As much as I would like to have a universal non-proprietary file system this won't fly with users. Both options are read-only which means you can't even remove images from the media after you've copied it to your system.

AFAICS the Win solution that you ref'd is a standalone program, meaning it's not possible to use standard file I/O calls to read from the device. So the pipeline would be:

• start reader
• copy to local system
• remove copied files on the camera (which ones did I copy again?)
• start GIMP, and get to work...

instead of

• start GIMP, load file, and get to work...

I, too, second the Science Museum.

Apart from, Forbidden Planet might be of interest.

This is security through obscurity: you're relying on the algorithm being kept secret.

That being said, I used to do this as well for a while but started to move critical passwords away from it. Now I store them in my iPod instead, which has the drawback that I have no idea how I can recover my passwords when it dies. There are backups but no idea if I can actually get at the data. It would be useful to export them (as text or CSV) and encrypt that with GPG.

This is so sad. He notices your code is faster and he's not the least bit curious? (I presume he's some kind of CS prof.) Anyway, good for you, but still... :-(

Terrorists around the world were heard saying: "Curses, foiled again..."

I'd argue the exact opposite: now that we know for sure that iTunes can be used to these purposes (otherwise apple wouldn't have included it in the EULA, right?) they'll double their efforts to find out how...

And here's your first clue. Diebold is in the business of making ATMs.

Heise security has a story that there's malware around specifically targetting Diebold ATMs running Windows...
http://www.heise.de/security/Windows-Trojaner-auf-Diebold-Bankautomat--/news/meldung/134794 (in German)
http://www.sophos.com/security/blog/2009/03/3577.html (blog entry the article refers to)

Profit, obviously.