The same Slashdotters who are worried about patents in the H.264 standard someday possibly being used to sue someone are now excited when patents around technology core to 3G are being exploited. Hypocrisy.

You got a defective refurb, and should probably take it back.

Doesn't it automatically switch over to wifi when available (i.e., not involving pressing a single button)?

Maybe instead of a vast conspiracy, it's because LiFePO4 batteries have a much lower energy density? They can be charged much faster, but would you carry a 200W power brick to take advantage of it?
Lithium based ultracaps have on the order of 10% of the energy density of Li-Ion batteries. Would you carry a laptop that lasted 30 minutes per charge?

Most people will have their batteries replaced if it every stops holding a charge. Seems like a fair tradeoff to have devices last 30% longer per charge.

If it's not a formal standard issued by a standards body, and it's not a de facto standard, what really makes it a standard? If simply publishing defined a standard, almost anybody could create a standard, and there would be nothing standard about it.

I don't know what it will take to get people straight on this. H.264 is open and is a standard, but patented. WebM isn't a standard, but isn't patented.

It's the "toss up a bunch of towers" that's extremely expensive and impossible in some locales, like San Francisco, where residents will fight tooth and nail over "radiation".

We have prenotification of Flash security holes being exploited in the wild:

http://blogs.adobe.com/psirt/2011/09/prenotification-security-update-for-flash-player.html

Flash is a mess with dubious value. A new version doesn't fix that.

A 406MHz PLB is cheaper and more effective.

As cool as this is, you really don't want one. Specular reflections off other surfaces can blind you instantly. There's no way to actually hand hold it with it powered in any remotely safe manner. If it doesn't terrify you, you don't know what you're dealing with, and if it does, you probably don't want one.

How is something that 10s of millions of people have a status symbol? By definition it can't be.
My dad has an iPad, and it's his only computer and only internet access via 3G for $25/month. Works well for anything he does, and it's cheaper than other alternatives. I have one I use when flying (see www.foreflight.com). The only sort of comparable alternatives are thousands of dollars (e.g., Garmin 696) combined with expensive subscriptions. The GA pilot community is snapping up iPads because of this.
It's convenient to blame the whole world as vain, but it's worth digging deeper before judging them. If you don't, you're not doing just as much of a disservice as the fanboys.

Because anybody who would ever install other OSes on an iPad would also spend the 5 minutes it takes to jailbreak it. 95% of people don't care at all that the iPad is locked, and probably prefer it that way. Another 4% just jailbreak it. The remaining 1% are whining on Slashdot due to ideology, not any practical concerns.
Apple providing tools to do this? That's costs their company money and resources in the form of development, support, etc. Why would they want to do this when the jailbreak community does it for free?

Depends on your definitions of "real web" and "pack light", no? I would argue carrying a laptop is by definition not packing light. Heck, carrying any computing device isn't. For many people, an iPad is sufficient. It's all I carried on my last Europe trip, and I surely didn't miss Flash based websites for the few times I was web browsing at all in Burgundy.
Biggest issue was that O2 in all their wisdom refused to sell me a prepaid 3G data SIM without a French bank account.

What's terrifying is if that mob start attacking poorly secured internet connected infrastructure.

But that's the definition of a jailbreak. Everybody who wants to can do so trivially.