Are we now faced with a variation of the old shoe carnival? Consistent inconsistency yet again? "Well, I was just at ORD this morning and they didn't make me dump my bag." "They aren't doing it right." or "LAX told me laptop and video players only." "We're keeping the bad guys off balance."
Well, if I travel someplace where they make me take everything out, I'll just get about seven bins and dump my bag completely. With all the spaghetti I carry on a normal day, that should shut down the checkpoint for 30 minutes while I carefully pull everything out and then stand on the other side carefully repacking. And I will make sure that I carefully separate every piece of equipment that has a wire or chip in it. I carry several thumb drives, a bunch of chargers, rechargeable batteries, patch cords, iPod, keyless entry, etc. Heck, if it happens enough, I'll toss in an old ZIP drive and a network hub.
If I do that at MCI, I could shut down an airline's boarding area for a while since they usually run only one WTMD per checkpoint.
The only full bag dump I've ever endured was at LHR -- and that guy never found all the pockets in my backpack; FRA only wanted me to pull out my digital camera after x-ray.
In the meantime, only the laptop comes out and my cellphone and earpiece go in that bin with it.