Arcniz hit it on the head;
"The connundrum has shifted in a span of decades from figuring out how to make up for missing data to figuring out what portion of a mountain of data to use and which to ignore. Perhaps this is a pivotal factor in the uninterrupted progress of Air Transat incident?"
As someone who has spent 25+ years in the information technology industry, I can attest to the fact that this is precisely where computer technology is falling short, if not burying us. We are confronted with information overload at a growing rate. Email, voicemail, all of the warning beeps from your Ipod, PDA, VCR, DVD, microwave, HDTV, etc. Your PC and the wonderful world of Windows. We wind up staring at the device wondering what the heck it is thinking, and usually powering it off and on to fix it. The trouble is that when you do this in an aircraft, you are wasting precious time. The problem in this incident, IMHO, was either information that was not presented in a purely logical fashion, or there was not enough training (procedures)for the crew to decipher it.
Computer technology in aircraft does not have the luxury of time that its ground-based counterparts have. There can be no confusion factor. Confusion can only be eliminated in extremely accurate design and clear, conscise training. That responsability falls on both the manufacturer and the airlines.