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I was doing some Availability calculations the other day, comparing two discrete and geographically separate Tier II facilities with one Tier IV.  The business proposition was that the availability of archive/storage if duplicated in two discrete facilities was higher and, as it happens, cheaper.  I was ignoring the management of the data; replication, updates etc.  The numeric result of the MTBF of the two systems in parallel with, literally, no common point of coupling was over 14,000 years and was much higher (about 1000x) than a single Tier IV facility.  Now this number, and the result in general, didn't surprise me but I struggled a bit to get my head around that time-frame.  Was it meaningful to quote 14,000 years or, in human scale, was it equivalent to 'forever'?  I couldn't decide quickly so I chuntered on the problem whilst watching TV (actually falling asleep in front of - but that's just an age thing).  When I awoke I realized that recorded history only goes back 6,000 years or so and we, humans, as a species, have walked around this planet for 30,000 years.  Some people would argue that we are a form of carbon based infection, a virus, and just a passing phase in the thin layer of gas that clings to our lonely sphere.  Anyway I started to get depressed about that until I came across a 'fact' that put our existence on this planet into focus:  We have known about the magnetic poles for a couple of thousand years or so and made our first great strides in our exploration and expansion with the aid of the simple compass - a magnetized needle that swings to point North.  Then, to demonstrate just how transient we may be against the back-drop of the passage of time of the planet itself, I learned that the poles have, in the past, swapped polarity.  Not once, not twice, but 171 times!  How would we feel today if all of a sudden the planet decided to do it again?  My compass would point South... amazing.  And to the 14,000 year MTBF?  'Forever' in human terms, not even a spot on a spec on a blip in the cosmos.