that's well-known and almost viable.
I have never had a problem with people nicking the packages left on my doorstep. And even if I did, I wouldn't feel any better about giving some complete stranger the ability to enter my home completely unsupervised. What I do get is them just leaving a note for me to collect it from the post office whose opening hours are utterly incompatible with times I can get there, but that's not enough to make me willing to just let the driver into my house unattended either.
Either way, my preferred solution is to get packages delivered to my workplace. There's always someone there to receive deliveries and packages get put aside somewhere secure enough.
Nice theory, and if it works for you I'm happy for you for it. But personally, if I had the willpower to turn the internet off for a day and leave it off, I'd have the willpower to just leave it on and not use it. I expect I'm far form the only one.
The problem though is that a lot of this "less hardware" isn't in a showroom near you, giving you no opportunity to try a laptop's screen or keyboard before committing to a mail order purchase. And there are fewer choices for screen size; System76 for instance has no laptops smaller than 13 inches. And laptops sold with GNU/Linux carry a lack of economies of scale tax that outweighs the Windows tax; they tend to run over $600.
Admittedly, laptops can be a bit of an issue in that way; I was mostly thinking in terms of desktops. Still, not insurmountable, and every laptop I've dealt with semi-recently has been Linux compatible anyway - occasionally requiring firmware blobs for wireless networking, but otherwise just fine.
The drawback being that the old hardware won't be warranted anymore. So if you buy a used laptop specifically for its compatibility with Linux, good luck if the screen hinge or the power jack starts to break.
Again, not a worry with desktops, which is a bit more the use case for needing new software to work with old hardware. Replacing the mobo/CPU and video card but keeping the old sound card and SCSI controller because they still work, kind of thing. And actually less of a problem with laptops than you might think; I recently bought a damn near 20-year-old laptop from eBay (to play DOS games on, rather than for Linux compatibility), and replacement parts are relatively easy to find. Granted, it's not much of an option for those unable or unwilling to open up the machine and swap bits out, but Linux users do tend to be more willing to do this than Windows users.
Maybe. But generally Ctrl-Q and Alt-F4 will both work, rather than only Alt-F4. There's not really any downside to keeping Alt-F4, which in any case is enough of a de facto standard that it works in Linux GUIs. You might make an argument for freeing it up for some other function, but operating systems and other software out there that already have it still will and not everyone will implement the change right away, so you'll wind up with the fun situation where you're not sure whether pressing Alt-F4 will perform OTHER FUNCTION or quit the program, or have to check all the time, or just avoid using it so it might as well not be there for OTHER FUNCTION.
You want another? Why is Alt-F4 still available to shut down programs and log off Windows.
Because keyboard shortcuts are a good thing to have. Sure, I could use the mouse to close a program. I could use the mouse for a lot of the things I use the keyboard for, but it would be much less efficient.
The drawback here is that desktop Linux gets less attention from hardware makers, particularly those who are more possessive about their trade secrets, than Windows.
The argument can be made that it's better to have less hardware that works but what does work doesn't crash the machine, rather than everything working but maybe a quarter of it capable of causing a crash.
Another angle is that a fair bit of hardware out there doesn't have drivers for current versions of Windows, but once drivers get into Linux they stay in Linux. For example, a sound card I have that worked in WinXP but not Win7 still works just fine in Linux.
I dunno, it seems like it'd be a bit difficult if you had the kind of accessibility issues that features like Sticky Keys were designed around. A single button that did the same thing would be a bad idea, but a two button combination would be friendlier to that and still not have all that bad a risk of being accidentally activated.
There are tons and tons of of niche programs that are written to run on older versions of Windows which we don't have the source code for anymore. So I imagine people will be able to find uses for ReactOS well into the future.
Which will be nice, if/when it's actually capable of reliably running anything.
Whatever the financial case for leasing, I don't like the idea of something highly personal that I rely on, such as a mobile phone, being at the mercy of the network. Leasing is not much different from a contract in that regard. If I was actually interested in upgrading frequently, and it was leasing from someone other than the network, then the idea might have some merit.
But I like the simplicity of the device I use being a thing I own outright, and having the option of easily and cheaply dumping my network for a new one if they bugger things up badly enough or screw me over.
When I said "some", I didn't mean "most" or even "a significant number", necessarily. And I sure didn't say the theory had merit. I think the whole business is a crock of shit, but just because it's a crock of shit doesn't mean that there aren't at least a few suckers out there.
Are other people such sheep that they would actually choose a place just because its busy without any other information?
I expect some would make a choice between two otherwise similar restaurants based on the theory that the busier one has the better food. Others might choose the busier one if it's the "right" kind of busy on the basis of it being a fashionable place to be, rather than any value it might have as an actual restaurant. Some might even only be looking for a fashionable place to be seen, and it being a restaurant is entirely incidental.
In either case, it would only be a feasible strategy to rent a crowd for it in a larger city where going to a fashionable place is a serious desire of a lot of people - and even then, the return on investment is doubtful.
Who in their right mind thought these tools would be useful to a consumer?
The same can be said of many consumer devices that wound up being successful. When the iPad first came out, people mocked A) the name, and B) the idea that anyone would want an overgrown iPhone that can't make phone calls. No-one mocks it anymore. In the case of the Echo, being able to give verbal commands to a computer rather than mess about with a keyboard has long been a feature of science fiction that many people wanted in reality. That many people have their doubts about the usefulness, reliability and privacy of such a thing is besides the point; many people don't have such doubts and want the convenience and/or novelty of it.
Are people out there really that dense to think that a device like this isn't sending every waking minute of their lives to some spook at the NSA?
The answer to "are people out there really that dense..." is always "yes".
And sorry, Trump won according to our laws. Like it or not, he did. We are country of the rule of law and if we start applying them to what is popular only, we will be headed for some serious upheaval and unrest.
A) laws are often unjust in some way, and some notable ones in your country are unjust in some deliberate, blatant and discriminatory ways. B) in many cases where the laws are fairly just, they're selectively applied based on among other things how much fame, political power or especially money one has. And you must not be paying much attention, but you're headed for some serious upheaval and unrest as it is. Applying some laws based on what is popular would actually make that less likely to boil over, the way things are currently.
Don't like the situation? Well, voter turnout is still only a fraction of the eligible voters. And if those folks spent the time voting and doing the leg work that the Tea Party Republicans are so good at, maybe they too can make changes.
But it will be slow and tedious.
One of the bigger problems these days is that what is needed is a quick way of dealing with a problem like "the leader is acting like a dipshit and fucking things up" and the only solution (within the system, at least) is something slow and uncertain like "wait a few years and vote them out (and hope that more people aren't swayed by bullshit again)". And that's leaving aside the problems that your electoral system has which almost seem designed to ignore what The People actually want.
Not that things are perfect where I live, of course, but our situation is nowhere near as bad as yours.
On the one hand, his brain-dead bigoted drivel being vomited out so much got old well before he even ran for President. On the other hand, they are useful in that they A) provide a useful insight into his mentality, which helps in countering his shitty actions, and B) often undermines or outright contradicts is administration's efforts to get anything done, which helps a lot in countering his shitty actions.
Which "professional-grade" 3D software are you talking about?
Whatever the original poster is talking about. I don't know and don't especially care which of those are Windows-only and which run under Linux, but he's giving them as an example of Windows software that might continue to not work with ReactOS. The point isn't really 3D software, it's software one might need to use professionally that you'd otherwise need Windows for.
When I first heard about it years ago (15ish?), I thought it was an interesting idea, and it'd be nice to have something that could reliably run Windows software without actually needing to have Windows, but was disappointed that at the time it could only run basically the same handful of things WINE could.
More recently - within the last year or so - I investigated the idea of using it at work to run some of the software we need without having to either continue using Windows XP or pay to upgrade. The runtimes needed for the software wouldn't even install.
There's really no advantage to it over Linux in any kind of practical terms, and some key disadvantages.
With Linux and WINE, you can run a smallish subset of Windows software, and you've also got the rest of the Linux software ecosystem. With ReactOS, you've only got the smallish subset of Windows software. If it had 100% Windows compatibility or even much greater compatibility than WINE, an argument could be made in its favour, but as things stand it's little more than a novelty. And if it was at all plausible for it to achieve either 100% Windows compatibility or close enough to be worth it, it would have done so by now.
If you want a Free operating system, go with Linux and live with the selection of software that works with it. If you really do need professional-grade 3D software or other things that are Windows-only, bite the bullet and use Windows. As nice as it would be to have a useful middle ground, it's not happening.
It didn't seem to occur to him that if he hacked them, it would make the answer to the question of "will he be fired?" a very definite "yes".
Of course, that's if we take his claims at face value; he was clearly looking to get a lot of other stuff, and that's the best excuse he could find. But he's still an idiot for thinking he wouldn't get caught and admitting in an email that he did it.
What this kind of paranoid person doesn't understand is that they can already track you to an incredible degree
In Australia not so much. People disappear all the time just because they don't want to be found. Sometimes (eg. battered wives with a homicidal spouse looking for them for extreme examples (which do happen)) it's not a bad thing.
I am talking in Australia. Certainly people can basically disappear from their social circle or their employer or even their family relatively easily, but dropping off the official radar would take a lot more doing.
... so ultimately all you're doing is arguing against having the convenience.
Isn't that enough to oppose this? How many reasons do I need to tell the government to get out of my personal business? Assuming the government can already track all my monetary transactions that does not mean I am somehow obligated to make it easier for them.
Maybe, maybe not. In my view, the government is less inconvenienced by me not using cards than I am. Feel free to disagree (which I'm sure you will, given the libertarian flavour your post has), but I just don't think it's worth making things significantly more difficult for myself just for the sake of making things slightly more difficult for the government.
You'd be surprised how many paranoid people don't actually understand what it is they're being paranoid about. There are people who, for example, won't enter their credit card number into an electronic system because they're worried someone will steal the details, so instead speak it aloud over the phone in a room full of people.
Here in Australia there was also some kind of single card for some array of services or other (health, maybe?) that the government wanted to introduce, being sold to the public on the basis of it being a convenient way for them to co-ordinate all these services, rather than getting Form A from Department A to submit to Department B so they could get Form C to submit to Department C so they can get Form B so they can go and get what they actually want from Department D. People raised a huge fuss over privacy concerns, and how this card would be used to track people, and all that, and eventually it was scrapped. The people celebrated because they'd defended their privacy. But the various departments talk to each other behind the scenes anyway, and bit by bit legislation to allow the departments to do what they were going to with peoples data passed, leading to the end result where people are tracked anyway but don't have the convenience they could have had.
So the moral of the story is, if you're objecting to some offered convenience because privacy, either think about and object to all the other ways the involved parties could get your info anyway, or just take the convenience on the basis that you might as well have that if your info is going to be passed around anyway.
Who is "they"? The NSA probably has access to my credit card transactions. But my neighbor doesn't, nor does my mother-in-law, nor do the local police.
The local police, if they have any reason to care to, can easily get access to it. There's been things in the news about how most of the time when the police go to someone - particularly ISPs and financial institutions - asking for something, it's just handed over without so much as asking if there's a warrant. There's also been things in the news about cops just accessing whatever records they like, so if your neighbour or mother-in-law happen to know a cop could use a few more dollars or a favour, they could have access too.
But more generally, even without actual access to bank records, plenty of larger businesses and institutions can track other things from which a creepily complete picture of you can be inferred.
The breakdowns that I've encountered, while rare, are generally moderately severe, i.e. not just out for a few minutes, but hours, or overnight.
The breakdowns I've encountered are not by any means rare, though severe issues such as being unavailable for hours at a time are. More times a day than I can be bothered counting, the transaction takes long enough to process that my customers get worried, say there should be enough money in the account, ask if it always takes this long, etc. At least once or twice a day it fails to get through to the bank at all - on a good day. On a bad day, we might get a couple of dozen times where it won't get through to the bank at all. And not even on a "well, their systems must have been down for half an hour" sort of basis; out of say ten consecutive attempted transactions, maybe three at random points work.
Slashdot Mirror
Theoretically, it would mean easier Linux porting. Not so much because they're both Unix-likes, but because OpenGL is supported on both, rather than needing to port from DirectX to OpenGL like is currently needed to port from Windows to Linux.
Basically. IBM, for all their faults, by and large had pretty decent products. A few blemishes on the record in that regard, but for the most part you could rely on IBM kit being good.
But Microsoft... for the most part, they make crap. DOS, which basically got them the dominant position they have by being bundled with the IBM PC and also happily sold to everyone cloning it, they bought from someone else to begin with. Everything else, Windows, Office, etc was crap, and everyone I knew thought so through the whole history of it all. Even DOS, when it got more and more features and became more and more Microsoft's work, became more and more crap. We all just continued to use it because there was basically no other choice if you were using an IBM-compatible. Slightly less so with Word and Office, but Word .doc was the de facto standard, which other office suites weren't always guaranteed to be fully compatible with.
And today... it's basically the same situation. Windows and Office are crap, but people stick to it because they need this software or to work with others on these documents, if they're even aware that it's possible to use something else. The only difference is that there is another option with its own software ecosystem and partial Windows compatibility that's well-known and almost viable.
I have never had a problem with people nicking the packages left on my doorstep. And even if I did, I wouldn't feel any better about giving some complete stranger the ability to enter my home completely unsupervised. What I do get is them just leaving a note for me to collect it from the post office whose opening hours are utterly incompatible with times I can get there, but that's not enough to make me willing to just let the driver into my house unattended either.
Either way, my preferred solution is to get packages delivered to my workplace. There's always someone there to receive deliveries and packages get put aside somewhere secure enough.
Nice theory, and if it works for you I'm happy for you for it. But personally, if I had the willpower to turn the internet off for a day and leave it off, I'd have the willpower to just leave it on and not use it. I expect I'm far form the only one.
The problem though is that a lot of this "less hardware" isn't in a showroom near you, giving you no opportunity to try a laptop's screen or keyboard before committing to a mail order purchase. And there are fewer choices for screen size; System76 for instance has no laptops smaller than 13 inches. And laptops sold with GNU/Linux carry a lack of economies of scale tax that outweighs the Windows tax; they tend to run over $600.
Admittedly, laptops can be a bit of an issue in that way; I was mostly thinking in terms of desktops. Still, not insurmountable, and every laptop I've dealt with semi-recently has been Linux compatible anyway - occasionally requiring firmware blobs for wireless networking, but otherwise just fine.
The drawback being that the old hardware won't be warranted anymore. So if you buy a used laptop specifically for its compatibility with Linux, good luck if the screen hinge or the power jack starts to break.
Again, not a worry with desktops, which is a bit more the use case for needing new software to work with old hardware. Replacing the mobo/CPU and video card but keeping the old sound card and SCSI controller because they still work, kind of thing. And actually less of a problem with laptops than you might think; I recently bought a damn near 20-year-old laptop from eBay (to play DOS games on, rather than for Linux compatibility), and replacement parts are relatively easy to find. Granted, it's not much of an option for those unable or unwilling to open up the machine and swap bits out, but Linux users do tend to be more willing to do this than Windows users.
Maybe. But generally Ctrl-Q and Alt-F4 will both work, rather than only Alt-F4. There's not really any downside to keeping Alt-F4, which in any case is enough of a de facto standard that it works in Linux GUIs. You might make an argument for freeing it up for some other function, but operating systems and other software out there that already have it still will and not everyone will implement the change right away, so you'll wind up with the fun situation where you're not sure whether pressing Alt-F4 will perform OTHER FUNCTION or quit the program, or have to check all the time, or just avoid using it so it might as well not be there for OTHER FUNCTION.
You want another? Why is Alt-F4 still available to shut down programs and log off Windows.
Because keyboard shortcuts are a good thing to have. Sure, I could use the mouse to close a program. I could use the mouse for a lot of the things I use the keyboard for, but it would be much less efficient.
The drawback here is that desktop Linux gets less attention from hardware makers, particularly those who are more possessive about their trade secrets, than Windows.
The argument can be made that it's better to have less hardware that works but what does work doesn't crash the machine, rather than everything working but maybe a quarter of it capable of causing a crash.
Another angle is that a fair bit of hardware out there doesn't have drivers for current versions of Windows, but once drivers get into Linux they stay in Linux. For example, a sound card I have that worked in WinXP but not Win7 still works just fine in Linux.
There's nothing wrong with Ctrl-Alt-Del.
I dunno, it seems like it'd be a bit difficult if you had the kind of accessibility issues that features like Sticky Keys were designed around. A single button that did the same thing would be a bad idea, but a two button combination would be friendlier to that and still not have all that bad a risk of being accidentally activated.
There are tons and tons of of niche programs that are written to run on older versions of Windows which we don't have the source code for anymore. So I imagine people will be able to find uses for ReactOS well into the future.
Which will be nice, if/when it's actually capable of reliably running anything.
Whatever the financial case for leasing, I don't like the idea of something highly personal that I rely on, such as a mobile phone, being at the mercy of the network. Leasing is not much different from a contract in that regard. If I was actually interested in upgrading frequently, and it was leasing from someone other than the network, then the idea might have some merit.
But I like the simplicity of the device I use being a thing I own outright, and having the option of easily and cheaply dumping my network for a new one if they bugger things up badly enough or screw me over.
When I said "some", I didn't mean "most" or even "a significant number", necessarily. And I sure didn't say the theory had merit. I think the whole business is a crock of shit, but just because it's a crock of shit doesn't mean that there aren't at least a few suckers out there.
Are other people such sheep that they would actually choose a place just because its busy without any other information?
I expect some would make a choice between two otherwise similar restaurants based on the theory that the busier one has the better food. Others might choose the busier one if it's the "right" kind of busy on the basis of it being a fashionable place to be, rather than any value it might have as an actual restaurant. Some might even only be looking for a fashionable place to be seen, and it being a restaurant is entirely incidental.
In either case, it would only be a feasible strategy to rent a crowd for it in a larger city where going to a fashionable place is a serious desire of a lot of people - and even then, the return on investment is doubtful.
Always listening device,
Who in their right mind thought these tools would be useful to a consumer?
The same can be said of many consumer devices that wound up being successful. When the iPad first came out, people mocked A) the name, and B) the idea that anyone would want an overgrown iPhone that can't make phone calls. No-one mocks it anymore. In the case of the Echo, being able to give verbal commands to a computer rather than mess about with a keyboard has long been a feature of science fiction that many people wanted in reality. That many people have their doubts about the usefulness, reliability and privacy of such a thing is besides the point; many people don't have such doubts and want the convenience and/or novelty of it.
Are people out there really that dense to think that a device like this isn't sending every waking minute of their lives to some spook at the NSA?
The answer to "are people out there really that dense..." is always "yes".
And sorry, Trump won according to our laws. Like it or not, he did. We are country of the rule of law and if we start applying them to what is popular only, we will be headed for some serious upheaval and unrest.
A) laws are often unjust in some way, and some notable ones in your country are unjust in some deliberate, blatant and discriminatory ways. B) in many cases where the laws are fairly just, they're selectively applied based on among other things how much fame, political power or especially money one has. And you must not be paying much attention, but you're headed for some serious upheaval and unrest as it is. Applying some laws based on what is popular would actually make that less likely to boil over, the way things are currently.
Don't like the situation? Well, voter turnout is still only a fraction of the eligible voters. And if those folks spent the time voting and doing the leg work that the Tea Party Republicans are so good at, maybe they too can make changes.
But it will be slow and tedious.
One of the bigger problems these days is that what is needed is a quick way of dealing with a problem like "the leader is acting like a dipshit and fucking things up" and the only solution (within the system, at least) is something slow and uncertain like "wait a few years and vote them out (and hope that more people aren't swayed by bullshit again)". And that's leaving aside the problems that your electoral system has which almost seem designed to ignore what The People actually want.
Not that things are perfect where I live, of course, but our situation is nowhere near as bad as yours.
On the one hand, his brain-dead bigoted drivel being vomited out so much got old well before he even ran for President. On the other hand, they are useful in that they A) provide a useful insight into his mentality, which helps in countering his shitty actions, and B) often undermines or outright contradicts is administration's efforts to get anything done, which helps a lot in countering his shitty actions.
Which "professional-grade" 3D software are you talking about?
Whatever the original poster is talking about. I don't know and don't especially care which of those are Windows-only and which run under Linux, but he's giving them as an example of Windows software that might continue to not work with ReactOS. The point isn't really 3D software, it's software one might need to use professionally that you'd otherwise need Windows for.
When I first heard about it years ago (15ish?), I thought it was an interesting idea, and it'd be nice to have something that could reliably run Windows software without actually needing to have Windows, but was disappointed that at the time it could only run basically the same handful of things WINE could.
More recently - within the last year or so - I investigated the idea of using it at work to run some of the software we need without having to either continue using Windows XP or pay to upgrade. The runtimes needed for the software wouldn't even install.
There's really no advantage to it over Linux in any kind of practical terms, and some key disadvantages. With Linux and WINE, you can run a smallish subset of Windows software, and you've also got the rest of the Linux software ecosystem. With ReactOS, you've only got the smallish subset of Windows software. If it had 100% Windows compatibility or even much greater compatibility than WINE, an argument could be made in its favour, but as things stand it's little more than a novelty. And if it was at all plausible for it to achieve either 100% Windows compatibility or close enough to be worth it, it would have done so by now.
If you want a Free operating system, go with Linux and live with the selection of software that works with it. If you really do need professional-grade 3D software or other things that are Windows-only, bite the bullet and use Windows. As nice as it would be to have a useful middle ground, it's not happening.
It didn't seem to occur to him that if he hacked them, it would make the answer to the question of "will he be fired?" a very definite "yes".
Of course, that's if we take his claims at face value; he was clearly looking to get a lot of other stuff, and that's the best excuse he could find. But he's still an idiot for thinking he wouldn't get caught and admitting in an email that he did it.
In Australia not so much. People disappear all the time just because they don't want to be found. Sometimes (eg. battered wives with a homicidal spouse looking for them for extreme examples (which do happen)) it's not a bad thing.
I am talking in Australia. Certainly people can basically disappear from their social circle or their employer or even their family relatively easily, but dropping off the official radar would take a lot more doing.
... so ultimately all you're doing is arguing against having the convenience.
Isn't that enough to oppose this? How many reasons do I need to tell the government to get out of my personal business? Assuming the government can already track all my monetary transactions that does not mean I am somehow obligated to make it easier for them.
Maybe, maybe not. In my view, the government is less inconvenienced by me not using cards than I am. Feel free to disagree (which I'm sure you will, given the libertarian flavour your post has), but I just don't think it's worth making things significantly more difficult for myself just for the sake of making things slightly more difficult for the government.
So has Australia, but I'm not sure how the materials the cash is made of is relevant to a cash vs credit/debit card debate.
You'd be surprised how many paranoid people don't actually understand what it is they're being paranoid about. There are people who, for example, won't enter their credit card number into an electronic system because they're worried someone will steal the details, so instead speak it aloud over the phone in a room full of people.
Here in Australia there was also some kind of single card for some array of services or other (health, maybe?) that the government wanted to introduce, being sold to the public on the basis of it being a convenient way for them to co-ordinate all these services, rather than getting Form A from Department A to submit to Department B so they could get Form C to submit to Department C so they can get Form B so they can go and get what they actually want from Department D. People raised a huge fuss over privacy concerns, and how this card would be used to track people, and all that, and eventually it was scrapped. The people celebrated because they'd defended their privacy. But the various departments talk to each other behind the scenes anyway, and bit by bit legislation to allow the departments to do what they were going to with peoples data passed, leading to the end result where people are tracked anyway but don't have the convenience they could have had.
So the moral of the story is, if you're objecting to some offered convenience because privacy, either think about and object to all the other ways the involved parties could get your info anyway, or just take the convenience on the basis that you might as well have that if your info is going to be passed around anyway.
Who is "they"? The NSA probably has access to my credit card transactions. But my neighbor doesn't, nor does my mother-in-law, nor do the local police.
The local police, if they have any reason to care to, can easily get access to it. There's been things in the news about how most of the time when the police go to someone - particularly ISPs and financial institutions - asking for something, it's just handed over without so much as asking if there's a warrant. There's also been things in the news about cops just accessing whatever records they like, so if your neighbour or mother-in-law happen to know a cop could use a few more dollars or a favour, they could have access too.
But more generally, even without actual access to bank records, plenty of larger businesses and institutions can track other things from which a creepily complete picture of you can be inferred.
The breakdowns that I've encountered, while rare, are generally moderately severe, i.e. not just out for a few minutes, but hours, or overnight.
The breakdowns I've encountered are not by any means rare, though severe issues such as being unavailable for hours at a time are. More times a day than I can be bothered counting, the transaction takes long enough to process that my customers get worried, say there should be enough money in the account, ask if it always takes this long, etc. At least once or twice a day it fails to get through to the bank at all - on a good day. On a bad day, we might get a couple of dozen times where it won't get through to the bank at all. And not even on a "well, their systems must have been down for half an hour" sort of basis; out of say ten consecutive attempted transactions, maybe three at random points work.