Authenticator app, not just iPhone anymoreFollow

I'm just wondering why this is for a price, and the iPhone one isn't.

I've been wondering that for a few days now, too.

Then I realized I had books.

And no, Noc, I didn't steal your phone. You may have left it here when you were doing your wenching, though.

I can't imagine driving without one

Is having a cell phone pressed to your ear while behind the wheel the equivalent of driving while intoxicated? According to a study by University of Utah psychologists, the answer is, unfortunately, yes.

"Just like you put yourself and other people at risk when you drive drunk, you put yourself and others at risk when you use a cell phone and drive," writes David Strayer, a psychology professor and the study's lead author. "The level of impairment is very similar."

The study, published in the June 29 issue of Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, found that drivers talking on cell phones, either handheld or hands-free, are more likely to crash because they are distracted by conversation.

Using a driving simulator under four different conditions: with no distractions, using a handheld cell phone, talking on a hands-free cell phone, and while intoxicated to the 0.08 percent blood-alcohol level, 40 participants followed a simulated pace car that braked intermittently.

Researchers found that the drivers on cell phones drove more slowly, braked more slowly and were more likely to crash. In fact, the three participants who collided into the pace car were chatting away. None of the drunken drivers crashed.

"This study does not mean people should start driving drunk," said co-author Frank Drews. "It means that driving while talking on a cell phone is as bad as or maybe worse than driving drunk, which is completely unacceptable and cannot be tolerated by society."

New research shows that people have greater difficultly maintaining a fixed speed, or keeping their car safe in a single lane when performing tasks that simulated conversing on a mobile phone, than if they were driving without the distraction. Contrary to expectation, the speaking and listening were equally distracting. The research was conducted at the University of Illinois and will be published in the next edition of Applied Cognitive Psychology.

Almost 100 students took experiments in which they drove virtual cars. While driving they had to provide answers about the layout of buildings on their campus, or check that statements made by others about relative positions of building were correct. The researchers monitored various aspects of their driving performance while they performed these tasks.

They showed that both speaking and listening had detrimental effects on driving. Participants were poorer at maintaining a stable speed, or keeping a constant distance between themselves and other traffic than when only driving. Paradoxically, there was some indication that when drivers had to speak while driving, their lane control increased even though speed control decreased.

Before this research the expectation was that speaking would be more detrimental than listening, because speaking is often thought to be a more complex task. "Unexpectedly we found that speaking and listening had very similar detrimental effects," says lead author Tate Kubose, a postdoctoral fellow working in the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois. "These results challenge the widespread presumption that production is harder than comprehension, and the expectation that talking while driving is necessarily more disruptive than listening," says Dr Kubose.

These results support the growing body of data suggesting that it is the cognitive task of conversing via phone, in addition to the physical task of handling the equipment, that impedes a person's ability to drive safely.

That one does sound pretty awful, but there are plenty of good books out there. Why don't you try a nice used book store? They're like orphanages for poor, lonely little books.

SpoilerOk, I know I'll regret this, but I gotta know the special weenie word now...

Thanks, Isyris. I almost passed out laughing at that. I'm glad you didn't pay full cover price for that book!

Did someone discover the black bar rollover feature? You know, when you mouseover, it still says ******.