FTFA:

The facial recognition scanners will ensure that ticketed passengers board their correct flight. It will prevent, for example, a passenger who arrives from Miami from trying to use a domestic ticket obtained from someone else in the departure lounge and then flying to Glasgow. Since domestic flights do not have immigration counters, it would be possible with the departure lounge arrangement in those terminals for a passenger from Miami to avoid immigration.

In the similar case of Gary McKinnon - who also has aspergers - his defence argued that extradition would be severely detrimental to his health. Being chucked in one of those super-jails - sharing a room with 12 other convicts - doesn't go too well with the typical inability to adapt to new routines or environments, found in those with the condition. I think he said he'd commit suicide if he had to go.

Absolutely. Now we have a juicy rumor the Higgs Boson truly exists, we can harness it any way we want.

Anyway, be careful ... I like gravity in my morning cereal.

I just use a cheap, generic cuprate-perovskite ceramic superconductor. Great for repetitive, loop-based music. I can listen to the same bit all day with no power.

Bicycle + Busy Road + Noise Cancellation = Short Lifespan :)

That's like saying that if the goal is to reproduce live theatre performances faithfully, then every piece of television equipment fails utterly. I think at some point, reproduction devices branched off into their own medium.

I don't complain about poor stereo-imaging when at a live music event. But then, I don't complain that every time I play a CD, it's a synthetic, predictable performance.

This is a minefield. Rationally, we'd enjoy music purely for the feeling the sounds evoke, without bias from what we know about the process taken to produce the music.

Personally, I think this is impossible. I like to know the story behind the artist, to build a picture in my mind as to the meaning of the music.

The production process matters. Mass-produced objects have lower perceived value than hand-crafted ones (even when this belief is mistaken).

It's like how the sense of taste is very much entwined with other senses: visual (appearance is very important), smell (we all know 'taste' is mostly smell, or is that an urban myth?). Then there is the semantic level: we don't like the "idea" of certain foods: in some countries they eat songbirds and insects, and many westerners are often repelled by this notion.

It's not enough for me to just experience something. I have to know what it "is".

So I say screw it: be biassed.

Right here on my desk I have a pair of Wharfedale Pro Active 8.2s, only £200. Very decent for the price. No need for separate amp as they are active, so I just hook em directly to my soundcard. Soundcard is an Emu 1212M, which has some sweet onboard DSP, including EQ.

However, I'm suspicious that the (apparently) flat response of studio monitor speakers is the best thing for general listening. Some say they prefer to hear the music the way the artist intended, but in my opinion there's nothing wrong with adding a little more salt to a meal to your taste.

Headphones: AKG K271s, closed-back for total isolation. Haven't got the balls to wear them in the office though, where I usually go for the in-ear type.

As for TV and movies, all I have is the built-in speakers in a fairly cheap LCD TV. I really ought to get that sorted, but space is at a premium in my flat.

Falls off chair reaching for tin-foil hat ...

Unless I'm mistaken, you're 'just' describing a standardised social networking protocol. This would decouple the 'presentation' layer (facebook.com, local app) from the plumbing (APIs, storage, discovery, etc).

Almost like the 'web' of the 'web'. 'Web 2.0' if you like ;)