"It's not a matter of having to run new lines out to the boonies - if they take credit cards, they can likely accept NFC payments."

Wrong.

Like most small businesses, ours takes credit cards, and the reader is connected to the dialup fax line. Swipe the card, enter a number and... wait until it dials, Beep Boop Beez Buzzzzz it sounds like a 14,400 modem in there. Takes about 30 seconds, assuming that the fax line isn't busy. Not a problem when you only swipe a few dozen a day, but the whole point of the shiny flashy phone is that you tap and go. We're not going to invest in the infrastructure to save our clients 30 seconds once a week.

From TFA "This work was supported by the Dairy Research Institute, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and the Egg Nutrition Center."

A study finding that saturated fat is not bad for you is what they paid him for.

Next up: CO2 is not causing AGW, funded by Exxon Mobil.

It's not shenanigans! CSI does this all the time.

It's a shame Whitehead had to wait a century or more for CSI to develop the digital photo interpretation techniques to prove this. With wet plates and darkroom chemicals the magnify-enhance-magnify-enhance-zoom-enhance would have taken days if not weeks.

I would prefer a cranky toddler in the seat next to me than an obese businessman. I'll even read to him to quiet him down. Works every time. Sam I Am, Oh Sam I Am......

"Pilots can use them, passengers can't?" Here's why. I spent my career in aerospace, the final two years on experiments involving these Electronic Flight Bags (In my case, ruggedized PCs, not iPads.) There has been hundreds of hours of testing, both in labs and aircraft to show that a particular model of iPad will not cause electronic interference to the controls or other safety critical systems... for that particular iPad model only. The pilot can't just go buy the next gen fondle slab and carry it aboard. Only the model and rev that has been approved. New hardware would require the testing process to begin all over again.

So, maybe if the avionics supplier who bought them from Apple and spent a lot of money going through the approval process would allow you access to their proprietary certification data, you could make a case to the FAA to allow you to use --that exact iPad-- during takeoff and landing. Good luck.

I like it!

Semiconductors do degrade over time. They're made of pure silicon (an insulator) which has been precisely contaminated in specific places with very small quantities of dopants (e. g. boron, phosphorous) giving one side of the junction an excess of electrons and the other side a scarcity. Over time, the dopants diffuse across the junction, changing the characteristics of the transistor by leveling out the excess/scarcity gradient. A 25 year old transistor will no longer meet it's specs. A diode will have greatly increased reverse leakage. AND gates turn into MAYBE gates.

Some capacitors will degrade quickly, some will last much longer. Ceramic capacitors will last a century, electrolytics at most 20 years. The electrolyte dries out.

By "behaves similarly to 'real meat' " do you mean it stands around and goes "moooo" or "oink"? because I don't think that's what they're planning.

Will require a robot that can fall asleep.

This design flaw was baked in before they wrote the first line of code. Before throttle-by-wire, the brake pedal had two independent kill mechanisms: an electrical switch to open the solenoid circuit, and a vacuum valve to dump the vacuum to the throttle servo. Either was sufficient to defeat the cruise control. Now it's all single thread. I don't want to go back to coil and points, but some control systems should have multiple override.

Disappear! entirely! from! all! human! memory!

(Score:6, Spit-coffee-all-over-the-monitor-Funny)

Never ask anyone if they're from Texas. If they are, they'll tell you. And if they aren't, there's no need to embarrass them by asking.

We're gonna' need that more and more!