This attacker screwed up and got tackled before the detonator was able to set off the PETN - the next one will likely be smart enough to set off a bomb in the bathroom.
I actually am very interested in hearing what alternative approaches there are out there.
But maybe that's ok. Maybe preserving our privacy and avoiding making us all feel like criminals while we're traveling is worth a successful attack every now and then.
Yes, I know: easy for me to say, not having been on that plane, and never having lost anyone to terrorism. But I'd argue that the people who have been victims of terrorism (directly or indirectly) are way too close to the situation to be able to make a decision like that for the rest of us.
What is so magical about planes that make them such huge terrorist targets? How many passengers are on your average commercial flight? 200? 300? Hell, you could kill that many people just by setting off a bomb in the pre-security section of a decent-sized airport on a moderately-busy day -- and it would be comparatively trivial to accomplish.
As others have pointed out, the mm-wave scans amount to strip searches. A full pat-down just has too many associations with a criminal arrest. Eliminating carry-on luggage is probably more under the "inconvenience" category, but it is, as you somewhat note, an inconvenience that would be a significant problem for a lot of people.
Bomb sniffers -- especially if they're machines that are used passively -- sound like a good idea. Better scanning equipment that doesn't violate my privacy, but is able to do an adequate scan of both me and my belongings, without the need to take off my shoes or remove things (laptop, bag of liquids, etc.) from my luggage, or to limit the quantity of liquids I can carry... we need all these things.
With the amount of money supposedly being thrown at "making us safer" on airplanes, why have these scanners not been invented and mass-produced yet? It's been over 8 years since 9/11, and, technology-wise, we just have a few poorly-deployed pieces of technology (the air-puffer things, whatever they do, and the mm-wave scanners that have been a PR nightmare) and no actual universally-deployed solutions. I've been seeing signs at airports for a while now claiming that they're "working on" a solution that will let us keep our shoes on... but this solution hasn't materialized. Gimme a break...