Yes the risk that data stored is wrong (somebody uses phony plates, clerical error, unauthorized access...) seems like a big risk to everybody. Many times have I read stories of police going to the wrong address with things turning out badly. This just seems like another thing to go wrong.

I see a few people walking around with bluetooth headsets. Maybe "invisible" hearing aids are expensive, but another option would be to use(hack) these cellphone headsets, or even use an iphone (there noise cancelling sw built in). People are used to seeing them - just have to convince your mom.

While I would not expect that the drive cables should affect the audio in any way, I have been in hardware development long enough that when a software person makes some strange claim like"the circuit changed and I didn't do anything" that often there is something behind it. In short, these things are complex. Not that the cable should not make any difference. Maybe in his motherboard, the terminations are not good and the EMI in the board is affecting the audio. This cable may be a better match. I am not saying this is the case, but do not write off these things just because they do not make sense. That said, the writer should also try to replicate on several platforms etc etc

I would imagine this kind of software would be too complex and specialized to be effectively reviewed at large. And who would still be responsible if something was wrong? There would be discussions to no end on how to do things. However, some kind of vault (government or 3rd party) to store the source would be good just to prevent intentional or accidental loss of the information should long term statistics show something is not right. If the software is open source, then the whole design may have to be open.

I think a classification and storage system would be more useful than software, but maybe you are talking about a very large number of components. If you want to roll you own, I started a very basic asset tracker using based on PHP. It's maybe slightly more useful than a spreadsheet. You can find it at http://tamb.sf.net/

The article also mentions satellites. There could be burst downloads at that quoted rate, but each terminal (which will not be 60 million) does not get continuous full bandwidth.