Teleportation: How Close Are We to Having Scotty Beam Us Down?

"Beam me up, Scotty." I'm not really sure if Captain James T. Kirk ever actually said that exact line, or it is one of those "Play it again, Sam" corruptions, but I do know that teleportation is the great dream of everyone from NASA engineers to those whose favorite pizza joint is on the other side of town and they don't deliver that far out of range. Long before J.K. Rowling stole yet another idea from someone, the men in tight pants and the women in short skirts aboard the Starship Enterprise were beaming around the universe with the touch of a Scotsman's hand. The idea of being able to get from your house in Connecticut to your office in Manhattan must be the stuff dreams are made of. But is teleportation really just a pipedream?