Whistleblower: The government is watching you. The wealthy elite are enslaving you. The politicians are oppressing you. These facts are obvious, and I have proof.
Public: Meh.

I imagined the scanners checking against a central server that holds the flight info, rather than having their own local copy of the data. But maybe that would be impractical for some reason. I can also see privacy nuts getting angry at being identifiable via a bar code (as the logical conclusion to all of this "improving convenience" malarky is for each person to have a single token that identifies them across all airlines).

On second thoughts, a bar code is far too easy to replicate and have someone else pay extra charges to transport your luggage.. so an electronic tag would probably be best - but one that you didn't have to reprogram yourself each time you fly.

The app itself would (or, should) know the exact details of the next flight.

Though I think it would be better just to have a barcode assigned to each customer which is then attached to their luggage - then they don't have to fiddle around with the tag every time they go on a flight. Recording flight data into the tag itself seems to be a completely redundant stage.

Hmm. I was being quite serious though. Most people, especially the ignorant ones you allude to, wouldn't give a shit even if you point out the risks. I used to be quite idealistic too, but I no longer take it upon myself to try to save these people from themselves, unless they are posing a direct risk to my employer.

"he turned himself into the police"

I just changed my view of this trial. No Mighty Morphing Power Ranger could ever be guilty of cold-blooded murder.

You say that as if it's a bad thing. If you are stupid enough to put something highly monetisable into a cloud service without at least encrypting it, you deserve what you get.. otherwise, yeah, who gives a shit?

Anyway, those types of services are for convenient synchronisation and data access - not for backup of essential data (unless you have a machine somewhere that you only activate every so often and synch as a backup).

Why shouldn't he be glad that nobody got hurt in this accident? Where did he say anything about impeding progress?

Besides, it's completely pointless to do things exactly the same and hope all goes well, rather than spending money to find out what caused the problem. Whether the next payload is satellites or humans, it's a complete waste if the whole thing blows up again..

If it was really a "new paradigm", ie the whole OS was built around it, it would actually be fine. The problem is that Metro feels more like a hacked on 3rd party replacement for the Start Menu, than something that works well with the Windows desktop.

Interesting. WDDM is one of those thing I REALLY wish we Linux people took a much closer interest into.

What's new in WDDM 1.3 that prevents forward compatibility, then?

HUMA

Your DNA isn't exactly decided then, because of replication errors/mutations.. I guess the earlier any errors occur, the greater chance that something goes drastically wrong, because then those mutations serve as the template for further replication.

All variance is caused by "malfunction" in the genetic process.

That doesn't say "all sex partners", it says any partners that she's had a baby with. Which is quite an important distinction..

Sounds like you're lucky enough not to have met any hipsters

Why not? We've had DVD, HD-DVD, and blu-ray.. no reason to believe that we won't have more iterations in commonly available optical storage devices.. thought I doubt we'll be using them for anything other than backups.. or should I say I hope we won't be needing them for anything else..