If this is the exciting tech for 2011, I have to admit - I'm a bit depressed. Luckily, we rarely know at the beginning of the year what'll actually be big the next year. More tablets, gaming phones, and processors really just isn't that exciting, however.

I'd prefer that laptop users be required to sit in the BACK OF THE CLASS. I don't really care if they are squandering their money playing some sort of game or watching porn. I want to be able to pay attention to the lecture, not have to try to ignore some action packed flashing laptop monitoring that keeps lighting up in between me and the instructor. I don't pay the money I pay to go to school and police other students. I'm there to learn - if they aren't, it's not okay to expect me to pay the price as well for their disinterest.

On subject, however - I have no problem with laptops in the class. The sounds of clicking and typing really aren't that distracting, and it can be very helpful to a lot of people. And honestly? Sometimes I DO need to grab my laptop and ignore the lecture for five minutes while I fix something at work (I own a small business, I'm often the only one that can do something without using an expensive on-call consultant). And that should be fine - as long as I am being respectful and not disrupting the education of the other people in the class - the education they (or someone) is paying good money for.

I know that normally, this being Slashdot, you can say "read the..." and know, with confidence, that you are scoring a well deserved point - even if you didn't bother to do so yourself. Sorry, bud, but let's look at that source article. Here are some choice quotes:

"The purpose of the study is to compare the crash experience of two different types of vehicles; it is not to make national estimates of problem size. The small sample size used in this study remains as a limitation towards conducting further analysis. Incidence rates provided in this report should be interpreted with caution due to the small sample size. Future analysis using larger sample size would provide better estimate of the problem size."

"This analysis was conducted on a total of 8,387 HEVs and 559,703 ICE vehicles that met the selection criteria. A total of 77 and 3,578 pedestrians were involved in crashes with HEVs and ICE vehicles, respectively. A total of 48 and 1,862 bicyclists were involved in crashes with HEVs and ICE vehicles, respectively."

Okay, so some important questions that need to be answered, and are not (I mentioned some of these in my first post):

1. How many people were hurt?
2. Were people being distracted by something at the time of the accident?
3. Are there any other external factors that were controlled for? (the list of controls are extremely poor, including things like location, and time of day, but not weather, ACTUAL lighting conditions, busy-ness of the location, time of week, etc.)

Point is, the study authors recognize their study is crap - they suggest a good study be conducted based on their evidence - that's IT. There isn't anything here to base a stupid new policy on. This is why politicians are rightly made fun of. This is why reasonable people sneer at shit like this, and get pissed when it actually passes. "Think of the pedestrian" you say - well, I say "Think. Period."

No. And really? What accidents? What factors are taken into consideration? Will people get used to cars that aren't so loud, and thus hear the tires and the sound of movement? Or does it even matter, since half the people are running around with their iPods blasting as loud as they can be? This article is B.S. - it doesn't address even half of the concerns, situations and problems. And it's a rehash that's being repeated every two or three months like someone has some sort scheduled gagging session. "Legislating car noise - news @ 11" x infinity

Your post is great, and generally true. The only problem is the first sentence: "No, it's not silly at all." The problem with that sentence is it seems to be in response to my question. If that is the case, then either you didn't bother to back up that assertion, or you feel the rest of your post DID back up that assertion, which it does not. It says nothing about whether or not it's silly to assume that a government agency, which marked these documents as secret, will say "Oh, we didn't mean those to be secret - you can show these things, but, if you don't mind, not those." That is absurd. Your post, on the other hand, gives good reasons for posting information ANYWAY, once it's been looked over, when that information is decided to be something that shouldn't be secret, by the reader of that information. That has nothing to do with the question/response that I laid out.

Wikileaks: "Which of these documents that you've market "secret" is okay to tell everyone?"
Government: "What the fu*K? None of them - that's why we marked them secret."
Wikileaks: "Well, if you won't decide, we will! And therefore, we release all of it!"

Do you see how silly that is?

I agree that "pathologically friendly" is bad as well - that's why I say - just don't answer. Even an idiot will notice, sooner or later, that everyone ignores only them. And they might get a clue, or even ask "Why doesn't anyone ever answer MY question?" And then, politely, you can tell them, if you feel like it. And if they don't ever realize? Not your problem.

This post deserves every single mod point that can be thrown its way!!! Damn. I've already posted in this thread, or I'd give you all I could. Please - +3 insightful (which is where its at right now) is completely unfair. Someone mod this guy's post up, please!

And thus, the cycle perpetuates. Better yet, if you are going to be an ass in your reply - just don't reply. That means the user might NOT get help - and that may be a concern for them - but it's better than getting attacked - which will definitely be a concern for them.

Thank you! That helps.

Thank you!

Do you have any other information than this? http://johnnyedge.blogspot.com/2010/11/these-events-took-place-roughly-between.html 'Cause that story sounds pretty fishy, though the video would seem to help, if it actually showed the astounding part (it does not).

You know, if the answer if "NO", then how about you just gawdamn say so, instead of wasting everyone's time hunting through stories that just restate the speculation? Jeez.

I'd guess it won't be long. Is there any reason that people needed to publish this information? Is this stuff that people "must know" - to the point where it's worth getting it shut down? This seems pretty dumb to me.

There is only one reason that MS hired Ozzie. It was because he started Notes. Whether that was to remove him from Lotus, or to get his resources at MS, Microsoft clearly thinks Notes/Domino is a great product.

I don't know about that logic, man. I heard they were thinking about buying Adobe too. Do you really think Microsoft considers Adobe products to be anything but shit? ;)