>Some people, myself included, say "the data are ...". I think it's daft to refer to a "data item" or "item of data" when you could say "datum".

After two years of Latin in high school, I simply hear "data", "media", "paraphernalia", "regalia" as plural. Now why the singulars of many of these have been nearly exiled from English is beyond me.

>>But nowadays one can't know who's male who's fe... um, what's singular what's plural: "windows HAS detected...",
>
>That's because Windows is A product.

This is America. Anything that's sold is a product.

>>"it's a $19.99 savings".
>
>That's just plain wrong. It's a saving.

Wrong or not, it's getting quite hard to find in singular form.

>>>Worse still, people now refer to "the media" as singular ( "the media is to blame for the ..." or "You've lost data? I think your media {as in "your DISK" FGSakes!} is faulty"). This is when I wish gun laws were far less strict in this country
>>
>>It's probably that the word medium (pl. media) has too many more important meanings - so if it said "I think your medium is faulty" it would be understood as "if you want to talk to ghosts, find someone else, this guy is a con", or "you tried to cheat, but I know you should wear at least L, if not XL - so I screwed your data".
>
>All very well if one's afraid of one's colleagues being facetious (which I'm not saying you are) but in context there's rarely any ambiguity, esp. if one's holding a scratched floppy in one's hand :-)

I know - but couldn't guess a better reason for avoiding the singular in this case.

Are you sure this "media" thing was already in practice back then when we still used floppies?