Separately they may not be more likely, but I'm sure if an undead, alien bear was terrorizing you, they would be more likely to kill you than a drunk driver.

Missing:
  - keyboard
  - mouse
  - network cable
  - monitor?
  - USB key to install from
  - Friend to copy OS onto your USB key
  - taxes (for those lucky to have them)

I think the real cheat is any budget that involves a mail-in rebate.
The article starts out about financial difficulties and then provides a price that doesn't reflect the walk home price. 3-6 weeks you might make that money back IF you are lucky that the rebate was honored.

Look at your post, now look at mine, now look back at yours and wonder what's wrong with it, and then look at mine to find out:
- cameras - why does the iPad need "cameras" (plural)? Do you want to be "that" guy holding something the size of a book up to take a picture?
- IR emission - I'm guessing you want to replace your remote control with the iPad for some reason. I guess you've never owned a Palm Pilot or a Windows CE device with their IR emitters that were next to useless. If you really wanted to replace your remote, you need both a transmitter and receiver to capture IR codes that aren't supported
- Bezel wastage - go complain about that on every other device you own that has a screen - your TV, your laptop, your cellphones, your alarm clock. If you cut that bezel off, try using your iPad without blocking the screen.
- AT&T - I'm sorry you live in the US of A - us other Americans don't have this problem. There's also the option of not getting the 3G model.
- 720p - the iPad is 768p. 720p 768p in terms of vertical lines.
- CF - really? You really want to support that? I'm sorry you bought an SLR from 4 years ago - a form factor that is nearly fully dead. Nonetheless, a slot that size in a device that small is asking for gunk to end up in it.
- USB - there's a simplicity in not having this: it prevents people from asking how come device X doesn't work. It's a bus where almost anything can be attached. It draws power. You'll notice that Apple sells the cable connector add-ons with a USB port as a "camera connection kit". It's to weed out the guy who attaches his USB powered nerf gun.
- 512 mb of memory - Each iPad you have has only 256MB of system memory. You did say you had 2 iPad's so maybe you meant together :)
- multitasking - Your comparison to Windows 3.1 begs me to believe you don't understand how multitasking works on iOS 4.x. Feel free to Google.com it to understand more. Comparing to the iPad specs, back when Windows 95 launched, the fastest processor was a Pentium running at 233MHz and having 64MB of RAM would have been amazing. If applications for desktops were written with more care, you wouldn't have to keep buying a faster CPU and more memory every 2 years to run the same family of applications.

Anyhow, I'm on a horse ...

I was aware of the period "feature" but not of the plus sign feature. Unfortunately for me, both scenarios are not applicable for my situation. In this case, the other guys e-mail address has the letters "vvd" attached to the end of mine.

On my gmail account, I get e-mail sent to another gmail account that is similar to my account name but 3 letters longer. Whenever I send mail to that account, it goes directly to me. The e-mail header information says it went to that account so I'm assuming (possibly incorrectly) that it isn't a simple forward rule. The real problem is that I can't e-mail the owner of the other account to get him to look into it because he doesn't get it or doesn't read it, and google definitely has NO place for me to reach out to them securely to ask them to look into this issue.

I wonder what percentage of gmail mail is being sent to the wrong accounts.

I work in an environment with 30 developers, 400K SLOC and 2 global sites specifically for one component (in a family of 12). Our review process is pre-submit and done through e-mail. Reviewers are as responsible as the code submitter in identifying negligent comments. From the check-in comment, the intent of the change should be obvious; the comments need only support the intent. Asking someone to review a change before submission has the added benefit of ensuring at least two minds understand it (even if one is only cursorily). If you don't understand the code, you ask questions and ensure each question answered results in a architectural document change, code change, comment change, or at the very least, check-in comment change. Sometimes, it is not apparent to the submitter that his concepts parlayed into code are consumable by others. It's for that reason it is important to put in bad code sometimes to see if people are paying attention.

There are no mod points for "Funny but incorrect" :)
Anandtech has shots of the 24 card display up and it has 4 cards in a regular mid-tower case.