"Sir, please step away from the PDA."

Professor Steve Andriole of Villanova University has had it with personal information systems users. I've met a few, though it sounds like he's stumbled across a nest of them:

How can anyone focus meaningfully on anything? Is this a plot by the makers
of adult ADD drugs?

The best example of this came at a meeting I recently attended. I watched all of the middle-aged guys pull out their weapons of choice: cell phones, crackberries, laptops, pagers and what are now considered old-fashioned PDAs. Each one of them laid their devices in front of them like they were trying to create some kind of cockpit.

''Mine is smaller than yours,'' I heard one of them say, as another challenged everyone to a digital race. ''I bet I can download more and faster than anyone here.''

These people are idiots.

If you can believe it, this item came across in a PDA newsletter, Palm Blvd.