It is the first paragraph of a story that had nothing to do with the iPad. I would have thought Nick would have been spitting acid for something like that.

Just read the link.

"The IPad" is a mentioned with a highlighted link to promote it, and further down is this hilarious jewel:
At their most basic, computers represent data as on or off, a "0" or a "1."

Ok, so she stuck a little solar cell on an IC - not hard since any junction exposed to sunlight generates a little power. I've done it with 1N914s in their little glass bodies.

What is more troubling is her statement concerning scaling:

"We would have one amp with one volt in a sample the diameter of a human hair and an inch long,"

In which universe? Sunlight strikes the earth with about 1000W per square metre or roughly 1W per 3x3 cm patch of ground. Her proposed 1W device covers significantly less area than 3x3 cm.

Of course, hers occupies volume and not just area.

Nutters, the lot of them. Next they'll be telling us that the we're related to monkeys and the world is warming.

Well, *this* time, the sarcastic remark about the ipad was a bit hollow and vitriolic ... I clicked the referred link expecting to see a glowing diatribe from the referenced author about ipad, but all there was was a reference, and a rather dismissive one at that.

The ipad is an item of significant current news, it's not unexpected or unfair to expect references to it to colour stories that are related to it in some way - in this case, because the self-powered circuit may be beneficially usable in portable computing devices such as the ipad.

Referring to the ipad in particular can colour the relevance of the article for less tech-savvy users and then the rest of the article (which doesn't mention ipad again) may educate them about the broader tech industry.

In this case, that author hasn't really done enough in his brief ipad mention to warrant an accusation of losing all credibility - especially not if that's the only judged criterion. So I take it the comment was just exaggerative sarcasm ... if so, then in this case, it's just not as witty/funny as on other occasions - that's my humour analysis done. Bye now.

I won't call it a microprocessor then.

You could put your company computer servers in roof tiles... but what about snow? (In fact, what about night?)

Build the solar panel into the screen cos we all know how easy it is to read a display in bright sunlight...

DUR!